Twitter users with a coveted blue verified chec kmark on their account may soon find themselves having to pay to preserve that status.
Twitter executives are “strongly considering” requiring those with the free check mark on their profile pay $5 each month for a Twitter Blue subscription or lose their badge, Platformer’s Casey Newton reported Sunday afternoon. Executives have spent the weekend talking about the idea and making plans about the measure, sources told Newton.
A report from The Verge, however, suggested it could cost more than that. That report states that Twitter is planning to charge $19.99 for a new Twitter Blue subscription, and that blue checkmarks will be lost to users if they don’t pay up. According to the report, users will be given 90 days to subscribe before losing their blue tick. Employees working on the project have apparently been given until Nov. 7 to implement the changes.
The blue tick is seen by some as a status symbol. To qualify, accounts must be “notable, authentic and active.” That includes accounts of government officials; people representing prominent brands; news organizations and journalists; activists; celebrities; athletes and others.
They’re also fairly rare. In 2021, on 360,000 accounts, or 0.2% of Twitter’s monetizable daily active users, were verified. Still, such a requirement could provide the company with a new revenue stream at a time when it’s reportedly getting ready for layoffs under the new ownership of Elon Musk.
Twitter Blue is a subscription service that offers several premium perks, including allowing users to undo a tweet, read news ad-free, edit a published tweet, organize your bookmarks into folders, pin conversations in your DMs, upload videos up to 10 minutes long and more. When it launched in 2021, the service cost $3, but the month cost went up in October to $5.
It wasn’t immediately clear, under the plans reportedly being discussed, whether the blue badge would be included in all Twitter Blue subscriptions. That too could spur greater interest in the subscription service.
Twitter representatives didn’t respond to a request for comment.