Furthermore, those who are already verified will have 90 days to subscribe or they will lose their verified status. Oh, and the team on the project was told they have until November 7 to launch the feature or they will be fired. As reported by Platformer and The Verge, Twitter Blue currently costs $4.99/month and allows users to edit their tweets, get early access to new features, and more, but it currently has nothing to do with verification. Verification, as of this writing, is meant to "let people know that an account of public interest is authentic. To receive the blue badge, your account must be authentic, notable, and active." There is no charge to be verified, as it is meant to simply be a way to stop accounts from impersonating you if your account has been proven to be of public interest. It is currently unclear if this new plan will verify everyone who has a Twitter Blue subscription or if only those who subscribe will be considered for verification.
Elon Musk has been outspoken with his desire to address how Twitter verifies accounts and handles its bot problems, and he tweeted on Sunday, October 30, that "the whole verification process is being revamped right now." Despite only closing the deal on October 28, Musk has already made moves, including changing the homepage to the Explore page for logged-out users. There are also reports that he is planning on cutting up to or over 5,000 jobs in a move "aimed at middle managers and engineers who haven’t recently contributed to the code base." Twitter currently makes most of its money from advertising, but these changes and more are part of Musk's plans to make subscriptions at least "half of the company's overall revenue." After making the initial $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter, Musk terminated the deal after, among other things, Musk claimed a breach of contract after he said Twitter wasn't doing enough to reveal how many spam bots and fake accounts were on the platform. He was sued for this termination and was set to go to court if he didn't complete the deal by October 28, but he made it so just under the wire.
