According to reports, a $20 monthly fee would be levied on Twitter users who have a verification badge under Elon Musk’s new ownership.
According to the Daily Mail, Musk intends to introduce a pay-for-play verification system in which confirmed users will be billed $20 per month.
Engineers at the microblogging site have until November 7 to implement the plan or risk firing.
On October 30, the initiative was announced to staff.
Now that he owns Twitter, Elon Musk has issued his first ultimatum to employees: meet his deadline for introducing paid verification on Twitter or pack up and forget their job on twitter.
According to sources familiar with the situation and internal communication reviewed by our press men, the instruction is to convert Twitter Blue, the company’s optional $4.99 per month membership that unlocks more services, into a more costly subscription that also validates users.
Twitter’s new Twitter Blue membership will presently cost $19.99 per month.
Verified users would have 90 days to subscribe or lose their blue checkmark under the present scheme.
Employees working on the project were informed on Sunday that they must implement the feature by November 7th or face job termination.
Musk said repeatedly in the months preceding up to his purchase that he wants to change the way Twitter validates accounts and manages bots.
He tweeted on Sunday, “The whole verification procedure is being revised right now.”
Casey Newton of Platformer was the first to reveal that Twitter was contemplating charging for verification.
A Twitter spokeswoman did not reply to a request for comment by press time.
Even though he has only been “Chief Twit” for three days, Musk has moved rapidly to make changes at Twitter, beginning with redesigning the site for logged-out users.
He’s also contemplating mass layoffs of middle management and engineers who haven’t lately contributed to the code base with the support of Tesla engineers he’s brought in as advisers at Twitter.
Managers are already compiling lists of staff to lay off, and the layoffs are likely to begin this week.
Employees charged with carrying out Musk’s ambitions since his takeover Thursday evening have been working late into the night and into the weekend.
The Twitter Blue membership became publicly available over a year ago as a means to access ad-free content from certain publishers and make additional changes to the app, such as changing the color of the home screen icon.
Advertising maintained the great bulk of Twitter’s income in the few quarters following its first public offering.
Musk wants subscriptions to account for half of the company’s total income.
