 Welcome back to the breakfast on Plus TV Africa and it is TechFile Tuesday and if you're not aware yet and you should be if you use Twitter that Elon Musk's Twitter has reinstated the blue verification mark for top accounts even if they didn't pay to have it back. So if yours is not reinstated it only means one thing, you're not a top account holder on the social media company. Elon Musk's officially killed its legacy blue check mark on April 20 of 2023 this year. He decided that Twitter will have verification mark only for paid users and businesses as well as government entities and officials. However, just as many of its users woke up to the disappearance of the legacy blue marks, many of them also woke up hours ago to its reappearance without paying to have it back. The tech world is having a few day discussing this and we are sure getting into this conversation on TechFile Tuesday today on the breakfast and joining us to have this conversation is Judge Elon Musk CEO Black Lagos. Hello Mr. Elon Musk. Glad to have you with us. Hello. Good to be here. All right. So one of the things I like about Elon Musk is that he's a bold person. He's brave. He's not afraid to take risks. Let us understand if you will the importance of his actions with this verification mark on Twitter. Of course. So first of all, I'd like to speak a little bit about the need. So I think one thing that a lot of people are not or are feeling to acknowledge is that Twitter is now privatized. You know, it's no longer a publicly traded company and this is a platform that Elon had to pay about $44 billion for, right, and the truth of the matter is as at the time that Twitter was acquired, the business had, you know, had been taking it downward decline. So if you notice when Elon got into the picture and assumed office, some of his initial actions were trended towards, you know, cost reduction. So as of now, Twitter is operating on less than 30% its, you know, initial workforce and on about two-third of its original computational infrastructure. So I feel like it's glaring that, you know, there was the need for Twitter to monetize the blue checkmarks and they're really just a revenue source. Even though as a CEO, obviously he's obligated to not promote the checkmarks as a revenue source. So he makes the claims that it's meant to equate the playing field for users on the platform, but it's really just, you know, a revenue source. And I can sort of empathize with that because the truth of the matter is the platform needs to, first of all, be operational before we can start talking about some security concerns that may arise from, you know, users being able to pay for this checkmark that initially were more criteria-based, right? So it's good to appreciate that this is most likely going to be a multi-step plan and in as much as in the interim, there's going to be a lot of confusion about, you know, which accounts might be legitimate, which may not be legitimate, you know. So I think while we're sort of going through this transition of the Twitter platform going through all these various changes in order to, first of all, become profitable before they now focus on, you know, some other essential features, users will just need to exercise a lot of caution on the platform and putting the effort into due diligence to ensure that if they are transacted with anyone, they've done their own background checks to ensure that, you know, that person is who they claim to be. George, are we on the same level? Do you still have your check? I never had a check. Okay. Okay, that's the lighter side. But you talked about it being a business strategy, a business idea. How is that a good business idea when the people who we are sure could pay for the checkmarks are being given for free now? People like LeBron James, this is multi-rich. People that have been given back this thing, like William Shatner, the presidents of this world and all that, they can't pay for this blue chip, but these people are given the chip for free. So how is this a very good business idea? Yeah, so I think it was just, according to Elon anyways, I think it's just three people who were given the checkmarks for free. And I can't really speak so much to the reason behind that. It's probably to create a butterfly effect. You know, if people see that some of the people they look up to on the platform have the checkmarks, then it sort of jump-starts that process of other people getting it so that it's not a case where no one has it, right? So it's possible that that's what he was looking to do. But to answer your question further on why this might be considered a good business, first of all, Twitter has about 450 million monthly active users, right? So the rule of thumb is if you were to monetize a business, you should assume that about 10% of the general masses or your entire user base would be likely to be willing to pay for that service, right? So if 10% of 450 million people, which is 45 million people, choose to pay the $8 fee, it would bring Twitter to roughly about $4 billion a year in revenue, right? And if you compare that with their revenue in 2022, which was primarily advertisement-based, Twitter was grossing about $5.22 billion, right? So you can see that there's a slim margin that's left in order for Twitter to be able to match and possibly even exceed their revenue of last year, which means that Elon could potentially make the decision to actually drastically reduce advertisements on the platform, which will now go a long way to make the platform even more enjoyable, because most people can access to the fact that if you're on any social media platform and there are all these advertisements popping up here and there, you see the sponsored posts, it kind of affects the experience, right? So I think it's a brilliant step or a brilliant move from the perspective of the CEO of Twitter. And if you've heard the most recent news, companies like Meta are actually now adopting this as well. So they've actually kicked off their Metaverified program, which also further confirms that there's a level of brilliance to, you know, selling this sort of subscription-based premium model to the general masses. All right. When Elon bought, well, fully acquired Twitter, one of the things he was quite particular about was free speech. Take us through some, and he evaluated to some of them, but take us through the changes that he brought to Twitter since he completely acquired it in 2022, that's October 27th of 2022, and how it's impacting the growth of Twitter since he took it over, because he was going down as you alluded also. Yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the most important things that he did was to drastically cut down content moderation. Prior