Elon Musk has been getting more and more desperate to get users of Twitter to sign up for Twitter Blue. But based on this report from Mashable that a reader pointed me to, that’s likely failing. Let’s start with this:
Researcher Travis Brown, who has been tracking Twitter Blue subscriptions since January, recently revealed around half of all users subscribed to Twitter Blue have less than 1,000 followers. That’s approximately 220,132 paying subscribers.
Furthermore, 78,059 paying Twitter Blue subscribers have less than 100 users following their account. That’s 17.6 percent of all Twitter Blue subscribers.
Breaking down follower counts even further, there are 2,270 paying Twitter Blue subscribers who have zero followers.
That’s a significant chunk of Twitter Blue subscribers being unable to crack even four-digits worth of followers, even though some have subscribed believing it would help boost the growth of their Twitter account.
This is pretty bad. If I’m an advertiser, there’s zero value to any of these Twitter users. Because they don’t have anything near the level of pull with their followers to make it worthwhile to stick ads on the platform. The only person who wins here is Elon. Well, actually he’s not winning here either:
According to his data, Twitter Blue currently has a total of 444,435 paying subscribers. Accounting for the limitations of pulling this data using the Twitter API, Brown tells Mashable that he estimates that Twitter likely has around 475,000 paying subscribers.
This means that less than 0.2 percent of Twitter’s 254 million daily active users, a metric previously shared by Musk, are paying for Twitter Blue.
So let’s do some quick math shall we? If we assume that every Twitter Blue subscriber is paying $8 a month, that implies that Elon is pulling in $3.8 million a month from said subscribers. Keep in mind that he spent $44 billion buying a platform that according to him is now worth $20 billion, and it becomes clear that the math isn’t adding up because at that run rate, it will take an extremely long time to make his money back. Especially since advertising which is Twitter’s other source of income is dwindling.
Here’s another thing to consider. I’m sure that Elon was banking on those who are legacy blue checkmark owners would pay to keep the checkmark. But…
While the verified checkmark is seemingly the main draw of the subscription, Twitter does tout other features that come with the subscription service, although most of the advertised benefits have yet to launch. Users can edit certain tweets, add more than 280 characters to a post, and attach longer videos.
If these added Twitter Blue benefits were to be enticing to anyone, it would be Twitter’s power users. However, according to Brown’s data, only 6,482 legacy verified accounts have paid to subscribe to Twitter Blue.
There are approximately 420,000 legacy verified accounts in total, which are mostly celebrities, pro athletes, journalists, influencers, and other notable users that received the checkmark badge for free under Twitter’s old verification system.
Again, Elon’s not winning here. And it actually gets worse for Elon:
Twitter has already been struggling to grow Twitter Blue’s paid subscriber base. Will legacy verified accounts sign up for Twitter Blue to keep their blue checkmark? Judging by the sentiment on Twitter, it doesn’t appear that many are willing to do so. As even Twitter itself has reportedly noticed, users verified with the paid checkmark are often shunned by other users on the platform. And taking away legacy verification is likely to further cement the blue checkmark as scarlet letter on the platform.
This will sound familiar, but the lack of big names on Twitter with blue checkmarks next to their names lowers the value of the platform for other Twitter users or advertisers. But I am sure that Elon didn’t think that through before he came up with the idea of Twitter Blue.
Bad as that is, it gets even worse for Elon:
Many Twitter power users who have interacted with Twitter Blue subscribers note that they are most often far right wing accounts, cryptocurrency scammers, and hardcore Elon Musk supporters.
If I am an advertiser, these are the sorts of people I would be staying away from. And a lot of users of Twitter feel that way too. No wonder there’s a steady influx of users to Mastodon. Here’s the user count from 3PM EST:
Earlier today, I wrote that somewhere between one and two thousand users an hour are joining a Mastodon instance. That now seems to have crossed the two thousand an hour threshold. In other words the rate of people joining a Mastodon instance is increasing. That shows that Elon’s plans to make money are not only not working, but are driving users away from Twitter. Thus you have to wonder how long it will be before his $44 billion dollar investment, which is now worth $20 billion ends up being worthless.