In terms of wealth Putin has to be richer, and he seems pretty stupid.
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Twitter to Charge $20 a Month for Verified Accounts, Reports Suggest
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Elon Musk profits from publicity. Even writing down his name gives him that. Publicity allows him to pitch stupid ideas to hoards of clueless investors. Without publicity a Boring Company selling mail-order flamethrowers and caps that say "boring company" would be a joke. But with publicity he's the new Messiah who invents the future and warns everybody about sentient robots. His wealth doesn't come from his companies being profitable themselves, he's selling the idea that they're about to become highly profitable very soon and you can't miss out on the opportunity to invest.
I agree, the verification system makes no sense. You could be a YouTuber with 100k+ subs and not get it, yet some drama account breaking all sorts of rules gets a blue checkmark. I would go on, but I think you get what I'm trying to explain.
Mankind should be so lucky.
ALL social media should be vaporized. Hopefully, moves like this will start the ball rolling in that direction.
This is just the first of many moves to monetize social media beyond the serving of worthless adds. I also think Facebook and their Metaverse will crash and burn first. If it goes right, they will all suffer as they did at the end of the dot com era right before the 2008 great recession.
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Well, to be fair here, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla, Elon bought them out. And SpaceX wouldn't get very far at ALL if it weren't for all of those Government Subsidies. In this case (Twitter), it's more of a checkout aisle / impulse buy for him, than a "sharp witted" or "clever" business move. He was always bad at tweeting, thinking just deleting a tweet makes it go away. He lives in a world where which $10,000 suit he'll wear once is more of a business decision than what to do with Twitter..
I bet it went something like this: "Charge 'em $20- no, $19.99 a month.. That'll solve our problems"
His first two ventures were successful, though. He turned a 28k loan into $22 million for himself and then he went on to found X.com, now known as PayPal. While a great ROI, folks didn't tend to like his CEO capabilities at either.
100% is since you can see what kind of people said secret committee was favoring.
Correct and nobody wiped out his student loans. He was in debt when he was a student and worked his way out of it. People like to lie and say he inherited his wealth, but he didn't.
Hahaha, so much for „That is why I bought Twitter. I didn't do it because it would be easy. I didn't do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love.“
Yeah. Right.
Yeah. Right.
People always say these things, as if there's some illuminati approving Stonecutters or something. Most folks I follow aren't verified. Some tech folks. Some comedians. Some music industry folks. It can be a great tool if you know how to use the tool.
I’m no fan of more centralised control of Twitter. But I think this is quite a smart move by Musk:
Much of the battle over Twitter ownership is a power play between Musk and the establishment media. It’s about who shapes the information ecosystem, and what that ends up resembling.
The Twitter ‘blob’ of establishment media elites who oppose Musk are all verified... and are Very Precious about it. To date, these people have exerted extreme influence over the ecosystem. Both on Twitter and beyond, via their media outlets.
These people would rather quit the platform than pay Musk. But they’ll be enraged to lose the blue tick. What to do?!
While those who are verified and aren’t part of the blob won’t care to lose it.
Bigger picture: By blending subscription with Verified status, he is signalling his intention to demean the latter. One of the key red lines of status on the platform.
But two things also need to happen to make this complete:
TL;DR With this move to make Verified paid, Musk helps break up the blob, strikes at the heart of the establishment info ecosystem, and gets a step closer to reshaping Twitter away from its loudest voices.
(And if it fails, worst case: he generates some repeat income for Twitter.)
Much of the battle over Twitter ownership is a power play between Musk and the establishment media. It’s about who shapes the information ecosystem, and what that ends up resembling.
The Twitter ‘blob’ of establishment media elites who oppose Musk are all verified... and are Very Precious about it. To date, these people have exerted extreme influence over the ecosystem. Both on Twitter and beyond, via their media outlets.
These people would rather quit the platform than pay Musk. But they’ll be enraged to lose the blue tick. What to do?!
While those who are verified and aren’t part of the blob won’t care to lose it.
Bigger picture: By blending subscription with Verified status, he is signalling his intention to demean the latter. One of the key red lines of status on the platform.
But two things also need to happen to make this complete:
- Twitter tweaks the algorithm to stop privileging Verified accounts, e.g. so Verified's messages get the same play as Unverifieds. (Otherwise you can buy distribution, which is already a key talking point of the blob against this move.) If they did this, it would be consistent with Musk’s statements about making Twitter for everyone.
- Further down the line, Twitter implements a way of verifying identities which can be performed by everyone. Again, consistent with Musk’s comments on managing the bot issue.
TL;DR With this move to make Verified paid, Musk helps break up the blob, strikes at the heart of the establishment info ecosystem, and gets a step closer to reshaping Twitter away from its loudest voices.
(And if it fails, worst case: he generates some repeat income for Twitter.)
I registered an account here just to say I wholly agree! We need a serious friendly social network without the boasting and showing off. Maybe Elon can fix that! No irony
$20 A MONTH! The sad part is that so many people what that nice blue check mark that they will pay for it. I just use the platform to get the latest and greatest sports news, so I think I'll hold on to that $240.
With him posting misinformation and conspiracy theories already, the Twitter app will be off Apple and Google's app stores within 2 weeks so it won't matter.
Very easy to use a prepaid or other non-trackable credit card. This does nothing to stop imposter accounts and in fact makes it easier for them to get verified.
I thoght he bought it so that he can use it to create a super app like a western version of Wechat. Would make sense, he would need a big platform to start it and there are not many of them that can be bought. Not that I would want to use a Wechat style app controlled by Musk, but I guess if it got big enought we would all have to.......
How many enraged users here are verified on twitter, seriously. Did your media overlord tell you to think this way? This will hopefully purge some more terrible people as they will be unwilling to give him more money (aside from their Tesla). Twitter was pretty dull before with the heavily censored carefully curated group think, it is getting very entertaining to watch the media and celebrities lose their collective minds over this.
$20 is steep, but probably nothing to the majority of people who are verified. It is smart on his part to try and generate a profit from a company that is losing millions a quarter.
I had never noticed there was a thing called the blue tick. Of course now it just can't be unseen. I guess it just show how much I (don't) use Twitter.
I dislike a lot about Twitter and this deal but it sort of makes sense to have companies, institutions and specific individuals pay for the right to use Twitter as a announcement platform.
The pricing itself seems a bit weird, very expensive for individuals and even small businesses and very cheap for larger companies.
I dislike a lot about Twitter and this deal but it sort of makes sense to have companies, institutions and specific individuals pay for the right to use Twitter as a announcement platform.
The pricing itself seems a bit weird, very expensive for individuals and even small businesses and very cheap for larger companies.
I’m not sure if the last qualifies as a distinct group and isn’t covered by the other three already.
Nobody runs a company to do anything but make money. Elon, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, etc. This is their #1 goal and anyone who thinks otherwise no matter what they say is a gullible fool.
THIS! Having an actual person decide whether another account is a real person is WAY better than leaving it up to a dollar amount. Some lobbying company that can waste $1000 on 50 burner accounts that now look "real".