The fault in Twitter’s stars

The writing was on the wall. Not long after Elon Musk took over Twitter and began making decisions aimed at making the platform profitable, it became evident that this was going to be a struggle and that the situation would be rife for a competitor.

Almost all of Musk’s actions have since backfired with the advent of Threads – a new microblogging platform. The damage is already done to perhaps, the most powerful social media platform.

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Threads is Meta’s new venture. Just a few days ago, the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said more than 30 million people have downloaded Threads within the first few hours of its launch.

But Elon Musk has himself to blame for this

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After buying Twitter, Musk went on a downsizing spree to bring costs down. He fired around 80% of nearly 8,000 employees.

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But that’s not the only thing people hate.

Musk introduced a subscription model that irritated many. For instance, renowned American author Stephen King said that he won’t pay for the blue tick.

This year in April, Twitter announced that it would wound down its legacy verification program and accounts that were verified under the previous criteria (active, notable, and authentic) will not retain a blue tick unless they are subscribed to Twitter Blue.

The blue tick now means that the account has an active subscription to Twitter Blue, which means that the person with the blue Tick is paying in dollars as a monthly subscription.

Following this, many active, notable, and authentic users lost their blue ticks as many decided against buying it because they think credibility and authenticity shouldn’t be something that should be bought.

For now, Twitter’s blue tick does not suggest authenticity or credibility anymore. It simply means nothing more than another one of the newly introduced features.

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There’s a funny case of Twitter’s so-called verified accounts in Pakistan recently. A Twitter user has been claiming to be Zaka Ashraf, the former Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman, with the Twitter handle since February 2021.

It has now become common to impersonate anyone’s Twitter handle without a legitimate verification process in place, unlike the previous verification process.

However, the cheeky user managed to get it verified after the subscription model and had been tweeting and liking tweets that raised many eyebrows especially after Ashraf was made PCB’s interim committee chairman recently.

Finally, the PCB intervened in order to shut the fake account down.

There are plenty other such instances, which eroded the efficacy and credibility of Twitter verification.

Twitter has now also put its web-based TweetDeck behind a pay-wall, delivering a huge blow to users who relied on the platform for social media comparative analysis and content monitoring.

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Musk’s actions, after taking over Twitter, have done plenty damage to the huge platform. It brought the company’s worth to just one-third of what it was bought for last year.

According to a report published in The Guardian in May 2023, the valuation of the overall company, now officially called X Holdings Corp after Musk’s early venture X.com, at just $14.75 billion.

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Fidelity, an asset manager, which held a stake in Twitter worth about $20 million after Musk acquired the business for $44 billion, said in a corporate filing that its stake was now worth just under $6.6 million, which means that X Holdings Corp is just valued at $14.75 billion, the news report deduced.

Furthermore, the advent and extraordinary rise of Meta’s Threads within a few days will further reduce Twitter’s valuation as well as its relevance and might mark the spectacular crash of Twitter.

Musk may be the richest man on earth but he seems to be struggling here. It seems he did everything that would damage a company – disenchant employees and disappoint users.

Timeline: tumult at Twitter since Musk takeover

And now there’s a tough competitor in town and it’s going to create bigger problems on top of the damage Musk did for Twitter.

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The article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Business Recorder or its owners