2y ago

Brands that don't buy enough Twitter ads will lose verification

www.theverge.com Brands that don’t buy enough Twitter ads will lose verification

Hard to not see this as a threat, right?

Starting August 7th, advertisers that haven’t reached certain spending thresholds will lose their official brand account verification. According to emails obtained by the WSJ, brands need to have spent at least $1,000 on ads within the prior 30 days or $6,000 in the previous 180 days to retain the gold checkmark identifying that the account belongs to a verified brand.
...
Threatening to remove verified checkmarks is a risky move given how many ‘Twitter alternative’ services like Threads and Bluesky are cropping up and how willing consumers appear to be to jump ship, with Threads rocketing to 100 million registrations in just five days. That said, it’s not like other efforts to drum up some additional cash, like increasing API pricing, have gone down especially well, either. It’s a bold strategy, Cotton — let’s see if it pays off for him.

Technology @lemmy.ml

trashhalo @beehaw.org

2y ago

Brands that don’t buy enough Twitter ads will lose verification

www.theverge.com /2023/7/26/23808331/twitter-x-ads-advertising-incentives-verification-brands

92 19

Technology @lemmy.ml

Ken27238 @lemmy.ml

2y ago

Twitter tried to goad businesses into buying more ads so they can stay verified

www.theverge.com /2023/7/26/23808331/twitter-x-ads-advertising-incentives-verification-brands

226 33

TechNews @radiation.party

irradiated @radiation.party

BOT

2y ago

VERGE

Twitter tried to goad businesses into buying more ads so they can stay verified

www.theverge.com /2023/7/26/23808331/twitter-x-ads-advertising-incentives-verification-brands

2 0

196 comments

Bro what is elon doing????
- At this point, I'd say: Providing entertainment to the internet while also helping grow the fediverse
  
  Having never been on twitter myself I'm especially entertained, watching and laughing from a far corner of the internet
  
  I think the combination of sheer incompetence and his overlord bosses wanting to kill Twitter. Which is wild to me, since it could have been used as a propaganda tool for him ultimately worth more than the money he paid for it, despite the ‘worth’ of the company. The guy lives in a bubble with yes men surrounding him. He is the epitome of the meme “is it me that’s wrong? - no everyone else is out of touch”.
- Since he started his act about buying Twitter I saw that as a personal vendetta to harm it - the ultimate tantrum for being mocked at there and not being under his control. He said he'd buy then backed off just to hurt Twitter's value, but then when he was forced to buy it for the first offer value, he got even more butthurt.
  It's pretty clear that everything he's done since is to get revenge and destroy it. It's insane that some people keep praising his decisions towards Twitter as anything but ridiculous.
  He's the rich brat who doesn't get brown nosed by the waiter in front of his date, then proceed to buy the restaurant just to fire the guy.
  
  Eh, with Elon, I prefer to assume stupidity over malice, because he also had already done shit to hurt his own image before he owned Twitter. Who was he being malignant against then? Himself? To own, uh, his supported??? Everything falls in place by just doing the single logical step of "he dumdum".
  
  Didn't he offer to buy it so he could sell a bunch of tesla shares without sinking the value? And then he tried to back out, but was forced to buy it.
- Saudi Arabia put up 20 billion or so of the 44 he used to purchase twitter. The reason behind this is widely speculated to be Saudi Arabia wanting to destroy twitter because it was instrumental in the Arab Spring uprising.
  
  They didn't put new money into the purchase, they rolled their pre-existing shares over. Dorsey did the same FYI.
  Y'all are giving this idiot waaaay too much credit when it comes to scheming behind the scenes. It was a really poorly thought out pump and dump, nothing more. There's no big evil master plan; he's just really that stupid, and rich enough to constantly fail upwards. With Xitter we're just seeing his xitty ideas in their purest form, without the influence of the handlers he has to manage his bullxit at his other companies.
  Although I have to say, the accidental brilliance of going with branding that's so phonologically flexible is pretty fantastic, the jokes can write themselves now. But I doubt advertisers are going to appreciate the fact that their interactions on Xitter are colloquially becoming known as xcrements now...
  
