You might remember that the first thing that Elon Musk wanted to do was roll out Twitter Blue with a verification checkmark. Well, that turned into a train wreck next to a dumpster fire very quickly. And Elon was forced to pull it. Now according to The Verge, it may not return on the 29th of November:
Elon Musk told Twitter employees on Monday that the company won’t relaunch its paid verification subscription, Twitter Blue, until “we’re confident about significant impersonations not happening,” according to a recording of his remarks obtained by The Verge.
Musk said last week that his $8 per month Blue subscription would be made available again on November 29th. But in the meeting with employees, he said the timing of the launch was unclear: “We might launch it next week. We might not. But we’re not going to launch until there’s high confidence in protecting against those significant impersonations.”
This was confirmed later in a Tweet:
I am guessing that he took a beating from a number of advertisers who were impersonated on the platform. Thus if he relaunches this, he needs to be 1000% sure that nothing bad will happen or he is pretty much screwed. The reason being is that while he wants to shift Twitter income away from advertising as being the primary source of cash, he needs that advertising revenue in the short to medium term unless he wants to fund Twitter by selling Tesla stock like he recently did.
Another tidbit that is worth mentioning from this Verge article is this:
He also told employees that Twitter was done with layoffs and hiring again, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Verge.
Maybe that’s because his power play of wanting “hardcore” employees backfired in such a spectacular manner. The question is if anyone would want to work for this guy given what’s gone on these past few weeks? And if Musk is thinking that he can get former Twitter employees to come back, he may want to think twice. Apparently a lot of firms want ex-Twitter staff. Perhaps he should have thought about that before swinging the axe.