Goodbye blue tick?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 17 January 2024
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Once a much desired badge of authority and quality, on some social media platforms the blue tick (or check) is now available to anyone who chooses to buy one.
But has this been a popular move?
And has the monetising of verification meant that the blue tick has lost its credibility?
We hear from industry experts who can shed some light on verification, which has dramatically changed since Elon Musk bought Twitter, now X, in October 2022.
Presenter: David Harper Producer: Victoria Hastings
(Image: Two workers look at a phone. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | World of Secrets, Season 2, investigates allegations surrounding one of the most powerful religious figures of the 21st century, T.B. Joshua. |
| 0:10.2 | Search for World of Secrets, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:15.7 | Hello, I'm David Harper. This is Business Daily from the BBC World Service. And today we are talking about the financial significance of verification on social media, the blue tick or blue check that you might see next to certain usernames on platforms like X, formerly known as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. And if you think that sounds rather familiar, well... |
| 0:35.9 | We're looking at verification. That blue tick or blue check that marks out your social media |
| 0:40.8 | account has one to take notice of. A little over a year ago, we made a Business Daily program |
| 0:45.2 | on exactly this subject, and then this happened. |
| 0:50.9 | Elon Musk has now completed his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter after months of legal battles, |
| 0:57.9 | and he's changed his own Twitter title to Chief Twit. |
| 1:01.1 | And one of the first things he did when he was in control of what was still then called Twitter |
| 1:04.9 | was completely change verification, as detailed in this post from Musk himself. |
| 1:10.5 | Twitter's current Lords and Peasants system for who has or doesn't have a blue check mark is |
| 1:15.7 | power to the people. Blue for $8 a month. |
| 1:19.8 | And in a stroke, the blue check stopped being something that was gifted only to certain high |
| 1:24.3 | profile individuals and was now available to pretty much anyone for a monthly fee. |
| 1:29.4 | So how has this changed the way that X operates and the way that people interact with it? |
| 1:34.6 | I decided to go back and speak to our experts, starting with the social media consultant and industry analyst, Matt Navarra. |
| 1:41.2 | At Matt Navarra. |
| 1:42.6 | Last year we were sat here talking about the business implications of verification on social media platforms, but particularly Twitter now known as X. |
| 1:52.4 | And a lot has changed in that time. How does it work now? |
| 1:55.8 | Well, it's moved to this place now where if you want to become verified, then you can do, but you've got to pay to be |
| 2:01.5 | verified. And so the value of verification has changed and actually what people's expectations |
| 2:07.4 | or what people see as verification meaning has changed. And so people now, if they want to be |
... |
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