Elon Musk announces ‘Verified’ next Friday, colour ticks for govt, individuals

The billionaire took to Twitter to announce the subscription plans for companies, government and individuals.

Twitter's new owner Elon Musk on Friday announced that the social media giant will launch its verification feature called ‘Verified’ on December 2, i.e Friday. The billionaire took to Twitter to announce the subscription plans for companies, government and individuals. “Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week. Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates. Painful, but necessary”, he tweeted.

The company had paused its recently announced $8 blue check subscription service as fake accounts mushroomed, and had said the sought-after blue check subscription service will be relaunched on Nov. 29.

The coveted blue check mark was previously reserved for verified accounts of politicians, famous personalities, journalists and other public figures.Ever since the 51-year-old tycoon took control of the social media platform, he has been making sweeping changes in the organisation. After firing top executives like CEO Parag Agarwal, Musk has till now fired at least 75 per cent of the workforce. On his decision to fire employees, the owner had said there was no option as Twitter was losing more than $4 million per day.

"Regarding Twitter's reduction in force, unfortunately, there is no choice when the company is losing over USD 4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required," he had tweeted.