Twitter to charge $20 per month for blue tick verification badge: Report
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Twitter will revise its user verification process, Elon Musk said in a tweet on Sunday, just days after he took over one of the world's most influential social media platforms.
"Whole verification process is being revamped right now", Musk said in his tweet without giving more details on what may change.
Twitter is considering charging for the coveted blue check mark verifying the identity of its account holder, technology newsletter Platformer reported on Sunday, citing two people familiar with the matter.
According to the report, the blue tick will be limited to Twitter Blue members - Twitter's subscription that brings extra features like edit and undo tweets. The company is also reportedly planning to increase the Blue fee to $19.99 (roughly Rs 1,600). Moreover, users who are already verified will get 90 days to subscribe to Twitter Blue in order to keep the blue tick on their profile. It remains unclear whether Twitter will change rules to make the verification process more strict or lenient.
The report also points out that Twitter engineers are given a deadline to revamp the Twitter verification process or they will lose their jobs. It is not even a week since Musk formally acquired Twitter, though he has already fired some key players. The list includes former CEO Parag Agrawal, who took the role in late November last year. Other notable figures, such as Twitter CFO Ned Segal and policy chief Vijaya Gadda have also been laid off.
The CEO of Tesla Inc has not made a final decision and the project could still be scrapped but according to Platformer it is likely that verification will become a part of Twitter Blue.
Twitter Blue was launched in June last year as the platform's first subscription service which offers "exclusive access to premium features" on a monthly subscription basis including a feature to edit tweets.
The feature to edit tweets was also made available earlier this month after Musk's insistence on using a Twitter poll in April asking his millions of followers whether they wanted an edit button. Over 70% had said yes.
The billionaire has also requested that logged-out users visiting Twitter's site be redirected to Explore page which shows trending tweets, The Verge reported on Sunday citing employees who were familiar with the matter.
