More than 400,000 people have signed on to Twitter Blue, the $8-per-month subscription that CEO Elon Musk launched late last year. That not-insignificant total comes despite mass confusion over the social media giant’s verified blue check mark program.
Musk had previously tweeted that users who had been verified under the old program—celebrities, public officials, journalists, and the like—would lose their so-called legacy blue check mark on April 1 unless they signed up for Twitter Blue. But that hasn’t happened; instead, the blue check program has combined Twitter Blue subscribers and those who were previously verified. The end result is something akin to walking into a fire station where some people are actual firefighters and others have simply bought a firefighter costume at a Halloween store.
So, given all the ongoing confusion, what do those 400,000 (a figure that comes from Berlin-based software developer Travis Brown) actually get out of Twitter Blue?
For social media expert Janet Machuka, who has had a blue check under the old system for five years, the added features—especially the ability to create longer videos with reduced ads—looked enticing enough to subscribe.
“I’m trying to create my Twitter platform where I’ll be doing different sessions or different conversations on different topics, especially in the space that I have here in social media marketing,” Machuka says. “Having that plus time to add more to videos is something I was looking at.”
Machuka says it was important for her to keep the check mark because “people are used to seeing me with it.” After posting a video about her decision to get Twitter Blue, Machuka says she received positive reactions from her followers (and even gained a few more).
However, she believes the social meaning of Twitter’s check marks has now changed. “It’s no longer bringing a superiority complex if someone can pay for it and get it,” Machuka says. “It’s a choice, and it’s also for social proof.”
Machuka hits on an interesting point, and one that others have highlighted: Whereas the blue check was once a form of credibility, it now has a connotation of a commitment to the app.
Brown, the software developer who has been researching the impact of Twitter Blue, says it’s hard to analyze in detail the current numbers about the service because the platform doesn’t provide a tally of its subscriber base. A study Brown conducted in November found the average Twitter Blue subscriber had fewer than 600 followers. So even though the median follower count has almost doubled, “the characterizations there generally still hold,” he says, noting that there are now many more small businesses and organizations, as well as non-Anglophone accounts, paying for the service.
The Twitter user iFungibility, who operates a finance-focused account and spoke to Fast Company on condition of anonymity, says verification still holds status, even in this age of blended meanings. They said the security of having the check mark is the most important priority for their brand on the platform. But they also acknowledged that it’s now possible for anyone to impersonate a verified account by simply paying the fee (as was the case, for example, when someone impersonated LeBron James and tweeted that he wanted to be traded).
“For what I use Twitter for, I think it’s worth it,” they say. “But for the average person, it’s probably not any more beneficial than a normal account. . . . I think this Twitter Blue thing is, honestly, negative if anything.”
Even still, iFungibility says the status of having a verified account takes precedence for them, especially when the service is “cheaper than Netflix.”
For many, it’s now difficult to separate Twitter from its billionaire CEO—and, depending on your views of Musk, that could be a positive or a negative. Riz Nwosu says the main reason he jumped on getting Twitter Blue was for the editing feature that allows him to undo or modify his tweets. But he also says he read that having the service would boost visibility of his tweets, potentially even to Musk himself.
“Having the opportunity to have my tweets and my voice [be] more prominent could bolster my standing and make me more credible in the Twitterverse,” he says. “In the core, there’s something about [Twitter Blue] that makes your situation better.”
Nwosu also believes the function of the blue check mark has fundamentally changed. “With the pay-for-play, it completely invalidates any need to stop impersonators because any impersonator can just purchase [the blue check mark],” he says. “It was more of a verification tool, and now it’s more of an application tool.”
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