Twitter begins rollout of $7.99 verification badge plan

Twitter has officially begun launching Twitter Blue, a new subscription-based system proposed by new boss Elon Musk that will allow users to pay $7.99 per month for a verified checkmark next to their username along with features like less ads and longer videos.

An in-app iOS notification revealed Saturday states the features that will be available to Twitter Blue subscribers, including seeing half the ads a normal user would and the ability to upload longer videos up to 10 minutes long. 

The service is currently available in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK to start, but Musk indicated it will be available worldwide soon. 

As soon as we confirm it’s working well in the initial set of countries and we have the translation work done, it will roll out worldwide,’ Musk tweeted Saturday.

The announcement also indicates Twitter Blue users will see advertisements that are ‘twice as relevant.’ 

Musk tweeted that Twitter Blue will be ‘an absolute gamechanger for fighting mis/disinformation at scale.’ 

Twitter has officially begun launching Twitter Blue, which will charge users $7.99 a month for a verified checkmark and allow them to upload longer videos and see less ads

The rollout comes after around 3,700 of Twitter’s 7,500 employees were laid off by new boss Elon Musk 

Twitter Blue will also offer subscribers priority ranking for ‘quality content,’ meaning it will boost subscribers visibility in replies, mentions and reaches 

It will also offer subscribers priority ranking for ‘quality content,’ meaning it will boost subscribers visibility in replies, mentions and reaches. 

According to the company, this will ‘lower the visibility of scams, spam and bots.’

Musk also said he feels ‘far too many legacy “verified” checkmarks were handed out,’ and said he doesn’t consider previously verified users to be truly verified. 

The rollout comes after around 3,700 of Twitter’s 7,500 employees were laid off by email – a decision Musk defended by saying he had ‘no choice’ because the company was losing $4 million a day.

He has fired a number of executives and reports suggest the firings targeted teams in the sales, trust and safety, marketing, product, engineering and legal divisions.

Entire sections of the company have also been cut, including Twitter’s human rights team and ‘ethical AI’ team.

The Tesla CEO has long said Twitter’s workforce was inflated and ordered managers to ask workers where the company could cut $500 million annually.

He paid $44 billion for the company which lost $221 million over the last fiscal year.  

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey took to the platform on Saturday and apologized to current and ex-employees after the firings. 

In his first tweet addressing the takeover, Dorsey said he was sorry for growing the company ‘too quickly’ and declared that Twitter employees ‘always find a way no matter how difficult the moment.’ 

The co-founder rolled over his 18 million shares into the Elon Musk era of the company rather than taking a payout. His shares equal approximately a 2.4 percent stake in the company.

This means he will be one of Twitter’s biggest investors in the company, and contributed roughly $1 billion to Musk’s $44 billion purchase.