Now that he owns Twitter, Elon Musk has given staff their first ultimatum: Meet his deadline to introduce paid verification on Twitter or pack up and depart.
The directive is to alter Twitter Blue, the corporate’s non-obligatory, $4.99 a month subscription that unlocks extra options, right into a costlier subscription that additionally verifies customers, in line with folks acquainted with the matter and inner correspondence seen by The Verge. Twitter is at the moment planning to cost $19.99 for the brand new Twitter Blue subscription. Below the present plan, verified customers would have 90 days to subscribe or lose their blue checkmark. Staff engaged on the undertaking had been advised on Sunday that they should meet a deadline of November seventh to launch the function or they are going to be fired.
Musk has been clear within the months main as much as his acquisition that he wished to revamp how Twitter verifies accounts and handles bots. On Sunday, he tweeted: “The entire verification course of is being revamped proper now.”
The Twitter Blue subscription launched broadly virtually a yr in the past as a solution to view ad-free articles from some publishers and make different tweaks to the app, resembling a unique colour house display screen icon. Within the few quarters that Twitter reported earnings as a public firm after that debut, promoting remained the overwhelming majority of its income. Musk is eager on rising subscriptions to turn out to be half of the corporate’s total income.
Replace October thirtieth at 9:25PM ET: Added element that current verified customers will lose their checkmark in 90 days in the event that they don’t subscribe to the brand new Twitter Blue after it launches.