CALIFORNIA – Twitter is set to launch differently coloured badges to distinguish between accounts, according to the platform billionaire owner Elon Musk.
The announcement of the latest development was made Friday on the platform in another moment of changes to take place on Twitter.
“Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week,” Musk tweeted.
“Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates,” he added.
All verified individual accounts will have the identical blue check, according to Musk‘s subsequent tweet, but some will eventually be able to display a “secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an org(anization) if verified as such by that org(anization)”.
Since he acquired the social media behemoth last month, the idea that users may pay to be “verified” and receive a blue badge on their profiles has raised questions.
The contentious new owner of Twitter suggested a $8 monthly subscription charge to enable individuals to access the blue check, which was previously free but only available to businesses and public figures in an effort to prevent impersonation and false information.
Early in November, Musk launched his subscription service for the first time, but it failed miserably since many users paid with a blue check before pretending to be famous people, organisations, or world leaders.
Musk delayed the launch a second time after initially pushing it back to November 29 in response to criticism but it now seems the launch will happen on December 2.
Musk has stated that he wants to charge users for social media platform subscriptions in order to diversify the company’s revenue stream because currently, 90% of Twitter’s income comes from advertising.
