Twitter Blue: A Product Analysis

On April 14th, 2022, SpaceX and Tesla Founder Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter at $54.20 a share. Twitter agreed to Elon Musk’s offer a few days later and what ensues in the coming months is a tumultuous period of alleged stock manipulation, Musk reneging on his deal due to his fear of the number of bots vs. real users, Twitter suing Musk for this action, and then Musk finally completing the purchase of Twitter for roughly 44 billion dollars on October 28th, 2022.

Many wondered what Musk’s first action would be since acquiring Twitter due to his previous interviews and news conferences — one of his more prominent announcements was his desire to unban former president Donald Trump from the platform after he was banned for risk of further incitement of violence after the storm on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.

On the day of acquiring Twitter, Musk laid off most of the C-Suite executives that still were at Twitter and announced the creation of a content moderation policy with a “diverse set of viewpoints” that will be responsible for significant reinstatement or content moderation decisions. He also was firm on the ban of impersonation accounts and requiring anyone who wanted to engage in parody of a real figure to specifically put “parody” next to their account name.

Twitter Blue

Along with these announcements, Musk announced the addition of a new feature: Twitter Blue. Originally, all Twitter users were created equal. Every account was equal to one another and was differentiated based on the number of followers one had. However, as Twitter became increasingly popular and emerged as one of the most important news platforms, it became increasingly important to make sure that the accounts people were following were indeed them and not impersonations. Twitter released the “verification” feature. If a Twitter user were influential enough, Twitter would verify and grant their account with a checkmark that signified that it was the “real” them.

As part of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, he announced a new controversial feature: Twitter Blue. For $8 a month, any user on Twitter could pay to have the blue “verified” checkmark that many celebrities and large, influential figures had. When the feature was released, it was such a massive nightmare that it was promptly removed the next day. Ordinary Twitter users took advantage of people’s long-lasting association with the verification checkmark. In other words, the account was who it presented itself to be and bought Twitter Blue to impersonate business accounts with drastic repercussions.

For example, an account impersonating Eli Lilly and Co. tweeted out an announcement that insulin would be offered for free. This directly correlated with a dramatic drop in stock price as many believed this was the real Eli Lily and Co. Twitter account due to the blue checkmark.

This occurred so often during the release of Twitter Blue that it was removed as a feature soon thereafter.

What went wrong? Some would argue that it was due to people wanting to needle Elon Musk’s hubris and make his acquisition seem like a failure, but I would argue that this was a failure on two fronts: failure to adhere to a proper product design process and the seeming failure to collaborate effectively across teams.

Considerations for Twitter Blue: The Design Process

Twitter Blue is a product, and when you design any new product, you need to follow a process that considers who the customer is, what they need, why they need it, and simplifies the process for the user. In considering where Twitter Blue failed, I will use a simple design process that considers these few steps:

Is it Innovative?
Twitter Blue expands a very sought after feature for those who aren’t famous or influential to every user — it’s not innovative in terms of inventing something that wasn’t there before.
Does it Make a product useful?
It does not make the holistic product of Twitter more useful — it instead makes it more crowded and complicated. Although it was used to verify the source of the tweet was legitimate, Twitter Blue now does two conflicting things: verifies who the user is or acts as a status symbol for regular users.
Is it Understandable?
Following up on the product’s usefulness, its conflicting uses make the whole product of Twitter (as well as Twitter Blue) harder to comprehend. An essential feature of Twitter is being able to connect with and learn about what’s happening with figures where the validity of their identities truly matters. Adding on a second meaning to this essential feature confuses the user base — how are they supposed to differentiate between a Twitter Blue checkmark that is meant to verify versus one that’s paid for as a status symbol?

A Solution to Twitter Blue?

Not designing a new feature that passes these simple steps of design shows why the feature had so many issues upon release. A solution that’s being brought up now for Twitter Blue is to add a verification added feature onto influential account’s actual Twitters to eliminate confusion. However, I’d posit that a better solution would be to separate the need for a status symbol from the long lasting need for a trustworthy verification symbol.

There is no inherent need for both symbols to be the same. Adding in a symbol that’s separate from a blue checkmark that could be placed next to it is one solution - for example, a blue checkmark that’s next to a small blue bird. Another idea could be to add a (verified) text that’s next to a Twitter user’s profile name so that it stays there for every tweet they send out so there’s no confusion.