One month after being forced to remove the tool due to an influx of “verified” accounts posing as well-known businesses and users, Twitter on Monday reinstated a feature that allows subscribers to its service to acquire the coveted “blue check.”
Elon Musk, the new owner of the company he purchased for $44 billion, including a sizable amount of debt financing, is attempting to grow its subscription business and bolster the bottom line of the business with the updated verification system, which expands on check mark options with a number of new colors.
According to a tweet from Esther Crawford, the Twitter product head leading the subscription service initiative, the new Twitter Blue subscription service would cost customers who join via the web platform $8 per month and $11 per month, respectively. In an apparent attempt to cover Apple’s 30% app transaction fee, which Musk previously criticized, the price point on iOS is higher.
On Monday we are bringing back the ability to subscribe to @TwitterBlue — it’ll be $8/mo on the web and $11/mo on iOS. We’ve added a review step before applying a blue checkmark to an account as one of our new steps to combat impersonation (which is against the Twitter Rules).
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) December 10, 2022
Twitter will offer blue checks for all users, whether or whether they are celebrities, gray checks for businesses, governments, and other organizations, and gold checks for individuals.
Beginning on Monday, numerous companies’ accounts, including those of The New York Times and Taco Bell, began to display the gold business verification checkmark. Later on Monday, users were once again able to subscribe to Twitter Blue.
Musk has previously said that users who did not pay for Twitter’s new subscription service would have their checks deleted. These users had previously been verified under the prior system because they are journalists, celebrities, or public figures. “All legacy blue checks” would be eliminated “in a few months,” he tweeted on Monday.
In a few months, we will remove all legacy blue checks. The way in which they were given out was corrupt and nonsensical.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2022
When they click on the blue checks next to accounts that were confirmed prior to Musk’s takeover, some Twitter users have started to notice a new explanation that says: “This is a legacy verified account. It might or might not be noteworthy.
Musk also stated that Twitter would “manually authenticate” all verified accounts before accepting their check mark. Twitter has reduced its personnel by more than half and lost many others to attrition. If verified users change their account names, the corporation will also momentarily remove check marks pending authentication.
Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week.
Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates.
Painful, but necessary.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2022
Beyond ensuring that users have a working phone number, the details of that authentication method are unknown. “We don’t have ID verification in this update,” Crawford stated in a tweet.
We don’t have ID verification in this update.
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) December 10, 2022
According to the firm, users of the new Twitter Blue will also ultimately be able to post longer videos, see half as much advertising, and have their tweets prioritized at the top of responses, mentions, and searches.
we’re relaunching @TwitterBlue on Monday – subscribe on web for $8/month or on iOS for $11/month to get access to subscriber-only features, including the blue checkmark 🧵 pic.twitter.com/DvvsLoSO50
— Twitter (@Twitter) December 10, 2022
The debut of the new system was previously scheduled for the end of November, but Musk repeatedly postponed it due to worries about the feature’s safety.
As a means of leveling the playing field, the billionaire owner of Twitter has marketed the option to pay for verification. However, such a choice also poses a threat to the verification’s initial goal, which was to let users know they could believe the information being given by well-known people.
Musk ran the risk of further alienating many of the advertisers who still account for the vast majority of its revenues in an effort to use the paid verification option to increase its subscription revenue. After the premium verification option was introduced last month, popular companies like Nintendo of America and Eli Lilly saw account impersonation within hours.
Although it appears that the extra gold and gray verification categories are meant to allay some of these worries, it is unclear what the necessity that people pay to be confirmed would entail for trust in well-known individual users.
Musk tweeted last month, “All verified individual persons will have the same blue check, as the border of what makes ‘notable’ is otherwise too subjective. “If validated as such by that organization, individuals can have a second little logo indicating they belong to that organization.”
