Explained: How Twitter Blue chaos cost an insulin maker billions of dollars

“We are excited to announce that insulin is now free.” That tweet, sent on Friday afternoon from a fake verified account with the Eli Lilly logo, immediately began racking up thousands of tweets, hundreds of quote tweets and tens of thousands of likes. While many tweets from fake verified accounts of Nintendo, Pepsi, Lebron James, and Donald Trump caused mirth and mayhem in the aftermath of Twitter’s $8 verification fiasco, perhaps none did as much damage as that 10 November tweet from an account imitating the maker of the life-saving drug insulin. Let’s take a closer look at what happened: Tweet goes viral, stock tanks The tweet caught fire and went viral all over the internet even as the Eli Lilly stock took a nose-dive. A Twitter user, screenshotting the tweet and the Eli Lilly stock side-by-side on Friday, posted that the tweet had cost the company billions.

  According to Digg.com, Google analytics showed the pharma company stock went from $368 a share to $346 a share, wiping out billions in market value. Inside Eli Lilly, executives were in a furious panic. Two people speaking to the Washington Post on condition of anonymity, said company officials worried about the company image attempted to frantically contact Twitter. But the social media giant, after its massive staff cut gutted its communication team, didn’t respond for hours. The company told Gizmodo, “In recent days, fake/parody Twitter accounts for Lilly have communicated false information and we’re working to correct this situation.” By the time the company issued an apology from its real account @LillyPad it was too late.

By now, the row had turned into a free-for-all with politicos and Twitter users piling on. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted:

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  Epidemiologist and public health advocate Eric Feigl-Ding chimed in:

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Another imposter Eli Lilly account rubbed salt in the wound, tweeting: “We can do this whenever we want and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Some, however, pointed out that Eli Lilly was down due to demand for its most profitable drug falling five per cent and that the industry on a whole was down.

Regardless, executives at Eli Lilly had had enough. By Friday, a complete halt on any ad spending on Twitter as well as a stop on the publishing plan for all its corporate accounts was ordered. This blow came after a many massive corporations, worried about Musk’s erratic behaviour, paused advertising or fled the platform altogether. Remember, advertising used to comprise 90 per cent of the social media platform’s revenue. Musk needs Twitter to make money quickly since he has saddled the platform with $13 billion dollars of debt to finance its purchase and has to make a billion dollar yearly payment on that debt. The $8 verification has now been put on hold by Twitter, which has cut its staff by nearly half and laid off vast swathes of its communications, human rights, ethics, machine learning and algorithm teams. Experts flummoxed Some experts seem to be flummoxed at Musk’s behaviour. “For $8 dollars, Twitter is losing out on millions of dollars of ad revenue,” former Eli Lilly company spokesperson Amy O’Connor told Washington Post.

“What’s the benefit to a company … of staying on Twitter? It’s not worth the risk when patient trust and health are on the line.”

Though Musk has said the platform is losing around $4 million dollars a day and that bankruptcy may be a possibility, others like Andy Wu, assistant professor at Harvard’s business school, think the billionaire is waging an ideological battle – the costs be damned. “In addition to potential financial returns, my sense is that Musk and his co-investors are ideologically driven, that they’re really driven by values,” Wu told NPR. Wu, pointing to Musk’s ideas about free speech, said he thinks the world’s richest man and his backers are “willing to lose money for the sake of that fight.” With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.