Elon Musk says Twitter's Blue Verified relaunch is delayed
Twitter owner Elon Musk says the social network will not relaunch the Blue Verified $8 a month subscription just yet and that he's thinking about using different color checkmarks for organizations and individuals.
Twitter launched the new $8 a month Twitter Blue on November 9 but suspended it soon after when users began to abuse the new system to impersonate brands and high-profile user accounts, including that of Musk, effectively using the service to do exactly what Musk hoped to eliminate.
Earlier this month, Musk said Twitter Blue Verified will return on November 29 "to make sure it is rock solid." He hasn't said when it will relaunch again after the delay.
"Holding off relaunch of Blue Verified until there is high confidence of stopping impersonation," he wrote on Monday evening after an all-hands meeting with staff. "Will probably use different color check for organizations than individuals."
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Twitter Blue is currently available on iOS in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. It's not available on Android but the company plans to expand platforms and countries.
New rules include that newly created Twitter accounts can't subscribe to Twitter Blue for 90 days.
Musk bought the firm for $44 billion in late October – and since then has fired or otherwise lost about half his firm's staff, leaving it with 3,700 workers. Musk opposed the existing "lords & peasant" system for the blue checkmark.
Besides allowing anyone to buy the blue checkmark, Musk wants to give those accounts priority in replies, mentions and search, which he says is essential to defeat spam and scams. He also wants these users to be able to post long video and audio, and show paid-subscribers half as many ads.
Twitter reportedly lost about 1,000 employees last week after Musk gave them an ultimatum to be "be extremely hardcore" or resign.
According to The Verge, Musk told staff at an all-hands meeting on Monday that he was done with layoffs and was now actively recruiting again for engineering and sales roles. He reiterated that engineers who write code are a priority.
Musk also revealed the the number of daily active users in Japan is about equal to the daily active users in the US, despite Japan having a third of the population of the US. He wants all markets to reflect Twitter usage in Japan.
Musk this week lifted the ban on Donald Trump's account but Trump, who launched Truth Social after the ban, has said he saw no reason to return to it.
Last night, Musk said Twitter had gained 1.6 million daily active users in the past week, posting a graph showing monetizable daily active users (mDAU) had reached 259.4 million this week.
"This will improve a lot as Twitter becomes fast to use outside of North America, Western Europe & Japan," he tweeted in reference to Twitter mDAUs.
Musk earlier this month told advertisers – some of whom had suspended advertising on the platform – that mDAU's had climbed from 240 million to 255 million since July and tweeted that "Twitter usage is at an all-time high lol."