  They would've had to convince Musk though to take a huge hit to his credibility and ego with this, which I can't see him agreeing to.
- I can think of two explanations.
  He wants to intentionally run Twitter into the ground and destroy it. Probably because people were mean to him on it or something
  He’s completely lost his mind and is just being stupid.
  Hanlons Razor makes me think it’s 2
  
  For the first one, just shutting it down would have been enough.
- Extorting his advertisers, it seems. It's hella funny.
  
  Because he knows nobody is going to want to buy more ad space on a site that is (or at least was) restricting how many posts users can scroll through.
- He is ensuring his place in history as a seminal business case study.
- The most generous thing I can think of is that it's a social experiment to see just how many ways he can undercut a successful brand and platform before it completely implodes.
- He previously said that Twitter was in the red when he bought it. So pretty much everything he's been doing has been clearly aimed at either reducing Twitter's expenses or increasing its revenue. Better to have a smaller company that is profitable than a bigger company that is not profitable.
  Whether it's working or not, time will tell. But that's the likely motivation behind most of it.
- tHe SmArTeSt MaN iN tHe UnIvErSe. Doing small brain things again
- It's the result of brain damage from Covid.
- Something about this move makes me feel like he was bragging to somebody about how he managed to own a single letter domain, and his conversation ended up somehow here, with him doubling down on what wasn't even a good joke to begin with.
  This is purely speculative, obviously, but it just makes me think it's him putting his money where his mouth is to save face to someone else (who is likely bemused at best)
- He's got a really big loan payment to pay in October, everything is about that to keep it going for another year
- He’s playing with his new middle age crisis toy. Cars and spaceships got boring.

Just a few more failed businesses and in about 50 years he'll be all set to run for POTUS as the Republican nominee.
- What a shame he was born in South Africa and isn't eligible.
  
  for some reason, i don't think that would stop him from trying anyway and then throwing a tantrum for being ineligible.
  
  I'm sure the Republicans would just come out of the woodwork and ask "Oh, but what about Obama, how come he can run for POTUS then?". Which is, of course, something I already seen someone ask. Wasn't even some old person from "different times" or whatever, this person genuinely just had no justifiable reason to be this racist.
  
  What if the US annexes SA, would he be eligible?
- I'm not American but I confess I'm relieved that he can't do that. Just try to imagine someone like him being able to fire nukes.
  
  We dont have to imagine given that Trump was president for 4 horrible years.
  
  What makes you think he can't, and won't, do that?
- He isn't US born.
- How's he doing on rapes, domestic violence, and paying for abortions? That's still a requirement for that party last I checked
  
  Ah, that's a good point. Well, he's still got ~50 years to work on those if he hasn't started yet.

Wait, wait, wait, lemme get this right.
Problem: They were low or revenue.
Response: Increase API costs
Problem: API costs are too high
Response: People started scrapping Twitter
Problem: People are scrapping the site
Response: Make users sign in to view tweets
Problem: People have to sign in to see any ads too
Response: Tell companies that if they don't spend enough on ads they will lose verification.
I mean, what's next?
- Problem: Brands start leaving Twitter
  Solution: Increase the price of Twitter Blue
  
  Problem: Decrease of Twitter Blue subscribers
  Solution: Sue every other competitor for alleged infringing Twitter's trade secrets
- wait wait wait, lemmy get this right
  The pun was there the whole time!
  
  "The pun is coming from inside the building!"
- Problem: ...
  Response: Obliterate one of the most established logos and a verb "to tweet"
  
  Problem: My ego still hurts from not getting to use that single letter domain I got 20 years ago.
- What's next is Elon standing at a red light holding a piece of cardboard telling you to buy Twitter Blue or he'll key your car
  
  It's called X blue now. Because that's the colour of the... oh.
- People wanting a blue checkmark must own a Tesla.
- I wish they were scrapping it, as opposed to scraping it.
  
  Me too, I'll say it was wishful thinking and not a typo by me at all.
- But I don't know why she swallowed the fly
  Perhaps she'll die
  
  Shut up and swallow another live mongoose.

Imagine losing your arbitrary blue check mark because you didn't buy enough ads on a platform that no one really uses anyway.
- this is the gold checkmark for brands, not the Twitter Blue sub checkmark
  
  There's a gold checkmark too? Lol
  
  Huh? TIL!
  I just had a a quick check and @CocacCola has a gold star but @CocaColaAU does not.
  Sony and Uber do, Colgate and Purina do not.
  If large multinationals with effectively limitless marketing budgets can't be brothered ¯(ツ)_/¯
- I would feel devastated, crossed even
- Isnt it used by 350 million plus people?
  
