The IT Nerd

A reader late last night pointed me towards this story on The Verge where it is clear that Elon Musk has gone off the deep end. According to the story, Mush has demanded the following:

The directive is to change Twitter Blue, the company’s optional, $4.99 a month subscription that unlocks additional features, into a more expensive subscription that also verifies users, according to people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence seen by The Verge. Twitter is currently planning to charge $19.99 for the new Twitter Blue subscription. Under the current plan, verified users would have 90 days to subscribe or lose their blue checkmark. Employees working on the project were told on Sunday that they need to meet a deadline of November 7th to launch the feature or they will be fired.

I really can’t see movie stars, politicians and athletes who are already verified by Twitter giving Elon Musk $20 a month to keep their blue checkmark. What I do see them doing is abandoning the platform in droves. And the fact that Musk is threatening employees shows that he’s not only desperate, but a horrible boss as really good bosses do not need to threaten employees.

But why is Musk doing this? Well, the same reader said to me that Musk likely wants to make his $44 billion back as quickly as possible. And while that may be true, there’s more to this. Musk is under pressure to illustrate that he can quickly turn Twitter into a money making machine. And he doesn’t have the sort of latitude that he has with Tesla or Space-X. If he can’t prove that he’s capable of making Twitter print money so to speak, the people he borrowed the money from to allow him to buy Twitter will be knocking on his door. And if you’re Musk, what do you do? Thus this rather hyper aggressive attempt to get cash in the door quickly.

And I am sure Musk’s rather large ego would be really bruised if he can’t walk the walk after talking the talk so to speak.

Another thing to consider, many of my peers found that at $4.99 a month, Twitter Blue’s value was questionable. I’m not sure if there’s any more value at $20 a month. But as always, I am free to be surprised.

This entry was posted on October 31, 2022 at 8:08 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.