By John Ikani
Twitter’s billionaire owner Elon Musk announced Friday that the platform would be launching differently coloured badges to distinguish between accounts.
The Twitter CEO in a tweet said all verified accounts would have the same blue check, but some would be able to show secondary colours, AFP reports.
“Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week,” Musk tweeted.
“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.”
According to him, others would display “secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an organisation if verified as such by that organisation.”
He also said all verified accounts would be “manually authenticated”.
However, Musk did not clarify whether there would be a fee for any of the new checkmarks, as there was under the previous verification overhaul.
Musk’s previous attempt to overhaul verification, which he believes is necessary to reduce vexatious automated accounts on the platform and create much-needed revenue via subscriptions, was halted earlier this month when it led to a slew of fake accounts.
A relaunch earlier this month of the platform’s premium service, Twitter Blue, charged $7.99 for a blue tick, but users took up the opportunity to impersonate companies such as Eli Lilly and Tesla for less than $10. The revamp was pulled soon afterwards.
Twitter has nearly 238 million daily users, according to its last set of quarterly results, but that since past 250 million and user growth rates have hit “all-time highs” since Musk’s $44bn takeover, according to tech news site The Verge.
