It looks like today is the day that Twitter rolled out blue check marks for anyone who pays for the $8 “Blue” tier of service. I got mine this afternoon.
There was some controversy earlier in the day as Twitter rolled out a two tier checkmark system that would give some people a white “official” checkmark to designate them as a VIP in addition to the blue one they paid for. But that was reversed by Musk later in the morning:
But it looks like Twitter is instead going to embed a description for why the checkmark is assigned to a user if you tap on it next to the username. So for example my check mark says that I’m verified because I’m paying.
But if I look at an official government account like @POTUS, it’ll indicate that “it’s notable in government, news, entertainment or another designated category.”
Is it worth paying $8 for just a checkmark? Definitely not. But I like the idea of treating every user equally insofar as how far their content gets pushed out by the algorithms. Twitter’s prior policies shut out smaller independent creators and put them at a disadvantage. The blue check marks could even choose to ignore non-blue check mark people further deepening their echo chamber.
If Musk is serious about leveling the playing field $8 a month to extend the reach of my content is fine by me – especially if my mainstream competitors are having to pay for it too.
But ultimately I hope they really work to improve the consumption experience for Blue subscribers. The edit button and extended video lengths are a nice bonus but I’d love to have a completely ad free experience and better tools for consuming and posting content.
Twitter is not the only social media platform I subscribe to. I get a lot of value out of YouTube Premium as it provides a completely ad-free experience along with the full YouTube Music library. And the channels I watch are compensated for every minute I watch.
I’m also paying for LinkedIn’s Premium tier that offers a lot of useful benefits and guess what? A gold badge too!
Stay tuned as I’ll be doing a video soon about the added features you get with the subscription now and what I’d like to see out of it in the future.