Elon Musk's First Order Of Business At Twitter Is Making Blue Checks Cost $20 A Month

Elon Musk, fresh off completing his purchase of Twitter, has made one of his first orders of business making the site's infamous "Blue Checks" pay — literally.

According to a report from Platformer and The Verge, Musk's apparent first big idea to get Twitter to generate revenue is to make being verified on the platform a $20/month service. Furthermore, the team in charge of developing the subscription service has until November 7th to deliver, or they're all fired.

20 dollars?! https://t.co/HVEZ56UYDt

— Payton (@paytonisnotroll) October 31, 2022

Twitter's verification system was implemented in 2009 after baseball manager Tony La Russa sued the company because someone was impersonating him on the platform. Since then, it's become one of the site's more notorious and contentious features.

There is an impression among some on the internet that those with verified accounts are liberals with inflated egos, and nearly any major piece of Twitter discourse will find people (often conservatives) rolling their eyes at the "blue checks" weighing in on whatever controversy is circulating on Twitter that day.

Musk's plan can be seen as a bet that the ego stroke of a blue check will be worth $20 a month to enough people to generate a lucrative revenue stream. However, as the news spread about the new plan, many Twitter users, including some verified users, laughed and expressed they'd gladly let their blue ticks go rather than pay to maintain them. They also joked that paying $20 per month for a little symbol would be very dorky.

Hmmm should I pay $20/month to look like a guy who would pay $20/month for a blue check or should I pay 0 dollars https://t.co/vaJWaTcf9I

— seventy hours of sludgy guitar riffs (@nedwards) October 31, 2022

lol I’m not paying 20 dollars a month for a checkmark. You can have it back, Elon. https://t.co/VE691JHSqU

— Brett Kollmann (@BrettKollmann) October 31, 2022

You can take my checkmark it was never that serious. https://t.co/OXhYjR2mb3

— TKbreezy 🎙 (@TKbreezy) October 31, 2022

Others noted that Musk's strict and tight deadline for the feature could be a recipe for problems. Twitter has historically only delivered new features after months, and sometimes years, of rigorous testing.

That Musk gave a development team a week to develop a subscription service or face dismissal seemed draconian to some and opened up the potential for a rushed, buggy final product.

It is truly amazing that after so many years pretending to be an engineer, he still has absolutely no idea how anything works.
This is not the way to make a stable platform. pic.twitter.com/ZrxZ0z9BmA

— Dan Sandler (@Danielsand) October 31, 2022

Twitter was somewhat famous for slow product rollouts, but often because they went to the extreme to test and consider what might go wrong. It appears they're moving to the opposite extreme.

Also, this management style is how you drive away any good engineer. https://t.co/Sl88C9wrFQ

— Mike Masnick (@mmasnick) October 31, 2022

While the new $20 price tag will almost assuredly result in a mass un-verification on Twitter, some think it will still get Twitter some money. Some have noted that even if 90 percent of currently verified accounts don't opt into the subscription service, if just 10 percent do, Twitter could rake in $7.2 million a month.

If Twitter gets even 10 percent of these people to pay $20/month, they will be making an extra 7.2 million dollars per year. That's enough to buy four or even five houses in Toronto ⁠-- and, again, that's every single year pic.twitter.com/cvzYACXj2S

— Brooks Otterlake (@i_zzzzzz) October 31, 2022