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canyonwalkerBillionaire Elon Musk, the world's richest man, completed his purchase of Twitter this week for $44 billion. It's widely believed that he paid way too much. Even Musk believed that his offer was too high— as he tried for months to get out of it after making a formal offer. He only went through with the purchase when Delaware Chancery Court turned aside his requests to halt a lawsuit filed by Twitter for non-performance of contract. Obviously he thought he would lose... worse than lose, actually. He would have been forced to purchase the company for $44 billion and been embarrassed by public release of various documents about his behavior. So he paid his $44 billion to stay in control of the narrative.
As "Chief Twit" one of his first narrative choices was announcing that Twitter verified accounts, those marked by the blue check mark, would cost $20/month to keep.
Musk was stung by criticism that he was out of touch. Memes flew, including variations on this classic quip from character Lucille Bluth in the TV series Arrested Development, poster woman for unempathetic rich people.
Musk lowered the proposal to $8 and fired back with a meme of his own, as seen in this tweet:
In case you can't see the picture, Musk compared people whining about $8/month for Twitter Verified to those thinking $8/cup for a Starbucks coffee product is a bargain.
Aside from whatever sneering disdain one may have for $8 Starbucks drinks and/or people who spend $8/drink at Starbucks, there's a fundamental mismatch in this comparison. When you spend $8 at Starbucks, or even $1.95 at Dunkin' Donuts, you're the customer and you're buying a product. That's it.
With Twitter, everyone who tweets is giving Twitter the product, i.e., their content, for free. Twitter then uses that free content to attract audiences that it sells to advertisers. Verified users with those blue check marks are generally those most frequentcontributors vendors giving Twitter stuff for free. Now Musk wants to charge these vendors without whose unpaid work the company literally would be nothing.
As "Chief Twit" one of his first narrative choices was announcing that Twitter verified accounts, those marked by the blue check mark, would cost $20/month to keep.
Musk was stung by criticism that he was out of touch. Memes flew, including variations on this classic quip from character Lucille Bluth in the TV series Arrested Development, poster woman for unempathetic rich people.
Musk lowered the proposal to $8 and fired back with a meme of his own, as seen in this tweet:
In case you can't see the picture, Musk compared people whining about $8/month for Twitter Verified to those thinking $8/cup for a Starbucks coffee product is a bargain.
Aside from whatever sneering disdain one may have for $8 Starbucks drinks and/or people who spend $8/drink at Starbucks, there's a fundamental mismatch in this comparison. When you spend $8 at Starbucks, or even $1.95 at Dunkin' Donuts, you're the customer and you're buying a product. That's it.
With Twitter, everyone who tweets is giving Twitter the product, i.e., their content, for free. Twitter then uses that free content to attract audiences that it sells to advertisers. Verified users with those blue check marks are generally those most frequent
