Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Musk’s social network will also begin charging businesses and organizations $1,000 per month for verified status
As Elon Musk promised, Twitter’s previous blue tick verification system will soon be history.
The social network, which the mega-billionaire bought last year in a debt-ridden $44 billion deal, announced on Thursday that it will be available from April 1 unless they subscribe to Twitter Blue or the business-focused Twitter Verified Organizations plan .
See more
On April 1st we will begin to retire our old verified program and remove old verified ticks. To keep your blue tick on Twitter, individuals can sign up for Twitter Blue here: https://t.co/gzpCcwOpLp
Organizations can sign up for https://t.co/RlN5BbuGA3…
— Twitter verified (@verified) March 23, 2023
The only unique Twitter users who have verified blue ticks are those who pay for Twitter Blue, which costs $8/month in the US via web and $11/month via in-app payment on iOS and Android. Early Thursday, the company announced that Twitter Blue was now available worldwide.
For businesses and brands, Twitter recently introduced a gold tick and switched government accounts to a gray tick. As previously mentioned, a subscription to the social network’s new Twitter Verified Organizations program in the US – which will be the only way to keep a gold or gray tick – costs $1,000/month (plus taxes) and $50/month ( plus VAT) for each additional affiliate sub-account. (See prices Here.)
Twitter first introduced verified accounts in 2009 to help users see that celebrities, politicians, companies and brands, news organizations, and other “public interest” accounts were genuine and not scammer or spoof accounts. The company has not previously charged any fees for verification.
Musk said Twitter’s legacy verification system was “corrupt” and had opened blue ticks to every paying customer — perhaps a move to democratize the status symbol, but also a means for Musk to generate a much-needed new revenue stream. “There are far too many corrupt old blue ‘verification’ ticks out there so no choice but to remove the old blue in the coming months,” Musk tweeted in November.
Before Musk’s change, which allowed anyone to get a blue tick, Twitter had more than 420,000 verified accounts. After he took over, Twitter changed the wording in the description of the old verified accounts to say they “may or may not be notable.” (Musk claims he was responsible for the wording.)
In November, two weeks after Musk closed the Twitter deal, the company launched Twitter Blue with the tick as one of its premium perks. But after two days, logins were suspended as a flood of users set up fake and spoofed accounts that appeared to be “verified.” The company relaunched Twitter Blue the following month with new measures to prevent impersonators.
In Musk’s first company-wide memo to Twitter employees last fall, he said the company would need about half of its revenue from subscription services. “Without significant subscription revenue, there’s a good chance Twitter won’t survive the coming economic downturn,” he wrote.