Elon Musk is the new owner of Twitter, and one of his first orders was to introduce paid verification on the platform. The instruction is to change Twitter Blue, the $4.99 monthly subscription program that unlocks additional features, to a more expensive subscription that verifies users.
The current plan is to charge $19.99 for the new subscription and give users who are already verified 90 days to sign up for this new model (and price), or else they will lose their blue badge.
Additionally, employees working on the project have been told they must meet the November 7 deadline to launch the new feature, or they will be fired.
In the months following his acquisition, Musk clarified that he wanted to overhaul how Twitter verifies accounts and handles bots. On Sunday, he tweeted:
The whole verification process is being revamped right now
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 30, 2022
“The entire verification process is being overhauled now.”
Twitter Blue launched nearly a year ago as a way to preview articles from some publishers without ads and make other tweaks to the app, like a different-colored home screen icon.
However, in this time of existence of the subscription program, advertising remained the biggest source of revenue for Twitter. Musk is interested in increasing subscriptions so that the format becomes half of the company’s overall revenue.
This information was ascertained by The Verge, which also requested comment from Twitter, but has not received a response at the time of publication.
