In a fresh development, Twitter’s CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday set the final deadline for the removal of legacy Blue checkmarks on the social media platform. In a tweet, he says the final date for removing the legacy Blue checkmark will be April 20, 2023.
"Final date for removing legacy Blue checks is 4/20," his tweet says.
With this, Twitter users will have to pay a subscription fee to keep the Blue checkmark. The failure to do so would mean that users will lose the Blue verification mark. Earlier, the social media platform had set the date as April 1, for winding down its legacy verified programme and removing legacy verified checkmarks.
Twitter introduced the Blue subscription service in January this year globally and is priced at $7.99 on purchasing the subscription via the website, whereas it's available at $11 per month for iOS users via the Apple app store. In India, a Twitter Blue subscription is currently available at a fee of ₹650 per month for web users and ₹900 per month for android and web users. The social media platform has also launched a discounted price of the annual subscription at ₹6,800, which means the users will have to pay ₹566.67 per month.
Twitter Blue subscription comes with a slew of features. Once an account is verified with Twitter Blue, the user is able to edit tweets, upload 1080p videos, custom navigate, bookmark folders, and see 50% fewer ads in the home timeline. The feature also allows users to create longer tweets which are up to 4,000 characters long. A Twitter Blue subscriber can edit a tweet up to five times within 30 minutes.
In November, Twitter had to suspend its new verification scheme that allowed anyone to buy a Blue checkmark for $8. The Twitter Blue subscription programme wiped off billions of dollars from Eli Lilly's market cap after its official Twitter handle was impersonated to spread disinformation.
The microblogging platform has also limited its message message-based two-factor authentication (2FA) to its Blue subscribers beginning March 20. This means that in order to avail the two-factor authentication, users who do not have a Twitter Blue subscription will have to either pay ₹900 or use an authentication app or security key for 2FA.
Twitter Blue offers a gold checkmark for official business accounts, whereas the official accounts for government and multilateral accounts have a grey checkmark.
Meanwhile, in another development, Twitter has reportedly ceased as an independent entity, following its merger with a shell company called X Corp. According to an April 4 filing in the California court, Twitter has merged into X Corp and no longer exists. Incorporated in Nevada, X Corp is a privately helped corporation with its business based out of San Fransisco, Nevada.
The development comes months after Musk took charge of the social media platform in October last year for $44 billion. Following Musk’s takeover, the social media platform underwent several changes including the removal of the entire Twitter board and lay off 45% to 50% of its total workforce globally. Last month, Musk, in a letter to its employees, said that the valuation of Twitter has been reduced from $20 billion to $44 billion.
