Starting August 7th, advertisers that haven’t reached certain spending thresholds will lose their official brand account verification. According to emails obtained by the WSJ, brands need to have spent at least $1,000 on ads within the prior 30 days or $6,000 in the previous 180 days to retain the gold checkmark identifying that the account belongs to a verified brand.
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Threatening to remove verified checkmarks is a risky move given how many ‘Twitter alternative’ services like Threads and Bluesky are cropping up and how willing consumers appear to be to jump ship, with Threads rocketing to 100 million registrations in just five days. That said, it’s not like other efforts to drum up some additional cash, like increasing API pricing, have gone down especially well, either. It’s a bold strategy, Cotton — let’s see if it pays off for him.
You're a software engineer at Twitter. You keep getting these weird tasks that you know are stupid, but you keep doing them just to see where the hell this bullshit will end up.
If I were a business that is under threat of this, my response would be "ok.". No business that actually cares about its image should promote on a website that's filled to the brim with bigots and nazis
Risky? More like suicidal. The Twitter brand hasn't so much been tarnished as blown to pieces by Elon Musk. If he thinks he's in a position to make demands of advertisers, when advertisers are already in life rafts heading for the shoreline, well, good luck with that. Have that band you're not paying play you off, because you're going down with the ship, and the advertisers aren't going with you.
“Oh, ay, you got yourself a nice, beauty-ful brand over here. You got your followers, you got your eggs. Very nice. It would just be a cryin’ shame if somebody was to
Twitter (ahem) "X" lost half its advertisers already. I don't think the site has the leverage to make such demands. If anything, it's going to push advertisers into the welcoming robot arms of Mark III Zuckerberg and Threads.
Seriously, why is it even a thing anymore? It's really sad that people are still even using the service. I understand the stories, because a train wreck is hard to turn away from, but why would you still want to be on board the train? Literally no one should be on that hellsite.
I heard that Twitter originally added verification because they were getting sued over imposters, so they added verification to delegitimize imposters and thus give less reason for others to sue them.
Now Musk is getting rid of verification en masse, so the original reason for the lawsuits will return.
Here's how to play it if you're a business who loses your Twitter verification:
Allow yourself to lose verification.
Make a backroom deal with some random person, have that person make a fake account for your business and buy verification. Have the person post some bad things under their fake and verified account.
Sue Twitter since they have verified the fake account and removed verification of the real account, and are thus committing libel.
Why anyone stays on twitter is beyond me. Musk is turning it into something toxic, akin to parler or truth social, and he's making decisions regarding it like it's his private BBS or a toy to be played with capriciously.
Controversial idea but maybe federated servers should think of some way of delivering federated advertising. Some way to fund the model in a fair and equitable way while draw away funding that goes into Twitter or other social media platforms. Doesn't stop people blocking it of course.
@NevermindNoMind And, presumably, the brands will also lose an incentive to stay on the platform, especially now that it’s in the progress of re-branding as not-Twitter?
Wait, didn't the gold check marked brands have to pay exorbitant fees for the checkmark? Is that counting towards the $1000 per month or is that deal being replaced with this new one?