Elon Musk performed a lot of changes in Twitter after he took over last year. He fired nearly half of its employees and did several other measures to cut costs. Last year, Musk also introduced a paid verified badge plan that severely backfired and it had to be canceled.
Now, reports suggest that the social media giant will be revoking all the “legacy” verified account badges. This process will start in April and it will mean that only users paying for the verified badge will get to have it. So let’s find out in detail about this entire new development.
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Elon Musk-Owned Twitter Will End Legacy Verified Badges
Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter last year for $44 billion, he has made several drastic changes in the company. One of them was the introduction of the paid verified badge plan.
According to Variety, the social media giant announced on Thursday that from April 1, they will start to remove the verified check marks of accounts. These accounts were given the blue tick before the billionaire took over.
Only accounts who have paid for the badge under the Twitter blue plan will get to have the verified badges. Users will have to pay $8 per month through the website and $11 a month through the in-app payment on iOS and Android.
When it comes to companies and organizations, Twitter has introduced a gold check mark, while government organizations will get a grey check mark. These badges will cost around $1,000 monthly with taxes.
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Twitter Blue Was Introduced Last Year
In 2009, Twitter first introduced the verification system of giving a blue tick to high-profile celebrities, organizations, and individuals. It was to help identify the real account of popular names,
To generate revenue, Musk decided to charge for these verified badges. In November last year, Twitter blue was launched but it severely backfired. Several spam accounts bought the blue tick and renamed their accounts with the names of celebrities and or brands.
One of the most notable examples has to be a parody account renaming itself as the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. The fake account tweeted, “We are excited to announced insulin is free now.” This seriously affected the company’s stock prices and they issued an apology. After this, Twitter Blue was scrapped temporarily.
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