Elon Musk can be safely viewed as a lunatic with pronounced arrogance. Who buys a $44 billion social media portal, lays off a lot of employees, scares off advertisers? An egoist who loves chaos. His receipt: Dismissed Twitter employees threaten lawsuits. Income is plummeting, as the new owner himself tweeted.
But Musk can also be called a visionary who is currently building a new business model. It starts with a blue checkmark that should confirm: the account is “real”, “active” and “known”. It doesn’t get any more spongy than that. The result was fakes.
Verified will soon cease to be important, but willing to pay. Musk may be creating more transparency than his critics currently believe. At the same time, he treats advertisers coldly. He doesn’t do it out of masochism. To this day, social platforms are focused not on users, but on advertisers. Some leave data, others take it.
From now on, the focus should be on users, they will have to pay for this, but they will receive a service tailored to their needs. The user transforms from a product into a customer. Does it have to be that bad?