When Elon Musk announced that Twitter users would no longer be at the mercy of a small team responsible for allocating the verified status, many jumped with excitement. They believed it would be worth investing $8 – $10 on the Twitter Blue subscription to have an equal chance of their tweets getting more attention, maybe a few going viral as influencers.
However, even after months of paying for Twitter Blue Subscription, users are now being furious as the algorithmic priority for paying subscribers is still “Coming Soon”.
Many subscribers are frustrated after seeing the genius tweets failing to attain a sizeable number of views as they are not being prioritised by the Twitter algorithm despite having a verified account. They claim that their expectations of amplified reach, more retweets and engagement were higher than just owning a Blue check mark next to their name on the Twitter profile.
It was clear to see the frustration that ranged from anger to confusion and despair. Some people on the app seem to have missed the “coming soon” part and signed up for the Twitter Blue subscription in anticipation of tweets being noticed right from the very next day.
Some users have even proposed Musk an option of removing the algorithm control from their account as they are paying monthly, and expect their tweets to be seen by all of their followers.
“I have good content, but I get NO Retweets on my original tweets. This is a slap in the face to me!” tweeted one particularly perturbed subscriber in a since-deleted tweet.
Some even accused Musk of only paying attention to requests and suggestions put up by his followers being followed by millions of Twitter users.
Most of these users believe that paying customers must have some advantage over non-paying ones when it comes to algorithmic boosts automatically.
Unfortunately, Musk is not in a situation to keep his word. Although Twitter Blue has promised that it would one day “rocket paying subscribers to the top of replies and mentions, search,” the chief of Twitter is already dealing with many problems with the platform at the moment. In such a scenario redefining the algorithm to boost paying subscribers would be no less than taking too much risk for him.
The company is extremely understaffed after Musk announced a series of layoffs in the company. The impact could be seen from the site’s infrastructure which has experienced a fair amount of downtime since the mass layoffs. During this time, for Musk, making any change in the algorithm would be no less than touching a live wire.
But, you never know. We would not be surprised if Musk decides to work on the algorithm with an aggressive deadline after his mutual friends start complaining about the same thing.
Twitter has reportedly earned just $11 million within 3 months from the Blue subscription. And a sizeable share of these paying users is expecting to experience the algorithm boost to their replies and tweets. Testing their patience and failing to meet their expectations could backfire on Musk.
