Now that he is the owner of Twitter, Elon Musk has issued employees his first ultimatum: meet his deadline to implement the paid verification feature on Twitter or leave and quit.
The plan is to transform Twitter Blue, the company’s voluntary, $ 4.99-a-month subscription that unlocks more features. Twitter plans to charge $19.99 for its newly launched Twitter Blue membership. In the current model, the verified users have 90 days to sign up or forfeit the blue mark on their check. The employees working on the project were informed the following day that they had to finish by November 7th to begin the feature; otherwise, they could be dismissed.
Musk had made it clear in the months before his purchase that he wanted to change how Twitter authenticates accounts and handles bots. In a tweet on Sunday, Musk posted: “The whole verification process is being revamped right now.”
Platformer’sCasey Newton first published that Twitter might be contemplating the possibility of charging users for verifying their identity. Unfortunately, the spokesperson on Twitter has yet to respond to a request to comment.
Although he’s only three days into his role as “Chief Twit,” Musk has been quick to make adjustments to Twitter initially by changing its homepage to allow logged-out users. With the assistance of Tesla engineers that he’s recruited to Twitter as advisors, as well as planning mass reductions in middle management and engineers that haven’t contributed to the code base. These cuts will likely begin next week, and managers are already making lists of employees to be cut. The employees responsible for executing Musk’s projects since he was appointed to the presidency on Thursday night are working late hours of the night and during weekends.
Twitter Blue subscription launched a little over a year ago to access ad-free content from various publishers. It also allows users to make other changes to the app, including the option of a different color for the icon for the home screen. In the few times Twitter declared profits as a public company following the launch, advertising was the significant majority of its revenues. Musk is determined to increase subscriptions until they make up most of the company’s revenue.
