A Twitter You have forgotten what a quiet week is. At least since Elon Musk took control of the social network. The South African tycoon, owner of other companies, such as Tesla o SpaceX, is determined to try to scrape every last dollar he can from an app that is languishing, at least financially, due to increasing divestment from its major advertisers. And if, in addition, you can take advantage of it so that one of the businesses that you have on the side can profit from the site, all the better.
Last Monday, Twitter changed its logo of the blue bird, collected in the upper left corner in the computer version, for the logo of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency, one of the fetish assets of the businessman, who has benefited from the movement by raising his stock listing 30% and exceeding $0.90 per share.
This change has been the most notorious that has taken place on the social network in a week in which, in principle, the blue check marks were going to begin to disappear en masse from all those accounts that did not pay for the Twitter Blue subscription service . Until now, the vast majority are still active. Although it is no longer known if the user has the coveted ‘tic’ for being someone influential or simply for going through the box and paying the 8 euros it costs a month.
For Ferran Lalueza, professor of Communication at the Open University of Catalonia and an expert in social networks, the landing of the cryptocurrency symbol on the social network has a “very clear” economic motivation. “Musk’s link to Dogecoin is no secret. By the time he took control of Twitter, we already made it clear that he could pursue control of the speaker to benefit his own business. Here we see it clearly,” says the expert.
This is not the first time that Musk has benefited from the cryptocurrency, in which he has invested and whose symbol, practically, It has become his personal meme. Almost in a sort of alter ego. The idyll began in 2019, when the tycoon announced, of course, in a tweet, that it was his favorite cryptocurrency. Later, in 2021, he announced that he was going to launch a rocket to the moon that would be called Doge-1.
The rises and falls in the price of the cryptocurrency as a result of Musk’s statements caused an investor to file a lawsuit against the executive last June, whom he accuses of having created a pyramid scheme to alter the price of the cryptocurrency. Last Friday, the owner of Twitter requested that the accusation, which claims 258,000 million dollars, be dismissed.
The boomerang effect of authenticated accounts
Lalueza also sees in the arrival of the dog symbol on the social network a possible smoke screen behind which to cover the chaotic reconversion of verified accounts of recognized users into payment accounts. Currently, Musk is trying to strengthen the subscription system of the social network, which is not convincing practically anyone. However, it is estimated that less than 1% of the estimated 300 million Internet users who surf Twitter have subscribed to the plan, which offers a small handful of exclusive utilities in addition to the coveted blue tick.
«The blue tick has become a symbol of prestige. Currently, many companies, such as ‘The New York Times’, have announced that they do not intend to pay to wear it. If many follow the example, in the end it will become an icon to pretend. A boomerang effect could take place that ends up affecting the objectives of the social network”, points out the teacher. And it is that the cost of maintaining the tick for a company has nothing to do with what Musk is asking any user. The price, on the other hand, is around $1,000 per month.
While the experiments continue, the truth is that the value of the social network is increasingly far from those 44,000 million dollars that Musk paid at the end of last year. According to internal information from the company, it is estimated that its current price is just half of what was agreed at the time. During this year, the application has also suffered numerous service problems, initially caused by the drastic reduction of the application’s workforce, which has lost approximately 80% of its workers in just a few months.