New York () — Twitter re-launched on Monday the option for users who pay for the subscription service to receive the coveted “blue check mark.” The relaunch comes a month after the platform had to remove this feature amid a wave of “verified” accounts posing as high-profile brands and users.
The updated verification system, which expands checkmark options with several new colors, is part of new owner Elon Musk’s effort to grow the subscription business. And, in that sense, bolster the results of the company he bought for $44 billion, including a substantial amount of debt financing.
The new Twitter Blue subscription service will cost US$8 per month for users who subscribe through the platform, and US$11 per month for those who subscribe in the iOS application, according to a tweet from Esther Crawford, the Twitter head of product leading this effort. The higher price on iOS appears to be a move to deal with Apple’s 30% transaction fee, which Musk recently criticized.
As part of the new verification system, Twitter will offer gold marks for businesses, gray marks for government entities and other organizations, and blue marks for individuals, whether celebrities or not. The gold business verification mark began appearing Monday on the accounts of various companies including The New York Times and Taco Bell. Hours later this Monday the option to subscribe to Twitter Blue on the platform returned.
Musk had previously suggested that profiles verified using the old system — because they belong to journalists, celebrities or public figures — would lose their verification marks if they didn’t pay for Twitter’s new subscription service. In that sense, this Monday tweeted that “all the old blue marks” would be removed “in a few months”.
Some Twitter users have started seeing a new explanatory note when they click on the blue checkmarks for accounts that were verified before the Musk acquisition with the message: “This is an old verified account. It may or may not be noticeable.”
Musk too has said that Twitter, which laid off more than half its employees and has lost many others to attrition, would “manually authenticate” all verified accounts before approving its branding. The company will also temporarily remove checkmarks pending authentication if verified users change their account names. It is not clear what this authentication process will consist of, beyond verifying that users have a functional phone number. crawford said in a tweet: “We do not have identity verification in this update.”
The company Indian that subscribers to the new Twitter Blue will eventually also have their tweets prioritized at the top of replies, mentions, and searches. As well as seeing half the number of ads and being able to post longer videos.
Musk initially said the relaunch of the new system would be at the end of November, but it was delayed several times over concerns about the security of the feature.
The billionaire owner of Twitter has promoted the ability to pay for verification as a way to level the playing field. However, such an option also threatens to undermine the original purpose of verification: to help users know that they can trust information shared by prominent figures.
By attempting to use the paid verification feature to increase his subscription revenue, Musk also risked further alienating many of the advertisers who still account for the vast majority of his sales. Within hours of launching the paid verification option last month, accounts for major brands including Nintendo of America and Eli Lilly were spoofed.
The additional gold and gray verification categories seem intended to address some of those concerns. But it’s unclear what a requirement that people pay to get verified would mean with respect to trusting featured individual users.
“All verified individual humans will have the same blue tick as the line on what constitutes ‘remarkable’ is too subjective,” Musk tweeted last month. “People can have a small secondary logo that shows they belong to an organization if that organization verifies it.”