  Ironically, Musk also wanted us to believe that 50% of those were bots just a couple months ago...

This look more and more like a speedrun on how to bring down a well established platform in under a year.
- Like a real life Brewster's Billions

Getting low on popcorn...
- Send a tweet out to Orville Redenbacher.
- Have you tried demanding $1000 of popcorn or you'll stop eating?
  
  I have not. Given the likelihood of getting what I'm asking for, might be a means of losing weight.

So Elon is now going for the severed horse head under the bedsheets approach to persuade advertisers?
That's a bold move.
- Is bold the word we’re looking for here? It’s definitely A move.
  
  I think it's more along the lines of the "it's a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if it pays off for 'em" sentiment

Imagine what this must look like on the inside.
You're a software engineer at Twitter. You keep getting these weird tasks that you know are stupid, but you keep doing them just to see where the hell this bullshit will end up.
- And you haven't already quit because you're on an H1B/GC visa, and so your residence in the US is tied to your employment, effectively making you a corporate owned slave.
  
  TIL people deported their slaves when they were unruly.
- Imagine being the person who last Sunday night got the call from Elon "I really like this random X logo. Redo the entire site right now and remove all of the birds and blue theming, and have it live in production by tomorrow morning."
- This is how distopias happen. Hell this is how fascism sneaks up on people if they aren't paying close attention.
- At that point you’re not even going to try to explain it to your boss any more. Just watching the whole thing burn might be more entertaining than trying to save it from certain destruction.

If I were a business that is under threat of this, my response would be "ok.". No business that actually cares about its image should promote on a website that's filled to the brim with bigots and nazis

Stop using twitter. They don’t get to have the brand recognition anymore.
- Stop calling it twitter as well, twitter is dead and X marks its grave
  
  Yes stop letting them use the brand recognition.
  
  It's the Brand X social media site.

Every day I think the dumpster fire can't get any bigger and every day I'm proven wrong.

That'll bring your advertisers back

All legitimate companies have already left twitler

How to shut down a well established business under an year.
- Sounds like a great book title. Elon should try it out while the embers are still smoldering.
- I mean, well-established is a stretch...

The "X" stands for Extortion.
I'm sure the ego-less CEOs in large corporations will take kindly to being extorted. (/s)

Someone was dropped on his head as a junior billionaire.

Sooo... blackmail/coercion then...?
"Be a shame if you lost control of your brand on my platform, be a damn shame..."

Risky? More like suicidal. The Twitter brand hasn't so much been tarnished as blown to pieces by Elon Musk. If he thinks he's in a position to make demands of advertisers, when advertisers are already in life rafts heading for the shoreline, well, good luck with that. Have that band you're not paying play you off, because you're going down with the ship, and the advertisers aren't going with you.

Just shut it down already
- No. I love watching train wrecks and dumpster fires.
  
  I feel for the creators still trying to figure out where to go, but this situation is funny as hell.
  Like when people said Elon Musk renamed the platform after his divorcees

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Repeat.

What's he Musking up again?
Demanding $1000 a month from bands is kinda dumb.
- I like Musking as a verb.
  
  Musking: being a billionaire and therefore believing everything you do is genius while simultaneously ruining everything you touch. Buying your way into brands and calling yourself the founder.
  Occasionally someone "Musking" might also call people they don't like a pedophile.

“Oh, ay, you got yourself a nice, beauty-ful brand over here. You got your followers, you got your eggs. Very nice. It would just be a cryin’ shame if somebody was to
impersonate it.”

Twitter (ahem) "X" lost half its advertisers already. I don't think the site has the leverage to make such demands. If anything, it's going to push advertisers into the welcoming robot arms of Mark III Zuckerberg and Threads.

Man, if you ever have a social media site you need to burn to the ground, Elon's your guy.

Hahaha

Seriously, why is it even a thing anymore? It's really sad that people are still even using the service. I understand the stories, because a train wreck is hard to turn away from, but why would you still want to be on board the train? Literally no one should be on that hellsite.

