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Former “Chief Twit” and the current “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” Elon Musk announced last week that Twitter’s blue tick verification would cost money from now on in an effort to curb spam and fake accounts on the platform. Though the new price was not confirmed by Elon Musk many sources suggested that the price will be $20/Month. But now Musk has confirmed the new Verified Account Blue Tick will cost $8 and will soon become a paid perk that comes alongside Twitter Blue and could potentially bring back Vine.
Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit.
Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022
Musk has increased the price from $4.99 to $8, which is almost double but he does promise to give extra features and has also teased about bringing the Vine back(more on that later). He also confirmed that the price will be adjusted proportionately for different countries and their purchasing power.
As anyone would have predicted, Musk is facing a backlash on this decision and people are refusing to accept the new price and have threatened to permanently boycott the platform if he doesn’t overturn this price adjustment.
To all complainers, please continue complaining, but it will cost $8
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2022
Though Musk has promised many other things with this verification fee too, as it will also bring you priority in replies, mentions, and searches, the ability to post long videos and audio, and half as many ads, clarified the new CEO of Twitter. He said that all of these features are necessary to reduce spam and scam accounts on the platform. Twitter Blue users will be able to bypass paywalls for publishers willing to work with the social network.
Musk says that the revenue generated from these subscriptions will be used to reward content creators on Twitter. Public figures will get a secondary tag below their name, a feature that is already available for politicians.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022
Is Elon Musk Bringing Back Vine?
Musk has also reportedly asked Twitter’s engineers to look back at old Vine code to assess the possibility of bringing back the social media app. And also posted a poll on his Twitter asking everyone if should bring back the Vine app the turnout has been positive so far and looks like the majority wants to bring Vine back.
Bring back Vine?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
Vine was created back in 2012 by Dom Hoffman, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll. The platform was acquired by Twitter months later in 2012 and released to the public in early 2013. Less than three years later, Vine had a user base of 200 million active users, competing with services like Instagram and Pheed in an ever-evolving social media sphere. Facebook ended up restricting access to its Friends API for Vine and help kill off the product. Users of Vine could no longer connect the service to their Facebook accounts to find other friends on the platform. This caused the VIne to shut down, which resulted in the success of Musically(the old name for TikTok), and Instagram.
Some reports have said that Musk wants to bring back Vine by the end of 2022. However, a former Vine staffer who was in charge of shutting it down, Sara Beykpour, said that the app’s code is more than 6 years old and some of it is even 10 years old. So if Twitter wants to bring Vine back, it will have to build it from scratch.
some free advice, from someone who worked at Vine and also led the shutdown of Vine.
This code is 6+ years old. Some of it is 10+. You don't want to look there. If you want to revive Vine, you should start over.
trust me on this one guys ✌️🌱 https://t.co/knM0mKM3Xf
— sara beykpour (@pandemona) October 31, 2022
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