Twitter relaunches blue-tick service for £6.99 per month in the UK
Twitter users can pay for verified account status again after the social media platform relaunched its controversial blue-tick service last Monday.
Twitter Blue will cost £6.99 per month in the UK and will include useful features such as being able to edit tweets and see fewer ads.
The return of the service comes a month after it was paused due to a surge in ‘imposter’ accounts using the blue tick to dupe people into thinking they were famous brands or celebrities.
The new system aims to minimise the disruption by adding a gold check mark for companies and a grey check mark for government officials.
New owner Elon Musk, who closed a multi-billion-dollar deal to buy Twitter earlier in the year, said that this was a “painful, but necessary step”.
The launch of paid blue ticks is designed to democratise the platform and allow general users to become verified for the first time.
Adding it to Twitter Blue will also make the subscription package more compelling for users.
The service also allows users to use custom app icons and themes, post videos with longer runtimes, and see their posts ‘amplified’ for broader reach and engagement.
Musk has also teased a significant increase to the character limit, though this is unlikely to be tied to Twitter Blue.
Currently, users can only craft posts with up to 280 characters, but this could soon increase to around 4,000 characters.
One new feature that Twitter has already added is ‘Community Notes’, which provides additional context to certain tweets to combat misinformation.