You see, there is a little of selfish interest in almost everything we do. When it comes to business, the figure rises.
Twitter is one of such businesses that are exploiting this selfish-interest strategy.
There has been a lot of drama happening in Twitter, as a company, since the new owner took over.
The Blue Tick Bizarre
The internet has its language and Elon Musk wants to be a major stake holder in that space where people talk in short messages, sometimes, constricted to 280 words.
After he took over Twitter, he began to implement a lot of changes, including sacking a chunk of Twitter’s staff.
His latest implementation is the removal of ‘Twitter Blue Tick’ from celebrities’, politicians and quite a large number of persons that had worked hard to earn their blue ticks.
In just one day, one man took away what makes them heavy on Twitter.
Adding salt to their injuries, Musk decided to sell those years of hard work to them again for $8 per month. A Nigerian will say: “Twitter wan open account for their head”.
It sounded ridiculous to quite a number of the hard-work-gotten-blue-tick owners, especially those with deep thoughts.
Sadly, some politicians in Nigeria quickly showed they have paid for that blue tick. Quite a lot of them were revealed to us by Mr. Musk on April 21.
See Blue Tick: List Of Nigerian Politicians Who Have ‘Paid’ Twitter
These people who paid are people some Nigerians will say rose to fame and got blue tick without much work, but by paying for it.
Well, that is a story for another day. Back to the Twitter marketing strategy that failed.
Before Mr. Musk took over as Twitter CEO, the blue tick was given to accounts that belong to prominent people and organisations.
It was a symbol of verification after users have fulfilled certain requirements (hard work).
Now, what used to be a sign of authenticity could now be bought for a price and some users decided to subscribe.
However, when he realised that less than 5% of verified accounts subscribed, Mr. Musk announced the removal of the blue tick from non-subscribers.
The removal was to take effect on April 20.
The Return
On April 20, Mr. Musk kept his words.
He began to remove the blue tick from non-subscribers and this caused him to receive so much backlash.
Also, many high-profile account holders said they would not subscribe and Mr. Musk began to return their blue ticks on Saturday.
Musk tweeted on Friday that he was “paying for a few (subscriptions) personally”.
However, rather than praise Mr. Musk for this, many of the recipients protested against it.
You Should Read: Jack Dorsey: 3 Things To Know About Bluesky
American rapper Lil Nas X, whose profile displays the blue tick, tweeted: “on my soul i didn’t pay for twitter blue, u will feel my wrath tesla man!”
on my soul i didn’t pay for twitter blue, u will feel my wrath tesla man!
— ✟ (@LilNasX) April 22, 2023
The accounts of some dead celebrities, such as US chef Anthony Bourdain, also received a blue tick.
According to reports, accounts that are over 1 million followers are the ones getting the blue tick.
Also, the blue tick shows that the accounts have subscribed to Twitter Blue which many users say they did not.
Why do I have a blue check @Twitter @TwitterSafety?
This is false: pic.twitter.com/EK26PBaZRr
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) April 22, 2023
This is not acceptable. I did not subscribe to Twitter blue and find this extremely deceptive.
It better not be that someone can pay on my behalf. That will be a breach of my privacy pic.twitter.com/F6UmR14lMK
— Aisha Yesufu (@AishaYesufu) April 22, 2023
Interesting things happening there; if you read between the lines.
One is that Twitter’s new owner wanted to push for the subscription and needed some form of marketing to make people subscribe.
It discovered he could push that message with the removal from everyone and return of blue tick to a few persons.
When Mr. Musk said he had paid for a couple of subscriptions personally, he is saying that it is only through payment that the blue tick will return.
It then means Twitter had to go into every account’s backend and credit their account with the money for as long as Mr. Musk’s payment could cover.
Well, Twitter has “the yam and the knife”.
The Failed Marketing Strategy
if payments were truly made, that was a huge fund committed to marketing and pushing those statements saying the individual had subscribed.
For instance, if you want to know if Wizkid subscribed; click on the blue tick by his Twitter handle @wizkidayo and you will see a message saying he subscribed.
Sadly, that marketing is failing, as people are quickly seeing the alleged violation of privacy that Twitter had committed.
With celebrities coming out to state that they did not subscribe, people will stand their ground on not subscribing.
Everyone is saying: We earn badges. We do not pay for them. That is ‘obtainable’ everywhere.
With this, a few things will follow.
Some persons may take Twitter to court for privacy violation.
Twitter may remove that message and apologise to avoid court case or take a second route.
This route will for Twitter to introduce a new threshold of 1 million subscribers before you will get the blue tick (a badge).
So, get ready to form strategies that will help you grow your Twitter account if you want to be in the future game of things on the Internet.
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