Twitter has begun rolling out the new, $7.99 version of its Twitter Blue subscription service, which allows users to pay for a blue checkmark indicating they have been verified.
The Twitter blue service will also include an edit function, priority in replies and mentions and fewer advertisements, although some of those features are not yet live.
Twitter owner Elon Musk has said the goal of the new Twitter Blue product is to reduce the volume of harmful accounts on the platform. According to Twitter’s website, Twitter Blue subscribers will initially be unable to change their display name after receiving a blue checkmark.
‘We will be implementing a new process soon for any display name changes,’ Twitter said.
It is not yet clear what will happen to the approximately 423,000 currently verified, blue-check accounts on the site. Many blue checks belong to celebrities, businesses and journalists.
The changes continue what has been a tumultuous rollout under Musk, who purchased the platform for $44 billion last month. Since taking over, Musk has tweeted, then deleted, a link to a discredited, anti-LGBTQ report about the attack on U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, prompting concerns about his commitment to making Twitter an accurate source of information. A number of advertisers have paused spending on the platform, most recently Oreo cookie maker Mondelez, citing reports of an increase in hate speech.
Musk has tweeted that since taking over the site, there had been a “massive drop in revenue” that he blamed on “activist groups pressuring advertisers.” But he has also said user growth had hit “all-time highs.”
Earlier Wednesday, platform owner Elon Musk decided to remove gray ‘official’ checkmarks on some prominent Twitter accounts. In a series of tweets Tuesday evening, Esther Crawford, a product lead at Twitter, had said users that would receive the official tags would include ‘government accounts, commercial companies, business partners, major media outlets, publishers and some public figures.’
Those checkmarks quickly began to show up on many large accounts including those of NBC News.
But by noon on Wednesday, Musk tweeted to a user that he had decided to “kill” those checkmarks. The ‘official’ checkmarks quickly disappeared.
Crawford then clarified that the ‘official’ checkmarks would still be used in the future but that they would be initially focused on adding them to ‘government and commercial entities.’
There did not appear to be a clear rubric for which accounts had gained the official tag. Pop star Taylor Swift, former president Barack Obama, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates were among the users who had them. Accounts that initially lacked the ‘official’ tag included President Joe Biden’s personal account, Pope Francis’s account, and the account for U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months,” Musk tweeted Wednesday. “We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.”
