First Twitter changes: New homepage and monthly fee increase for verified accounts

October 31, 2022  14:31

Elon Musk is not wasting his time: less than 24 hours after completing his $44 billion Twitter deal, he has decided to change the homepage. And this isn't the only change so far: there are rumors that the social network may also raise the monthly fee for verified pages.

Twitter's home page changes

As Twitter's new Chief Twit, Musk wanted users to be redirected to the Explore page after logging out, which will show popular tweets and news. Earlier, however, visiting the Twitter homepage at logout would only display a sign-up form, encouraging users to create an account to view tweets.

Musk's idea required the involvement of a company vice president to reverse a code freeze imposed on Oct. 27 to prevent employees from making changes to the program code during the company's takeover.

Twitter employees, who wished to remain anonymous, said that the decision to change the homepage would have been discussed for weeks. Now it was done in a matter of hours.

Monthly fee increase for verified Twitter accounts

The Verge, citing its own sources, reported that Twitter plans to raise the monthly fee for verified accounts to $19.99 a month.

According to the publication, Elon Musk has ordered to change the Twitter Blue option, which costs $4.99 a month and gives access to additional features, to a more expensive subscription for verified users. If the latter don't sign up for a new subscription within 90 days, they will lose their blue badge.

On Sunday, some Twitter employees were briefed they had time until November 7 to implement the new feature.

Earlier on his Twitter page, Musk said that the entire verification process was being reviewed, but he gave no elaborations.

Other Twitter changes

Musk planned to cut three-quarters of the company's employees, optimize what he saw as the company's bloated IT infrastructure and significantly reduce its costs. But Tesla investor, visiting the company's headquarters on the eve of the takeover deal, promised not to lay off 75% of employees. On the first day, however, he fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and head of legal policy, trust, and security Vijaya Gadde.

Musk also recently published a poll on whether to bring back the Vine app that helps create short, 6-second videos. In just a few hours, more than 2.2 million users have already taken the poll, and most voted for the return of the service, which was shut down in 2016.

As for other changes, Twitter is expected to void the practice of permanently blocking users. SpaceX CEO plans to create a special board to look into the issue of moderation.

Musk also plans to create a super-application on a Twitter basis - something like China's WeChat, which is a universal service combining the capabilities of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Substack, and Uber. He calls the idea, tentatively labeled 'X,' an app for everything.


 
 
 
 
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