The new Twitter Blue offering a blue verified checkmark is now officially live on iOS in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. The subscription tier costs $7.99 per month. It offers users a verification mark that was given to a few selected users (organizations, governments, and other public figures) who met the criteria and can prove their authenticity, along with additional features yet to be rolled out.
Just a couple of days after acquiring Twitter for $44 billion, Elon Musk aspired to end the “lord and peasant” on Twitter who are or aren’t verified on Twitter. He said now any user can buy a blue verified checkmark with the revamped Twitter Blue subscription. Musk, the world’s richest man, has also marketed the new feature as a bot and spam remedy. He also touted his brainchild as a new revenue stream that the company could use to award content creators.
Product executive Esther Crawford, on Tuesday, announced that users will be able to distinguish between the Twitter Blue subscribers and the accounts that were officially verified with the new additional “Official” label. She further added that the “official” label is not for sale and not all previously verified accounts will get the additional “Official” label. Another major update to the verification system, that Esther announced, is that it no longer requires an ID verification, which was earlier mandatory for accounts wanting to get verified.
With that said, moving forward Twitter doesn’t want a blue verified checkmark to confirm an account’s authenticity, or in simpler words do its ‘original job’. Users impersonating anyone can get verification or can even have five different profiles- all verified.
Just a day after, Twitter added the “official” label to some high-profile accounts, including national political figures, news organizations, and some prominent journalists to signify the accounts were authentic (the original concept of the blue verified checkmark). However, within hours, Twitter scrapped it. Musk responded to a tweet from YouTube product reviewer Marques Brownlee saying that he “killed” the official tag, adding that the blue check will be the “great leveler”.
Moving further, Musk has publicly acknowledged that “dumb things” will happen on Twitter in the coming days. “Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in the coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn’t,” the billionaire tweeted.
Twitter Blue: Everybody knows you paid for verification
Before the Musk era, when users clicked on any verified profile, Twitter offered additional context about verification check marks saying that accounts were verified because they were “notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category,” along with a link to Twitter’s support page about verification. But now, when any user clicks on a Twitter Blue subscriber profile, the message reads “this account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue,” also with a link to the verification support page. And if Twitter again rolls out an “official” lab, there’ll again be two sets of verified profiles.
In just a few weeks after Musk’s takeover, Twitter has been hit by a massive wave of changes. First, top executives like the CEO and CFO were sacked, then around 50 percent of the company’s employees were laid off, and now the structure of the micro-blogging platform that appealed to millions of its users is under a chaotic overhaul.
However, as per some new tweets from Musk, these rules might change down the line. “We are changing the text to say ‘Legacy Verified. Could be notable, but could also be bogus,’” he tweeted. He added that there’ll “granularity to verified badge, such as organizational affiliation & ID verification”; w somewhat like the original verification system.
