After the collapse of Twitter Blue, Elon Musk assured us a new system would return, and on Friday he delivered some details surrounding the upcoming delivery of that promise.
With a revamped, colour coordinated system, full of manual checks to prevent previous PR disasters for companies like Eli Lily from happening again - the question still remains, will these changes solve the problems presented by Twitter Blue or create a new line of setbacks?
Hannah Wilde, Head of Social at digital marketing firm The Audit Lab, shares her input on the proposed system.
Advertisers and corporate accounts alike are understandably worried about the future of Twitter and their use of the platform, with half of the top advertisers having recently abandoned their Twitter strategies.
Many will have been waiting with baited breath for some kind of update on what the verification process will be going forward, and this recent announcement from Elon Musk will be sure to have sent heads spinning.
Introducing the new colour-keyed system of gold for businesses, grey for governments and blue for standard verifications seems like a good idea on paper, but what worries me is the implementation of the system.
The emphasis on manually checking all of these accounts before they are “officially” verified is inevitably going to cause a huge backlog of accounts, sitting waiting for their verification, especially considering the amount of layoffs and walkouts that have occurred since Musk took over the company.
With no current timeframe given on how long this may take, advertisers are sure to lose even more faith in the platform as they wait for their verification status to go through so that their content doesn’t get lost in a sea of other unverified accounts.
The new blue ticks are also universal across individual accounts if verified, regardless of celebrity status, meaning the previous issues of fake/satirical accounts from the previous iteration of Twitter Blue are inevitably going to repeat themselves - no matter the restrictions that are put in place on changing your account name.
Such a large-scale change occurring in such a short period of time is also sure to bring some issues to the surface. While there will obviously be some kind of testing process in place before the update is rolled out, it has only been a few weeks since the Twitter Blue fiasco. Twitter’s new strategy of throwing out new systems and seeing what sticks is a dangerous game to play.
Seemingly using the entire user base as their testing team, with little regard to the detrimental effects it may have for users across the board, from personal to corporate accounts. When advertisers are already reconsidering their use of the platform, it will be very interesting to see the aftermath of these changes being implemented.
