Twitter evolves the meaning of the blue check

The Future. Twitter’s overhaul of blue checkmarks (and gold for businesses) rolled out over the weekend and has already proven very confusing and controversial. While many have opted not to give in to Elon Musk’s ploy to raise more revenue, small businesses who rely on the added visibility of verification may have no choice but write down a checkmark as a necessary ad expense.

Losing the legacy
NYT offers a breakdown of what Twitter users can expect from the platform getting rid of legacy blue checkmarks (maybe, it turns out) in favor of giving them only to people who pay for it — the $8/month Twitter Blue or the $1,000/month gold check for businesses.

• You’ll suddenly see fewer tweets from accounts that don’t pay for the verification because the algorithm makes them less visible than tweets from blue checks (unless Twitter secretly intervenes).
• You may see an uptick in fake accounts impersonating public figures who decided not to pay for blue checks.
• Your “For You” tab will only be populated by blue checks unless you already follow unverified accounts that pop up there. In other words, it’ll be harder for tweets from unverified accounts to go viral.

While the blue check change is meant to boost revenue (which Twitter needs), the company is already preparing for it to be unpopular. Internal documents show that Twitter is planning to let the 10,000 most-followed organizations and the top 500 advertisers that have already been verified keep their verification.

We’ll see how long that plan lasts.