Since taking the helm of Twitter in a $44 billion acquisition, Elon Musk, better known on Twitter as ‘Chief Twit’ has wasted no time in making major reforms at the company.
He has demonstrated that he means business and has now issued an ultimatum to his employees on their first project: Meet his deadline to introduce paid verification on Twitter.
Failure to do so would mean that they better start packing up and leave. This is as reported by The Verge.
The expected deadline is November 7th, 2022. The move would only affect Twitter Blue users which is an additional Twitter service that users can subscribe to and get access to more Twitter features, such as Edited tweets.
Currently, Twitter Blue users conform to a monthly subscription of Sh. 605 monthly, but this is expected to change as Musk looks to make it Sh. 2,500 per month. Verified Kenyan Twitter Users would then have 90days to subscribe or lose their blue verification marks.
Before Chief Twit’s acquisition, he had said that if he took over the company, verification would be one of the issues that would be addressed.
On Sunday, he tweeted “The verification process is being revamped right now.”
The verification feature was introduced in 2009 and there have been more than 350,000 verified accounts since. The Twitter Blue subscription was launched a year ago as a way to see users view ad-free articles and also change the color of the home screen icon.
Just 4 days after being the boss, Elon Musk made some changes to Twitter such as ensuring those users that were logged out, would land on the Explore page when logging in again.
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He has also laid off many Twitter staff that he has felt have not been contributing to the code base.
This week, there are expected to be massive layoffs specifically targeting middle managers and engineers. Top managers have been creating a list of employees to cut off over the weekend.
His acquisition in a Sh. 5 trillion deal has had a dramatic reception worldwide. Last week, Musk filmed himself walking into Twitter’s headquarters in San Fransicso carrying a kitchen sink, with the caption: ‘Let that Sink in!’.
Musk said he embraces free speech and has already started giving some of ‘his truths’ on the platform.
“Finally, the truth that carbs are amazing can be said on this platform! #FreeSpeech #SoBrave” he tweeted on Saturday.