Twitter Blue: What does the badge of authenticity mean for brands?

The latter half of last year saw Twitter making headlines almost every day. The saga, which began in April 2022, has now led to several changes on the social media site – one of them being the launch of the subscription model. Elon Musk now dons the mantle of being the first to introduce Twitter Blue to users, despite attracting a fair share of criticism for the controversial takeover.

So, what is Twitter Blue and how does it impact users? According to Twitter’s blog page, “Twitter Blue is an opt-in, paid subscription that adds a blue checkmark to your account and offers early access to select features, like Edit Tweet.” Twitter Blue also gives one the option to upload videos for a longer duration of up to 60 minutes.

Accordingly, there is another section called Twitter Blue for Business that has been introduced to a select few brands as of now. “As a Twitter Blue for Business subscriber, a company can link any number of their affiliated individuals, businesses and brands to their account. When they do, affiliated accounts will get a small badge of their parent company's profile picture next to their blue or gold checkmark,” the Twitter page says.

This could mean that companies and brands can make a community, maybe even post about paid partnerships through these badges and much more. It is still uncertain though as to what the pricing range would be for this feature. But either way, the real question is, how does it impact brands and advertisers? When this feature rolls out, what can brands do to make the most of this new feature? Experts shared their views about this new feature and what utility does it have for brands.

Impact for Brands

According to Hareesh Tibrewala, Joint CEO of Mirum India, “Twitter Blue for Business is a good idea. It provides legitimacy to the brands’ Twitter handles. And for the consumer, it ensures that the content that they are consuming is authentic. On Twitter it is very easy to create parody accounts or accounts with misleadingly similar names, so Twitter for Business is a sound idea. The challenge is how will Twitter validate the legitimacy of the handle, once lots of business start opting for the same. Manually authenticating each and every request is going to be time-consuming.”

Shares views on how audience segmentation provided by Twitter Blue’s features would benefit advertisers, Kosal Malladi, Vice President, Madison Loop, says: “Twitter is clearly trying to open up new revenue models to support the business. Blue tick was a vanity metric; Twitter Blue is making the vanity metric more accessible. The implication of making any vanity metric accessible is that it steadily loses the vanity value. Hence Twitter is giving more features to Twitter Blue users, thereby making it a subscription/premium offering. Twitter Blue of Business is a similar effort. The complete details of this are yet to be revealed.”

Another benefit that Twitter would see, according to Malladi, is audience segmentation. “Now, Twitter will have one more avenue to identify audience behaviour. And this opens up a lot of possibilities for advertisers.”

But Malladi also has a word of caution for brands since the feature is new and the Indian audience for it is also limited. “Any platform will take time to build audience intelligence, and hence deliver results.”

Sabiha Khan, Head of Strategy- Digital Experience, Dentsu Creative India, shared more on how the blue tick will help businesses with authenticity. “Twitter Blue for Business might really help brands, especially those with a group presence, though it remains to be seen how it gets rolled out. Many businesses tend to struggle with the decision of one handle versus multiple handles based on geographies or product lines, and this badge seems like an interesting solution to help establish connection and authenticity. Of course, the support towards longer videos is also something brands will find useful. The prioritisation of tweets too may help from a response management POV.”

Sharing a different perspective was Lloyd Mathias, Business Strategist and Angel Investor, who has his doubts about the feature but believes the blue tick will help brands find a niche audience. “Twitter Blue users will be the ones desperately seeking the blue tick mark of validation. I’m not certain how valuable brand custodians will find these users until they grow into a significant number of users. However, given that these are paid, ‘premium’ users, brands may over time like to prioritize them for more premium offerings much like how television advertisers used the HD channel feeds to target more niche premium viewers.”

Karan Taurani of Elara Capital says Twitter Blue can be a great space for businesses to diversify their customer targeting. “You will see a lot of reverse marketing and partnership-led kind of stuff happening on Twitter as well, which was earlier limited only to Instagram. In platforms like Twitter, there's a lot of serious business involvement as well. So, I think if there's stability in the key norms, in terms of the tick mark, in terms of how the partnerships are to be done, I think there is a good potential for a lot of growth coming in from that business side.”

Taurani also believes that the subscription model can benefit both Twitter and the brands advertising on it. “I think this space would be used more in terms of a lot of formal announcements, right from actors and celebrities to other more serious announcements, more serious partnerships.”