Verification is a way for Twitter as a company to 1.) help users figure out who real celebrities, public officials, and companies are, 2.) imbue shortcuts for trustworthy news sources, and 3.) make itself safe enough for advertisers.
Twitter Blue is a suite of paid products and it’s a great idea. But conflating verification with that package has never been a good idea. The company instantly loses way more than it can ever gain.
That’s not to say that paid verification can’t be an optional paid product. But it would of course be about identity and not status in a public-facing sense. Perhaps users would want to pay a $1 a month for Twitter to check their ID and show their community they’re legit.
What is Elon Musk's feud with Apple about anyway? You're probably confused.
Is it about advertising, or about those 30% in-app purchase fees, or about removing Twitter from the App Store? Well, all of it, really. Let's dig in. 🧵
1. Musk said that Apple stopped advertising on Twitter. @washingtonpost reported that Apple is one of Twitter's largest advertisers, so that'd have been bad for Twitter. 50 of its top 100 advertisers have stopped spending since Musk took over, @mmfa reports, not including Apple.
2. But now, the analytics firm Pathmatics says that Apple hasn't stopped spending on Twitter. In fact, it's *increased* its ad spend recently. (@mmfa relied upon Pathmatics data in its original analysis.) This makes sense: it's holiday shopping season.