Elon Musk-led Twitter is reportedly planning big layoffs and a $20 monthly fee for every user who wants to verify or keep their current account verified.
According to The Verge, Musk ordered employees to raise the price of a Twitter Blue subscription from $4.99 a month to $19.99 and require anyone with a verified account to sign up to keep the blue verification mark. Citing “people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence,” The Verge article said the plan is that “verified users will have 90 days to sign up [to Twitter Blue] or lose their blue check mark. Employees working on the project were told on Sunday that they must meet a November 7 deadline to release the feature or they will be fired.”
Making verification a paid feature could make it easier for fraudsters to impersonate real people. As Twitter’s website notes, “the Twitter Verified blue badge lets users know that a public interest account is authentic. To receive the blue badge, your account must be authentic, reputable and active.”
Companies may see the fee as part of the cost of doing business, but individuals are less likely to pay that much just to keep their blue checks. When a verified person loses their checkmark, a fraudster could pretend to be that person and there would be no verified account they could point to to prove the fraudster is fake.
Musk tweeted on Sunday that “the entire verification process is being refreshed right now,” but did not elaborate. We reached out to Twitter’s PR department today and will update this article if we receive more information about Twitter Blue and its verification plans.
An earlier report about Twitter Blue’s plan to link verification said the subscription price would remain at $4.99 per month. “Twitter is strongly considering making its users pay to stay verified on the service, according to Platformer,” Platformer news site Casey Newton’s report said. “If the project [moves] going forward, users will have to subscribe to Twitter Blue for $4.99 per month or lose their badges.”
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Twitter Blue currently provides access to the Undo Tweet option and several other features.
The layoffs could reportedly affect nearly 50% of the workforce
While Musk has reportedly told Twitter staff that it is not true that he plans to eliminate 75% of the workforce, several reports say he is drawing up plans for major layoffs. Over the weekend, “Elon Musk’s inner circle gathered with Twitter’s remaining senior executives” and the group was “deciding on the first round of layoffs, which will target about a quarter of its more than 7,000 staff.” the Washington Post reported. The Post report said the layoffs will affect “virtually all departments and are expected to specifically affect sales, product, engineering, legal, trust and security in the coming days… After engineering, some of the most Twitter’s highest-paid employees work in sales, where several earn more than $300,000, according to documents seen by The Post.” One of the Post’s sources “said the total number of layoffs is likely to be closer to 50 percent.” The newspaper previously reported that “Musk told prospective investors in his deal to buy the company that he planned to get rid of nearly 75 percent” of the staff. A New York Times report, citing people with knowledge of the matter. said Musk “ordered the cuts across the company, with some groups being cut more than others.” Bloomberg also cited unnamed sources in a report that said Musk “asked managers to draw up lists of team members who could be let go.” Musk denied part of the New York Times report that said “the layoffs at Twitter would take place before Nov. 1, when employees were scheduled to receive stock grants as part of their compensation.” Musk’s cost-cutting can be at least partially related to the $13 billion in debt he used to complete the $44 billion purchase. “Last year, Twitter’s interest was about $50 million,” said a New York Times report on Twitter’s finances. “With the new debt assumed in the deal, it will now reach about $1 billion annually. However, the company’s operations last year generated about $630 million in cash flow to meet its financial obligations.” Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal and several other top executives shortly after the acquisition was completed on Thursday last week. He reportedly appointed himself CEO, but calls himself “Chief Twit.”