to when Elon took over Twitter, a bulk of the Twitter staff or a bulk of the Twitter workforce consisted of content moderators who had the ability to sort of tilt conversations on the platform towards certain directions. So like you rightly said, Elon being an advocate of free speech, I think that's actually one of the reasons he acquired the platform, not necessarily for business purposes, but he's already a wealthy man. The first steps, in addition to trying to save costs, was that he had to drastically downsize the content moderation team, and people have a certain appreciation towards that, because whether they say it outrightly or not, everyone appreciates the fact that they can have a platform where their voice can be heard and they can share their views without necessarily being sort of shadow-bound or deprioritized on the platform. That sense of equality I think has really sort of driven the numerical increase that Twitter has been experiencing. I don't know if you're aware, they've actually had record traffic levels recorded on the platform. So I think these are some of the things that people actually have an appreciation for, and it will go a long way to helping the platform continue to grow. Let's talk about the competition, for instance. Twitter, when Elon Musk came on board and acquired it, by that time someone like Trump had been taken off Twitter, Donald Trump had been taken off Twitter, he had an alternative. Then when he fired Jack Dorsey, Jack Dorsey had an alternative, and there are so many alternatives, even in Nigeria we have alternatives to Twitter that are really, really good. So do you think that Twitter is really going to be the only cock that grows like it used to be? So I think that depends a lot on the economic factors at play. I can't say for a fact how things will play out in the next month or two, but what I will say is that the Twitter brand is resilient. People have been using Twitter for quite a number of years, and they've been able to build that trust, and something that I would like to call brand resilience. So in as much as there are all these new solutions out there, and some might even possibly be better than the Twitter platform, the chances that those platforms will rise to the top would really depend on if Twitter is able to deliver on what they promised to. I think the only way that the balance would be offset at this point in time is if Twitter somehow delivers on their promises to their users, which includes free speech and some of the features that accompany the blue verification badge. But it's not very easy to win the masses over with a new solution unless the previous solution is not delivering on what it promised to the masses. When you're talking about competition not being able to rise, Twitter also had some time that they had to struggle as well. But now this decision that has come from Twitter, entering Facebook, maybe it will enter WhatsApp and all other social media platforms and all that, what will that do to the people who are the users of Twitter? I mean, already you didn't have a blue tick like I didn't have a blue tick and some people who did have may not have anymore because it has been monetized now and all that. So now that the social media is becoming so commercial because that's how a lot of people will see it, how do you think it will impact on the people using these social media platforms? Yeah, so I think provided that the features that we've had access to as non-blue checkmark holders are not compromised, I don't think it will do much damage. So as it stands now, Twitter is not imposing the blue checkmarks on all of the users. It's on an opt-in basis. So if you feel like the features that accompany the blue checkmarks are things that you would like to have or you'd like to use, they basically just made it available to the masses to the users to be able to subscribe for. So as long as these platforms don't impose these fees and say that in order to use the platform now you have to pay, I think it doesn't really affect people so much. What about the blue sky that Dorsey launched on? Let's talk about that a bit just before we go. What can you say about that, the blue sky? Yeah, so blue sky is extremely similar to Twitter. I had a look into the app a couple of days ago. I mean it's not available to people except you are invited. So I had to watch a review on it. So it's very similar to Twitter. The only difference is really the infrastructure behind it. It leverages on blockchain technologies, but some people call Web 3, others call crypto. And I think that's one area of technology that Dorsey has been very interested in investing into. I'm not very confident about the adoption, right? Because first and foremost, like I said, it's new. So you have to be able to prove to users why they should move their accounts, move all of their communities, their friends, the platform that they already used to, which is Twitter, onto this new platform. So unless the company blue sky is able to really sell something unique beyond just being decentralized behind the scenes, because the average user doesn't care so much about the technologies behind the scenes. It's more so about the features that are available to them on a day-to-day basis. And I don't really see the technological infrastructure sort of affecting an average user's day-to-day experience personally. So let's see. Maybe they have some things installed. I know they are still in development and we're watching to see what the final form of the application will be as at the time when they finally launch. I tried a Nigerian based one, they call it trend chat, and it's just seamless and it's just beautiful. But we just hope, George, that Twitter will not drop in quality because now whoever can afford it gets the chip. That's what people are thinking about it. But before now, you have to be present. You have to be seen, you have to be known, and then they give you that verification to show that you really are the owner of this. But now it seems as if if you can't pay, well, you just get the chip. Some of us are really not that much interested in some of those things. Being everywhere. Well, I don't want to mention the few that we are on, just one or two of them and we are good. But you know, I'm happy for those of you who are all over the place. Whether you're tweeting, whether you're roaring, it's the same thing. Get connected. Thank you so much, George, for coming on the show this morning. Of course, thank you so much for having me. Thank you, George. Okay, that was George Omoson Jr. CEO Black Lagos talking to us about the implication of removing the blue chips on Twitter and all that. We will be back shortly for sports and then after that we'll wrap up. Stay with us.