Twitter Blue Relaunches With Color-Coded Checkmarks Trranscript

Twitter Blue is officially back with a few upgrades. Yahoo Finance Tech reporter, Allie Garfinkle is here with the latest. Allie, what is Elon Musk and the new Twitter management doing here exactly?

Hi, Pras. Great to see you. So it’s worth backing up a little and just saying that Twitter Blue, first things first, it’s Twitter subscription service and with it you get the ability to do things like edit tweets, post high quality videos, and of course you get that all important check mark. So what they’re doing here is this. First things first, pricing is changing. Now it’s going to be $8 a month for Android users, but if you are an Apple user, it is actually going to be even more expensive. It is going to be $11 a month. This is coming on the heels of Musk’s standoff with Tim Cook that seemingly has been resolved since then. It’s also worth talking about check mark gears here, because there’s actually, this to me, is one of the key things we’re going to see really, really different check marks.

(01:07)
You and I are used to just seeing the blue check marks. Now there’s going to be a bunch of different colors. The blue verified check will now involve a verification process and it will be part of Twitter Blue. The gold check is for companies and the gray check is now for governments. I’ll be totally real with you, my first thought was this is going to be a lot of check marks. Bottom line, given how fraught the company’s first effort at making this public was, there were issues with impersonation and misinformation. I have the sneaking suspicion that given that and given the turmoil of the company, this is not the last we’re going to hear about check mark.

Well, let me follow up on that, Allie I have a blue check mark. I just checked it right now by my name on Twitter, wanted to make sure it’s right there. So is this going away tomorrow? What’s the deal with this? I understand they got to raise subscription revenue, but it seems like there’s a little bit of a game being played here. What can I expect from my personal blue check going forward?

Yeah. I’m going to be real with you, Jared. I think it’s not entirely clear as someone who doesn’t have a blue check.

Shocking.

Yeah. It’s shocking, right? As someone who doesn’t have a blue check, I’m a little less worried about it personally, I will say. But I think that it’s safe to say, Musk came out today saying he wants to get rid of all the blue legacy check mark, right? So I think it is safe to say that there will be some kind of change. It is unclear who that will affect and why. I would assume right now it’s going to affect everyone, including you. But that said, again Musk’s tenure of the company has been eventful and sometimes unclear about what will happen next. So I would venture to say that you have your check mark today, maybe you won’t have it tomorrow. Maybe you won’t have it in a few months, but it’s safe to say changes will keep coming.

Here today, gone tomorrow with the blue checks. Allie Garfinkle, thank you so much.