1) As someone who was (briefly) in charge of the Twitter Media team - the group tasked with getting high profile people onto Twitter, and verification - AND as one of the few ever to voluntarily give up the blue check, I want to try to articulate how risky this policy change is.
2)The reason the Twitter Media team existed was because *almost all* of the engagement on Twitter happens with tweets from high profile people/organizations across government, sports, music, business, news, whatever the Kardashians are, etc. They’re the lifeblood of the platform.
3) We verified those people so that any user could know they were interacting with a real account; part of the fun of twitter is the real time dialogue with thought leaders (that then flows to others in the replies who get to share their thoughts and ideas).
4) There were a bunch of important safety and security reasons for doing this as well. Hero tweeps like @KatieS and @Larakate have all the scars/stories to prove it. It was also possible to organically build a verifiable account by gaining followers and impact on the platform.
5) There can be some debate over whether Twitter thrived on giving many non-verified users false hope that they were doing anything other than shouting into the void; regardless, it was (and is) the case that verified users are what drive engagement.
6) Now, surely there are verified users today who don’t deserve it. They craved the status symbol and found a way to worm their way in. The percentage is low, and the impact to the platform negligible. Any designation like this is by definition subject to human judgement.
7) But again, the Media Team spent all their time and resources supporting the people who - and the data undeniably proved this - support the platform. We knew where our bread was buttered. Twitter didn’t exist without these creators sending tweets. Now…
8) There were times where certain high profile people actually asked to be paid to join Twitter. There was some internal discussion about this over the course of the company’s history. But the decision was always to hold the line and hope the network effects would win. They did.
9) But what Twitter is going to start doing tonight flips the equation - it is going to ask its most important creators to *pay Twitter* instead of the other way around. Every other social media platform has found a way to pay its creators, not charge them. Will it work?
10) Every day that goes by validates Zuck’s famous “clown car crashed into a gold mine” description of Twitter. While it looks like a criticism on the surface, it is in fact praise for the underlying resilience and perseverance of Twitter. As Zuck discovered, it’s hard to kill.
11) Tonight is another test of that resilience. While a lot of web3 stuff has proven nonsense, the underlying principle that creators should have ownership in the consumer facing platforms that their content powers is still a vibrant idea, one most creators passionately believe.
12) This is the first major opportunity for creators, as a whole, to flex their muscle and reclaim power in the web3 age (if that’s a thing 🤷♂️). If most OG blue checks stop tweeting in protest of being asked to pay to create the content that Twitter lives by…Twitter dies.
13) The likely sequencing will be like LeBron: first, give up the check and not pay. But as the experience degrades and impersonation abounds, creators will start to wonder why they’d contribute content to a platform and company that holds them in such contempt.
14) That will be the point at which we might expect a wave of silence to ensue. The first real staring contest of the creator economy is upon us. Will creators seize the moment? Can Twitter sustain it? 🍿
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