Ever since billionaire Elon Musk purchased Twitter, he has introduced a lot of changes to the social media platform, which also acts as a micro-blogging and news outlet. Some of these changes have been controversial, but Elon continues to support them because his vision is to make the social media app a tool for free speech.
This goal, however, is a hard sell because people have been suspended from the platform for various reasons, some of which are the definition of “free speech.” It will also clash with revenue prospects because if he wants to make money from Twitter, he has to appeal to advertisers, or they will go elsewhere (some of Twitter’s leading advertisers have dropped the company).
Just as a reminder, Elon seems to have had an issue with how Twitter verified people before. He says that the initial blue checkmark was issued to people through fraudulent means, which is why he has been trying to overhaul the whole process. For instance, the checkmark is now being issued under the Twitter Blue subscription. Legacy checkmark holders will, in the coming days, lose the mark and have to pay for it instead. At the same time, the color of the verified mark is now different: it is free for ordinary people and gold for organizations/businesses.
Elon also wants to pass on his CEO role to someone else. Typical of his style, he posted a poll on his profile asking people if he should leave the company, and people overwhelmingly voted for his departure. His replacement, however, will be a challenge to find because that person, whoever they may be, will have to strike a balance between advocating for “free speech” and not upsetting advertisers.
Circling back to the changes introduced by the company, Twitter has revealed today that it will be showing the number of times a tweet has been viewed. It’s similar to how you can tell how many times a video has been played. This feature has now been expanded to include text tweets. It’s likely that we will see more changes in the coming days, and we will update you whenever that happens.
“Twitter is rolling out View Count, so you can see how many times a tweet has been seen! This is normal for video. Shows how much more alive Twitter is than it may seem, as over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply or like, as those are public actions,” says Elon on Twitter.
