It seems no coincidence that @elonmusk became the number one account on Twitter just months after its owner took control of the platform.
Early Monday, Musk overtook Barack Obama as the most followed Twitter user — with 133.08 million followers compared to Obama’s 133.04 million.
It comes on the heels of Twitter’s CEO asking the company’s engineers to build a special system that boosts his tweets after the Super Bowl on Feb. 12.
According to people familiar with the matter, Musk ordered the renewal when his tweet about the Super Bowl didn’t get as many impressions as a similar tweet from President Joe Biden.
The billionaire deleted his ‘failed’ tweet and threatened to fire his engineering team if the engagement issue was not fixed.
Musk’s follower count has grown and now stands at 133,084,622, more than Obama’s 133,042,303.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk reportedly deleted his tweet about the Super Bowl last month because it didn’t get the same amount of engagement as a similar post from President Joe Biden.
Musk’s tweet simply read “GoEagles!!!” accompanied by an American flag emoji — but Musk deleted it after it generated just over 9.1 million impressions.
In comparison with, Biden tweet – Also expressing support for the Philadelphia Eagles that lost to the Kansas City Chiefs – generated nearly 29 million impressions.
According to a report before CurriculumThe incident culminated in Musk’s growing frustration over what he saw as a decline in engagement with his tweets.
He ordered employees to overhaul Twitter’s algorithm — a problem described internally as “high urgency” — so that it would show users Musk’s tweets first.
Hours later, Twitter users began sharing screenshots of the “For You” tab showing nothing but tweets and replies from the CEO.
The For You tab shows popular tweets that are boosted by an algorithm – whether or not the person follows the account that posted them.
So it seems that giving Musk’s tweets more prominence had the effect of encouraging people to click on his account and the “follow” button.
MailOnline contacted Twitter for comment in an email — but the company’s department now only responds to any inquiries with a poo emoji.
Musk laid off Twitter’s global outreach team shortly after his takeover.
After Twitter employees scrambled to change its algorithm so it boosted Musk’s tweets, users began sharing screenshots that only show the tweets and replies from the CEO.
Musk’s follower count has increased since the time of writing, and he has 133,089,608 followers on Twitter compared to 133,042,468 followers for Obama.
Interestingly, this means that the number of Obama’s followers decreased in a matter of hours, while Musk’s is still increasing, according to the stats I published earlier. the edge Displays.
Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion in October, has ordered a slew of changes to the platform, both for user experience and behind the scenes.
Earlier this week it was announced that users who don’t pay for Twitter Blue – the platform version which costs £11 per month for Android and iOS – would not be able to vote in polls.
He also said that users who don’t pay a fee won’t have their tweets appear in the For You tab, incentivizing people to look for Twitter Blue.
Musk said the changes would prevent “hordes of AI bots from taking over” the site, though he didn’t explain exactly how.
Starting April 15th, only verified accounts will be eligible to be in Recommendations For You. chirp.
(This is) the only realistic way to deal with the hordes of advanced bots taking over. It is otherwise a hopelessly losing battle.
“Voting in polls will require verification for the same reason.”
Musk said the changes are “the only realistic way to address advanced bot swarms.”
If you want to be able to vote in Twitter polls after April 15th, you’ll have to subscribe to Twitter Blue, which starts at £9.60 per month.
Jake Moore, a technology expert and security consultant at ESET, challenged Musk’s suggestion that the decision had something to do with removing Twitter bots.
“This isn’t just a response to the AI bots infesting the site, it’s a response to the company hemorrhaging money,” Moore told MailOnline.
Musk killed the company and is now looking into removing features from unpaid accounts.
Musk also recently removed two-factor authentication (2FA) for SMS from the free version — a decision Moore called “ridiculous” that would lead to “many accounts being hacked.”
2FA sends an SMS containing a code to users’ smartphones, which they have to enter to access their account, as an extra layer of security.
One of the most controversial changes of all is the removal of the blue tick next to the names of account holders.
Previously, the blue tick was a free feature given to “active, notable, and real” accounts of people such as politicians, celebrities, and journalists.
But Musk now wants the meaning of the blue tick to be an indicator that the account “has an active subscription” Not a bot account.
In fact, everything it does indicates that the account holder pays a monthly fee for the privilege.
It’s intentional Users were changing account names and photos To resemble an official account And paying to give it a blue tick to make it look authentic.
MailOnline contacted Twitter for comment in an email — but the company’s department now only responds to any inquiries with a poo emoji. Musk laid off his communications team shortly after his takeover
Them thangs thangin: New York Rudy Giuliani impersonated on Twitter when Musk started messing with the blue flag system
Furthermore, Taliban members were able to pay to have blue ticks next to their account names.
After months of delays, Twitter will finally remove blue ticks from non-paying accounts starting April 1, it confirmed last week.
Musk has rolled out new gold and gray tags to denote verified companies and government agencies, respectively – and is charging £1,000 a month for them.
Inside the company, meanwhile, Musk has laid off thousands of Twitter employees to help curb expenses and boost profits.
Most recently, Musk laid off another 200 employees at the end of February — and days later Twitter suffered a three-hour outage.
A few days later, Twitter ran into more technical problems when users became unable to see photos or post links.
Outages have increased since Musk started Twitter, leading to speculation that there aren’t enough employees to fix his issues.
