Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, the social media site has changed its appearance in a number of ways, including which users have a blue check next to their name—and why—and what statistics are shown beneath a tweet; here’s a timeline of the changes Twitter has made since Musk’s takeover in October 2022.
FILE - The Twitter splash page is seen on a digital device, Monday, April 25, 2022, in San Diego. By ... [+]
Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter was finalized and he quickly fired executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal, and began layoffs that impacted about half of the company’s staff.
Twitter Blue, the subscription option for users, officially launched for $8 a month, offering users an instant blue checkmark — previously reserved for people or organizations that had been deemed “authentic, notable and active,” — and the ability to edit tweets, among other features.
In addition to the number of likes, retweets and quote tweets, Twitter began showing how many views tweets were getting.
The old “Home” timeline that fed users tweets from people or topics they followed was replaced with a “For You” timeline as the default, which served up algorithmically-chosen tweets; users could still switch to a “Following” feed to find tweets from those they follow.
The famous blue bird logo disappeared—just for a little bit, as Musk replaced the bird with a Shiba Inu, the logo for Dogecoin, of which he’d long been a proponent. [The bird returned a couple of days later, causing Dogecoin’s stock to drop to 8.4 cents from the high of 10.5 cents it reached after Musk made the dog the logo, Fortune reported.]
Legacy blue check marks disappeared from the site, meaning the only “verified” people left were those who bought into Twitter Blue, the site’s premium offering.
Twitter’s “What’s happening?” prompt in the box to write new tweets became more aggressive, changing to “What is happening?!” for users on desktop.
When Musk bought Twitter, he said he wasn’t doing it to “make more money,” rather “to try to help humanity, whom I love” and to make it “a common digital town square.” Musk’s changes to Twitter were often accompanied with pushback from users who worried he’s driving the platform into the ground. Shortly after Twitter Blue began, for example, people expressed concern that the change made it too easy to impersonate public figures and, in January members of the Taliban bought blue check marks, though they were later removed. Other than the change of blue check marks, the aesthetic changes haven’t garnered much criticism, though Musk’s handling of Twitter as a whole has made people question how long the platform will continue to exist. Intelligence Insider estimated that Twitter’s ad revenue will drop 28% from last year, in part because advertisers don’t trust Musk, Yahoo News reported.
On Thursday, Musk announced he’d be stepping down as CEO of Twitter and on Friday he announced his replacement would be NBCUniversal’s former head of advertising and partnerships, Linda Yaccarino. Musk said Yaccarino will “focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology.”
Musk's Long Promised Encrypted Messages Finally Launch On Twitter…With Major Caveats (Forbes)
Musk Taps Linda Yaccarino As Twitter CEO Replacement (Forbes)