Anyone who's been following Elon Musk on Twitter, being very active on Twitter or keeping up with Twitter in the news will have known that Twitter has had a lot of changes over the last few weeks and months.
Now before we go deep into this let's rewind the clock back to how all this started. Before Elon became the CEO and proud owner of Twitter there was a little back and forth about how much was going to be on the table and if Twitter would even consider handing the company over to Elon.
After a long game of back and forth Twitter and Elon finally made a deal and Elon became the new owner and CEO of Twitter. According to The New York Times, Elon offered Twitter $44 Million. The moment Twitter and Elon signed the dotted line Elon became the new CEO and he didn't walk into his new business quietly.
He walked into Twitter HQ with a skink saying and later on tweeted "let that sink in" along with that he also decided to lay off around (3,700) members of his staff according to TechCrunch. Now before he kicked them all off, he didn't let's say "do it the way you are meant to do it" instead he deactivated their work laptops, closed down their work accounts and couldn't enter Twitter HQ so all the staff members who thought they had a job suddenly lost it overnight.
A few weeks later Elon did what every business owner would do find a way to make money and he had to make it fast after all he did spend $44 million plus Twitter was losing millions of dollars which isn't good for a person who owns other business like Tesla and Space-X. At this time Twitter was also losing millions of advertisers which was also not great for Twitter at the time.
With all this happening on Twitter Elon and his team were thinking of new ideas, what to remove, add and change to the platform.
Some of the changes that Elon and the team at Twitter were very welcoming to Twitter users such as removing fake and any boot accounts that were flooding Twitter and a few other things. With that said there has also been a few things that Elon and Twitter have changed on Twitter that some users didn't like the idea of and one was not allowing Twitter users to advertise their other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and many more. You may think that's fine just to make a Linktree page or something like that but no that wasn't allowed and for bloggers like myself, businesses, online content creators, and organizations this isn't good.
Twitter has also had a lot of media attention in the news, papers, news articles and news apps but along with this came Apple's CEO Tim Cook who was concerned about the Twitter App being on the iOS App Store. When it comes to apps being on Apple's app store they have to go through some checks and rules before Apple gave them the go-ahead to add them to the app store.
With the changes that Elon was making to the app. Apple became very worried and was in a debate about removing the Twitter app and taking it down completely. For Twitter, this wasn't great for a number of reasons one Apple have millions of customers who are on iOS so for Twitter, that means they will have millions of Twitter users not using their app if Apple was to take the app off the app store that would affect Twitter, not in a big way but it would affect them to a degree plus Twitter was in a debate with one of the most popular companies I the world.
After a few weeks or so Tim Cook (Apple CEO) invited Elon Musk (Twitter CEO) to Apple Park where they both talked about Twitter. No one really knows what has been said apart from Tim and Elon because as you know when it comes to Apple everything is very well hidden. Whatever was discussed must have been good because Apple has kept the Twitter app in the App Store and has backed off Twitter for now.
One all the stuff with Apple, media and Twitter users getting used to the fact that Elon was now the owner Elon decided to do something else on Twitter that got a very big mixed reaction and two didn't really go to plan...at all
Do any of you remember way back before Elon took over Twitter when the social media platform extended the charter limit and then the users wanted an edit button? Well from what I cloud tell back then they added the edit button for Twitter Blue now this was the one that Twitter was building and testing in places like the United States before rolling it out fully to other countries like the U.K.
When it came to *Twitter Blue Elon Musk hasn't been as much of a success then people thought and like I said it didn't really go to plan. The one main thing that pops out with Twitter Blue is getting that blue checkmark next to your name which was for people and accounts such as celebrities, public figures, news originations and things like that before if you wanted a blue checkmark next to your name you would have to fill out the application form and wait a few days to hear back from Twitter if you got approved or not.
Now get a Bluetick next to your name you'd have to join and pay for Twitter Blue but apart from the blue tick there are a few other things you get such as
Blue check mark | You only get this if you have a verified phone number, and your account Twitter's staff verify that they're not impersonating another person and that you are a real person/human and not a robot
See fewer ads | see 50% fewer ads [coming soon]
Post longer videos | You'll finally be able to post longer videos to Twitter
All the existing Blue features | Edit tweet, 1080p video uploads, reader, custom navigation, bookmarks, top articles and more
Get early access | Get early access to selected new features with Twitter Blue Lab
NTF Profile picture
A better news reading experience | Discover relevant news, enjoy articles without ADs and support the sites you like to read
Early access to selected new features | Explore selected new Twitter features including Twitter Blue Lab
The price for this on iOS isn't cheap and will cost you £11.00 per month in the U.K but for desktop, it will cost you £7.00 per month or £84.00 per year.
Some of the features that I've mentioned above may seem good to you and for others absolutely no good at all.
Of course, people are going to have their own thoughts on this and everyone is entitled to that. In my eyes. Twitter Blue is for people like bloggers, YouTube, video creators, online content creators and for Twitter users who are continuously active on the social media site but when it comes to the blue check mark I believe that it should only really be for bloggers like myself, YouTubers, famous people and etc I don't agree that just anyone can get the blue checkmark.
I think Twitter Blue is great but like I said only if you're active on the site a lot and end up using all the features that are currently available on Twitter Blue and the ones that are due to come sometime in the future.
For Twitter and Elon I hope Twitter continues to be a success and I hope Twitter Blue will too but I can see a lot of people leaving Twitter over a number of things even more now that Elon and Twitter have removed the text message security things. I hope they bring that back sometime soon... Have you heard that Meta is planning on bringing its own version of Twitter Blue to Facebook and Instagram
I hope you all enjoyed reading this week's blog post and I hope you're looking forward to the next one. As always thank you for your continued support you me and my blog over the last 7 years.
Before we end this week's blog post I just want to mention that the comment boxes have been turned on so now you're able to leave a comment below every blog post.
I hope you all enjoyed this blog post and are ready for next week's blog post
