Twitter weighs charging a fee for blue ticks; Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky reacts

There is a lot of speculation about how Elon Musk will reshape Twitter. Any changes will impact the microblogging site’s 329 million users, spread across every corner of the globe. Twitter currently does not have a CEO, and Musk is overseeing the whole operation personally, after firing CEO Parag Agarwal and CFO Ned Segal last week.

One of the changes Musk is said to be weighing is monetising Twitter’s verification programme, by charging $20 for a blue tick. The blue tick lets people know that an account is authentic.

American entrepreneur, podcaster and angel investor Jason Calacanis is among the people Musk has tasked with helping him reshape Twitter in line with his vision to make it the world’s town square.


On Monday, Calacanis tweeted a poll, asking users, “How much would you pay to be verified & get a blue check mark on Twitter?” The tweet had options of $5 a month, $10 a month, $15 a month, with the last one being ‘wouldn’t pay’.


Reactions to the tweet were varied. “Twitter is better when everyone is verified, so I would make it free (with a goal of everyone being verified) and decouple it from paid membership,” said Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky

The Airbnb CEO added later to his reply saying ‘Paid membership is a great idea btw’.

Twitter has been buzzing with speculations over how the Tesla CEO is going to restructure the social media company.

Chesky interacted with users on the same thread, sharing his ideas on Twitter’s potential verification policies.

Replying to a user named @5xlong, who tweeted saying “I think we need to clarify what the purpose of verification is. It’s currently meant to be to help find legitimate, notable people. That shouldn’t be tied to payment,” Chesky said “I think there is free verification of identity and then are idea around status. Then there are payments and membership ideas, among others.”


Meanwhile, the Indian IT MoS, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, in a statement said that the government has not received any confirmation on reports of verification badge being chargeable, from Twitter’s end.