Twitter verification is to be available to anyone, under a reported plan by the company’s new owner Elon Musk. The catch? If you want that blue checkmark, you have to pay $19.99/month for a Twitter Blue subscription.
According to the report, existing verified users will have 90 days to subscribe, or lose their checkmark …
A brief history of Twitter verification
Twitter verification has a chequered history. It was first introduced back in 2009, when it was mostly an invitation-only process. Twitter would proactively reach out to accounts held by public figures to invite them to confirm their identity in order to have their accounts verified.
In 2017, the company began actively inviting applications from those who felt their accounts should qualify – but soon abandoned this when it ending up verifying accounts belonging to neo-Nazis. The company said at the time that the blue checkmark was not an endorsement of accounts, merely confirmation that they were who they claimed to be – but it was obvious that reform was needed.
There was then an extremely long hiatus before Twitter relaunched its verification program in a far more transparent format. Twitter listed three criteria for verification. Users need to be notable, authentic, and active – and fit one of seven categories.
Twitter Blue
Twitter last year launched an unrelated subscription service known as Twitter Blue. For $2.99/month, subscribers got a (very brief) Undo Send option and a few customization options.
The price was this year increased to $4.99/month, with a long-awaited Edit feature added earlier this month, as a subscriber-only perk.
Musk’s reported plan
The Verge says that new owner Elon Musk plans to increase the price of Twitter Blue to $19.99/month, and offer verification as part of the deal. This would mean anyone could get a blue checkmark simply by paying the fee.
Owners of existing verified accounts would also have to subscribe in order to retain their checkmark, with Musk reportedly giving them 90 days to do so.
The news broke in three stages. Platformer reported that Musk was “considering” ending free verification, and existing verified users would have to subscribe to Twitter Blue in order to retain their status. Musk tweeted in response:
The Verge then reported the $19.99/month plan, and suggested that it would be very rapidly introduced.
Now that he owns Twitter, Elon Musk has given employees their first ultimatum: Meet his deadline to introduce paid verification on Twitter or pack up and leave.
The directive is to change Twitter Blue, the company’s optional, $4.99 a month subscription that unlocks additional features, into a more expensive subscription that also verifies users, according to people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence seen by The Verge. Twitter is currently planning to charge $19.99 for the new Twitter Blue subscription. Under the current plan, verified users would have 90 days to subscribe or lose their blue checkmark. Employees working on the project were told on Sunday that they need to meet a deadline of November 7th to launch the feature or they will be fired.
Reports that Musk plans mass layoffs are also gaining momentum, with multiple claims that software engineers were asked to have their recent code available for inspection by the billionaire. Comically, one report said that the code should be printed out, before engineers were told to shred those printouts.
9to5Mac’s Take
Top comment by Cuban Missiles
I am not a Twitter user and therefore have no checkmark. In other words, I have no dog in this fight.
With that said, my observation of musk is that he says a lot, throws a lot of ideas out, and follows through on a small subset of them. To me, this means that the final version of twitter will likely be incremental and less drastic changes.
I do think that having subscriptions for content producers that give them edit capabilities and blue check marks makes some sense. For consumers of the content on Twitter, keep it an advertisement driven experience seems best. I would suggest that they adopt the linked in approach of allowing for more than just likes (like, celebrate, support, laugh, love, insightful, curious).
While the reports are unconfirmed, they would be consistent with Musk’s plan to have the platform become less dependent on advertising, and to have around half its revenue generated from subscriptions.
He is under pressure from banks and co-investors to generate cash to service loans and provide returns on investment.
There are undoubtedly those who would pay $20/month to get the blue checkmark, but it would fundamentally change the meaning of the symbol. Instead of acting as confirmation that accounts of public interest are real, it would simply indicate that someone is willing to pay for the privilege.
One key question is what happens to verified accounts in countries where Twitter Blue is currently unavailable – which is most of them. It will also be interesting to see how many existing verified accounts are willing to pay 20 bucks a month to retain their checkmark.
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