Here Is Everything You Need To Know

Topline

Twitter will relaunch Blue—its subscription service which offers verification badges to users who pay a monthly fee—on Monday, the company announced on Saturday, a much-delayed move that comes more than a month after the original rollout of the service was plagued by “verified” impersonator accounts sowing chaos on the platform.

Twitter Blue will relaunch on Monday.

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Key Facts

The company announced the relaunch in a tweet, noting Twitter Blue subscriptions will cost $8 a month for those who sign up on the website and $11 per month for those who subscribe through the Twitter iPhone app.

As previously reported, the higher price for the iPhone app subscription is to cover the cost of Apple’s 30% fee on all in-app purchases—but users who sign up on the website should be able to access all of Twitter Blue’s benefits on the app.

The combat impersonator accounts that plagued the original rollout of Twitter Blue subscribers will need to register their phone number with Twitter in order to receive a blue verified badge.

Twitter Blue subscribers who change their display name, profile picture, or handle will lose their verified badge until the account is reviewed again.

Aside from the verification badge, Twitter Blue subscribers will have the ability to edit tweets, upload higher-quality videos and access a reader mode.

The company is also promising a set of upcoming perks for subscribers that includes fewer ads, the ability to post long-form videos and their accounts being boosted in search results or replies.

What We Don’t Know

While the addition of a phone number verification process is likely to mitigate some of the concerns around impersonator accounts it is still unclear if Twitter plans to manually review all subscribers before granting a verified badge or if the process will be automated.

What To Watch For

Aside from rolling out Twitter Blue once again, the platform is also set to make changes to how it displays other verified accounts. According to Twitter’s Head of Product, Esther Crawford, verified business accounts on Twitter will soon display gold checkmarks, while government and other official accounts will carry gray checkmarks. This is another measure undertaken by the company to mitigate the problem of “verified” impersonators.

Crucial Quote

In a cryptic tweet early on Sunday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk wrote: “The bots are in for a surprise tomorrow.” Although it is unclear if this is linked to the relaunch of Blue, Musk has previously pitched the service as a means to combat spam and bot accounts on the platform.

Key Background

Twitter first rolled out the $8 per month Twitter Blue subscription last month as part of a broader effort by the company to shore up revenue and reduce its reliance on advertisers—as many of them were leaving over content moderation concerns. The rollout of Blue—Twitter’s first high-profile product launch since its takeover by Elon Musk—was a disaster as the social platform was soon flooded by impersonator accounts with “verified” badges which made them hard to distinguish from real high-profile accounts. Musk, who had ignored repeated warnings about a rapid rollout of the service from his own trust and safety team, attempted to resolve the issue by first issuing diktats about parody accounts. The company, however, was eventually forced to suspend new signups to deal with the chaos.