Elon Musk’s latest attempt to get Twitter users to pay for perks began rolling out on Monday, with the goal of avoiding the impersonation saga that scuttled the platform’s verification system last month.
The reintroduction of a Twitter Blue subscription tier coincides with billionaire businessman Musk’s efforts to lessen the platform’s reliance on advertisers, who have shown a reluctance to invest in marketing messages in a space where derogatory or abusive content is permitted to flourish.
According to the report, Twitter has launched gold check for businesses, grey check for government, and blue check for individuals (celebrities or not), and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before the check is activated.
Twitter Accounts in 3 Colours HIGHLIGHTS
- Finally launched is Twitter’s updated account verification programme.
- Blue checks are for people (celebrity or not), grey checks are for the government, gold checks are for businesses, and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before checks are activated.
- Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, made the announcement on the microblogging platform last month. We’re planning to launch Verified on Friday of next week, he wrote in his post, “sorry for the delay.”
“Gold checks for companies, grey checks for the government, blue checks for individuals (celebrity or not), and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before the check activates,” the SpaceX CEO added.
- Paying to be Blue
The subscription service costs $8 per month for web users and $11 for Apple device users, according to a series of tweets from the tech company.
The price increase resulted from Musk’s displeasure with Apple’s service fees levied at the App Store, which serves as the sole access point to iPhones and iPads.
According to the tech platform that Musk recently paid $44 billion for, Twitter accounts must be at least 90 days old and connected to a verified phone number in order to sign up for Blue.
Online subscriptions to Blue are currently available in Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, with “plans to expand,” according to a tweet from Twitter.
When Blue would be accessible to Twitter users with smartphones running the Google-backed Android operating system was not specified.
- Benefits promised
Individual subscribers will receive the recognisable blue authenticity checkmarks as a sign of verification.
The checkmarks will be grey for governmental organisations and gold for businesses, it was added.
According to a list of benefits, tweets from Blue subscribers will “rocket” to the top of replies, mentions, and searches on Twitter because they will be given a higher priority than tweets from non-paying users.
It was promised to those who paid for Blue that they would experience half the amount of advertising as other users, be able to upload longer videos, and have the option to retract a Tweet after it has been sent but before it is seen by other users of Twitter.
Additionally, the company said in a blog post, users will have more customization options and early access to new features that Twitter is testing.
- Earlier checkmarks
Checkmarks that have previously been given to Twitter users to signify “active, notable, and authentic accounts of public interest” that have been verified by the platform seem to be sticking around for the time being.
According to the company, blue checkmarks will either show that a user has subscribed to Twitter Blue or that they have an old account that was verified using pre-Musk criteria.
Previously, verification checkmarks were free on Twitter, but now they are reserved for organisations and public figures in an effort to avoid impersonation and misinformation.