Enshittification Stage 3.
- This isn't even enshittification. This is just trash ownership

South park couldn't come up with this level of "because x therefore x"

I heard that Twitter originally added verification because they were getting sued over imposters, so they added verification to delegitimize imposters and thus give less reason for others to sue them.
Now Musk is getting rid of verification en masse, so the original reason for the lawsuits will return.
Here's how to play it if you're a business who loses your Twitter verification:
Allow yourself to lose verification.
Make a backroom deal with some random person, have that person make a fake account for your business and buy verification. Have the person post some bad things under their fake and verified account.
Sue Twitter since they have verified the fake account and removed verification of the real account, and are thus committing libel.
- Step 2 is illegal and not realistic. But honestly someone will prob do that for big brands anyway so same logic applies anyway
  
  As if large businesses care about what is legal. They only care if they can't get away with it and if the costs for fines etc. exceed the revenue made by the violation.
  But nobody needs to buy the Ads tobact as an imposter, since that was working w.o. verification already.

A desperate ploy to repay the insatiable debt frin the purchase, or genius business move? You decide.

I miss what Twitter used to be
- I liked the idea of twitter until the time news outlets started quoting random tweets in their articles.
  
  I remember back in like '08 or '09 the TV in the cafeteria at work was playing CNN and they literally had a camera pointed at a computer monitor scrolling Twitter, discussing what people on Twitter were saying.
  That's when I knew journalism was dead.

Why anyone stays on twitter is beyond me. Musk is turning it into something toxic, akin to parler or truth social, and he's making decisions regarding it like it's his private BBS or a toy to be played with capriciously.

"I just reinstated a pedophile. Now pay me to put your ads on my SHIT" ~Elon "fascists are my best and only friends" Musk

X* ads.

Twitter is still a thing? Color me surprised. It won’t be much longer.
Also, FUCK Elon Musky

wtf...musk is an idiot

The fuck is this meant to do? Will Elon ever realize that he's not improving Twitter in any way and is only making it worse?

I'm no businessman but this sounds like a good way to make companies move away from your platform.

Lol, without his handlers to keep his stupid ideas in check he really is outing himself as an absolute idiot

So what is stopping the companies from just paying the 9 bucks for the verified status and telling the muskrat to sod off?
- gold checkmark identifying that the account belongs to a verified brand.
  Blue checkmark and gold checkmark are different things.

What is this "Twitter" you speak of? Is it that dead blue bird?

Speedrunning the collapse of the Corponet

X.org is really stepping up their game eh?

Elon is fishing for suckers.

More than that.
He's dispelling the myth of the billionaire businessman. He could show up quite a lot in all sorts of history books

@NevermindNoMind #Musk is getting desperate now.

@NevermindNoMind #Twitter sucks anyway. It lost its charm ever since that #asshole #elonMusk took over! #ElonSucks #ElmoIsNotAGod #GoodbyeTwitter #GoodbyeX

Enshittification continues….

Bully much?

@NevermindNoMind And, presumably, the brands will also lose an incentive to stay on the platform, especially now that it’s in the progress of re-branding as not-Twitter?

Wait, didn't the gold check marked brands have to pay exorbitant fees for the checkmark? Is that counting towards the $1000 per month or is that deal being replaced with this new one?

Controversial idea but maybe federated servers should think of some way of delivering federated advertising. Some way to fund the model in a fair and equitable way while draw away funding that goes into Twitter or other social media platforms. Doesn't stop people blocking it of course.
- We do need to think about how to keep the Fediverse running, but advertising shouldn't be federated. If an instance wants to run ads that's fine, but that shouldn't be distributed to any other instances, not even if the posts and users engage with other instances. Who is going to want to see or redistribute ads for a different instance?
  
  Like I said, controversial but it's quite reasonable for the operators of these servers to want to raise money somehow. Even if the activity pub feed describes elements with a "this is an ad" tag and allows the recipient to choose whether to serve it or not.
- beehaw has donations and releases regular reports of how its being spent, I think that model is pretty good. from what ive seen they always get more than enough needed.
- No please let's just make it not a thing anymore to finance stuff with advertising. I'm happy to support an instance I enjoy spending time on with volunteering service and/or money, but I'm here exactly because I don't want to see ads. I'm right now a happy human, commenting on a post on the internet, without a need in the world and I don't want to see any text, picture or video on my screen that suggests otherwise.

Of course Elon would do this.

196 comments