Musk says orgs will soon verify affiliated accounts; Blue sign-ups and name changes will be reinstated end of this week • TechCrunch

Twitter Blue, Twitter’s paid tier, seems on ice at the moment as the company tries to navigate how to control it from abuse by impostors while still promoting it as a mass market product to generate a new revenue stream among users.” official” and hundreds of millions more use Twitter. No big deal! In the absence of any official announcement, Twitter’s new owner and CEO, Elon Musk, is back to typing and rolling out some social guerrilla marketing on how brands , other organizations and the rest of us use this platform.

Yesterday, Musk said in a tweet that the company will soon allow “organizations to determine which other Twitter accounts are actually associated with them.” In later notes, he clarified this meant organizations would be able to manage their own affiliates and affiliate accounts, but Twitter would likely be the arbiter of what counts. is the main organization.

It’s unclear whether managing links will be a tool only for organizations that pay for the privilege of using it — a Twitter Blue-style level for organizations, brands, and people. influence — or whether it’s something any verified account can do. Where the verified green-checking accounts themselves will fall compared to the paid-for green-checking accounts is still a big question mark, as Twitter has made so many changes around the product in the last week that Most people don’t know what’s going on right now.

In any case, if all goes according to plan — Twitter’s business plan as outlined in Tweets, that is — Twitter Blue, along with another related service has been suspended due to abuse impersonation — current lock for verified users who change Twitter screen name — should both restored by weekendMusk noted.

No doubt Twitter is trying to make some lemonade out of the lemons here. Musk’s tweets come after a few weeks of unbelievable turmoil for the company operating under new ownership, spearheading a different business model (focusing on subscriptions and wall fees rather than just advertising) while also moving from publicly traded to private). and in some ways possibly the most severe, as of last week with half the number of employees compared to a week earlier.

That means more than just sudden changes in what the company is doing and how it does things (latest as of this morning: a freezes when changing code) but very little communication about it.

Case in point: Twitter Blue was expanded, mocked and rather brutally abused, contracted, and eventually halted in less than a week’s time. However, the service’s “Official” Twitter account has not sent a single Tweet, nor made any actual announcements, since then. October 18 — 10 days before Musk closed the deal to buy the company.

On the other hand, if Musk’s suggestion about the new feature do implemented, and it involves managing affiliate accounts (rather than scary tracking, such as how employees discuss the company in their personal accounts), it really long overdue. One of the problems with Twitter is that impersonated accounts often have to actively find and request takedown of other accounts, and even then the process isn’t always immediate. (So ​​do abusive and harassing accounts.)

Something like this could effectively solve that problem by making it easier for organizations to track and report those unaffiliated accounts, which would be a step for Twitter to soften the deal. agreement for organizations to sign up for (and pay for?) “official” and for Twitter to improve its credibility with brands and organizations, which seems pretty poor at the moment.

Indeed, just as we ordinary people find it difficult to put our faith in what might happen next, brands and organizations are also somewhat left out.

We have received some research transferred to us from battle field, a London-based marketing agency that works with brands and companies on social media strategy. It reveals the current state of Twitter’s interface with commercial organizations. Its long and short: like the rest of Twitter right now, it’s everywhere.

One of Twitter’s efforts to resolve confusion (hah) between “Blue” premium accounts, pre-existing blue check verification status, and violent impersonations Blue paid tier mining disorder, is to create a “double-verification” route where “real” accounts are denoted by both “official” notes. and blue check mark.

But taking only the top 100 FTSE companies in the UK, Battenhall found that only 23% of them were granted that double-verification status by the end of Friday.

Additionally, 39% of the FTSE 100 companies have only a single blue tick verification. But as Battenhall founder Drew Benvie pointed out to me, “That could signify a verified account or an $8 per month Twitter Blue verification pay account.” Inconsistent sound? In addition, all 38% of the companies in the FTSE 100 do not have any form of verification at all.

“Burberry, the brand with the largest Twitter following in the FTSE 100, has not received an ‘official’ white mark rating, a prominent brand rating equivalent to 8 worth of Twitter Blue subscribers. dollars,” added Benvie. by Burberry Twitter account, which has a blue check, has about 8.2 million followers. Phoenix Group, with 4,100 people, has the smallest following of the 100 FTSE companies with 4,100 followers, but it has dual verification. Other FTSE 100 institutions with the double include AstraZeneca, BP, Diageo, Sainsburys, Tesco and Vodafone.

“There is no clear pattern as to which accounts are verified, official or even actually who they say they are as the blue ticks can be purchased for £6.99 or $8, ‘ Benvie noted. “I believe (although I don’t know specifically) that the current verification situation is more or less random, where a number of brands – large and small, large and small advertisers – are seeing levels different degrees of verification. I expect people to make decisions based on this, as opposed to an algorithm, but as far as I know the rationale is not communicated to the brands involved.”

They are not the only ones who have not received any communication. We’ve reached out to Twitter for comment on this story — as we do with all of our news — but have yet to receive a response. We will update this post as we receive information from the company.