Elon Musk launched Twitter Blue for a second time after pulling it for issues, introducing new gold check marks for verified business accounts
- Twitter Blue has relaunched, featuring a new, gold check mark for verified businesses.
- Elon Musk pulled the subscription after it was used to impersonate official accounts for companies and influential figures, including Musk.
Twitter Blue is back, and the revamped version features yet another check mark to signal account verification.
The subscription service relaunched on Monday with a new gold check mark to designate verified accounts for businesses. Twitter Blue still has blue check marks for verified individual user accounts and gray check marks for verified government and multilateral accounts.
The return of Twitter Blue is weeks in the making. The service, which allows users to buy verification on the platform, was put on pause last month after people used it to impersonate accounts of companies, politicians, and even Musk himself.
Musk said at the time that he was waiting to relaunch Twitter Blue "until there is high confidence of stopping impersonation," adding that varied check mark colors would be used to differentiate the accounts of organizations versus individual users.
To crack down on the rampant impersonation, the relaunch will require Twitter Blue users to register a phone number before they can get a blue check mark, and subscribers who change their handles, display names, or profile photos will temporarily lose the symbol until their accounts are reviewed again, Twitter said this weekend.
The new Twitter Blue also comes with a price hike for app users on iOS. People using the Twitter app on their iPhones will pay $11 per month. Musk has frequently criticized Apple for taking a 30% cut from most App Store purchases, once tweeting that the fee is "literally 10 times higher than it should be."
The price of Twitter Blue will remain $8 per month for those who subscribe on web. Besides the blue check mark, the subscription also comes with the ability to edit tweets, upload videos in 1080p resolution, and view tweets in reader mode.