Twitter is postponing the launch of Twitter Blue again, and when it finally returns, it might bring along a new breed of “official” checkmarks.
This is according to Twitter CEO and owner Elon Musk, who tweeted the news on Tuesday.
“Holding off relaunch of Blue Verified until there is high confidence of stopping impersonation,” he said. “Will probably use different color check for organizations than individuals.”
Given that the Twitter checkmark saga is getting increasingly hard to follow, here’s an obligatory recap.
Twitter’s blue checkmark is used to prove users’ identities. Shortly after acquiring Twitter, Musk rendered the blue checkmark mostly useless by making it a perk of purchasing a Twitter Blue subscription, meaning that everyone could get the checkmark for $8 per month without any additional identity verification. Then, after a wave of impersonations, Twitter brought in an additional, gray checkmark saying “Official” for certain accounts, as a way to do what the blue checkmark originally did: prove a user’s identity. Then, Musk “killed” the “Official” checkmark, but the company brought it back shortly thereafter.
Given the speed at which the entire endeavor was descending into chaos, Twitter decided it was best to pull Twitter Blue altogether, making it impossible for most people to get any sort of checkmark on their account. Musk chimed in, saying the feature will relaunch on Nov. 29 to “make sure that it is rock solid.”
Yes, it appears that this recap might ultimately end up being a thousand-word affair. We’re very sorry.
With Musk’s latest tweet, it appears that the Nov. 29 date is definitely off the table. But the new colors are interesting, not only because they’ll definitely complicate matters even more, but also for their meme potential (see below).
In any case, if you were hoping to get a blue checkmark, you’ll have to wait a while, and if you’re an organization, your checkmark might be purple, beige, lavender? Given that he fired most of Twitter’s employees (or drove them out with “extreme” demands), it’s (probably) Elon’s call, so all bets are off.
