In the wee hours on Friday, thousands of Twitter users including celebrities, politicians, business leaders and companies began losing their flagship 'Twitter Blue' checkmark. This comes days after Twitter's CEO Elon Musk announced that the final date for removing the legacy Blue checkmark will be April 20, 2023. To keep the Blue checkmark, users will have to subscribe to Twitter Blue and pay a subscription fee.
In India, Ratan Tata (former Tata Group Chairman), Gautam Adani (Adani Group chairman), Karan Adani (CEO, Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone ), Anil Agarwal (Vedanta Group Chairman), Rekha M Menon (Chairperson & Senior MD, Accenture India), Suchitra Ella (co-founder & MD, Bharat Biotech), Rishad Premji (Chairman of Wipro), Adar Poonawalla (CEO, Serum Institute of India), Nithin Kamath (co-founder, Zerodha), Punit Goenka (MD & CEO, Zee Entertainment Limited), Anil Ambani (Chairman, Reliance Group), and Kris Gopalakrishnan (co-founder, Infosys) are amongst the business leaders that have lost the 'Twitter Blue' verification mark.
Meanwhile, globally, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, and Joe Ucuzoglu (Deloitte’s CEO) are amongst the business leaders who have lost the 'Twitter Blue' verification mark.
Amongst companies, Vedanta, Tata Motors, Jaguar Land Rover, Tata Steel, Tata Power, Tata Group, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Hindustan Unilever, Infosys, ITC, Visa, Alibaba Group, Bajaj Auto, Ant Group, Air India, SpiceJet, IndiGo, Godrej Consumer Products, Hero MotoCorp, and Adani Green Energy have lost their 'Twitter Blue' verification mark.
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.
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 laying off 45% to 50% of its total workforce globally. Last month, Musk, in a letter to its employees, said the valuation of Twitter has been reduced to $20 billion from $44 billion.
