Twitter replaces original logo, high-profile accounts refuse to pay for verification

The Yahoo Finance Live team reports on how Twitter replaced its blue bird logo in its app on Monday with an image of the Dogecoin dog and news of high-profile accounts refusing to pay for Twitter Blue verification.

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DAVE BRIGGS: Changes at Twitter today. On your screen, you see that dog, the old Doge icon has now replaced the blue bird that used to be the upper left portion of your screen. Elon Musk trolling his own users once again. Meanwhile, shares of Elon Musk's favorite Dogecoin surging today, up more than 15%, coincidentally or not, as this change comes amid confusion on Twitter over a shift that did not happen. Twitter promised to remove the verified checkmark form of all, quote, "legacy accounts" by April 1st.

But here we are on April 3, and they have removed one account. The New York Times and their 55 million follower account no longer has the verification check. Musk tweeting he would remove the media company's badge after finding out that the Times refuses to pay for Twitter Blue. But they are certainly not the only ones. The Washington Post, the White House, even LeBron James said they won't pay to be verified.

And I thought it was most interesting what the White House said about this, Seana. They said, quote-- and this is Rob Flaherty-- "It's our understanding that Twitter Blue does not provide person-level verification, so all the blue checkmark does is simply serve as a verification that you're a paid user." So why in the world would anyone want to pay for something that simply says you've paid?

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, it makes no sense. And I think that's why you're seeing a number of people say that they are not willing to pay, whether it's $8 a month for an individual, $1,000 for a business. When it comes to New York Times, they were the 24th-- or they are the 24th most followed account on Twitter, 54 million followers, more than 54 million followers. So you kind of question why Musk is doing that, why he's weighing this fight.

And of course, he didn't waste any time. He started attacking the New York Times, tweeting, quote, "Their propaganda isn't even interesting." We know that he has not been afraid to attack journalists, to attack anyone who has been critical of Elon Musk in the past. But you got to question just his reasoning and why he's even doing this in the first place because it is a hard sell, and I think a number of business accounts aren't going to be willing to pay for this.

DAVE BRIGGS: Yeah, and it's $1,000 a month for an organization, plus $50 thereafter for the employees under them. And look, this is just another example of Elon Musk really asleep at the wheel at Twitter. He has done nothing quantifiably positive since taking over there. Let's just keep score. Advertisers have fleed the platform en mass. The ad revenue has plummeted. The dialogue, the discourse has arguably gotten worse on Twitter. And oh, by the way, that $44 billion valuation is now less than half of that. It's been a debacle. Oh, and they've cut, what, more than half of the employees as well.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, hard to see the turnaround plan taking shape any time soon, but we, of course, will see how that all plays out.