Twitter Inc plans to relaunch its account verification service next Friday, with different colors of checkmarks for individuals, companies, and governments, after an unsuccessful initial launch of the service led to an increase in users impersonating celebrities and brands on the platform.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced on Friday – via Twitter, of course – that he has designated checkmark colors for different user categories – gold for companies, gray for governments, and blue for individuals, including celebrities.
– Painful, but necessary – he stated, adding that verified accounts will be manually authenticated before the checkmark is activated.
The modified verification service, which will cost eight dollars per month, will allow individuals to have a smaller, secondary logo of the organizations they work for, but only if those organizations verify them, Musk noted in his tweet on Friday.
– Longer explanation next week – he concluded.
This service, whose launch was initially announced for this Monday but postponed to increase security levels, is crucial for Twitter to succeed in boosting revenue at a time when Musk is trying to retain advertisers after purchasing the company for 44 billion dollars last month.
A previous attempt to introduce a new checkmark model caused a flood of fake Twitter accounts, some of which impersonated Musk as well as major companies, prompting Musk to temporarily suspend it. For example, one user pretended to be the pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly and announced that insulin would be free, which caused the company’s stock to drop.
