Mark your calendars? | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Elon Musk says the new Twitter Blue, which lets you pay $7.99 per month for a blue verification check mark next to your name, will relaunch on November 29th. In a tweet, he said he would be “punting” the relaunch to the new date “to make sure that it is rock solid.”
It’s safe to say that the original Blue launch didn’t go super smoothly. Twitter first started rolling out the new Blue subscription on iOS earlier this month. However, the platform pulled Blue signups a few days later after a wave of fake verified accounts popped up on the platform.
Punting relaunch of Blue Verified to November 29th to make sure that it is rock solid
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2022
The mayhem resulted in a fake Nintendo account that posted an image of Mario flipping the bird and another account impersonating the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, which posted a tweet saying that insulin is now free.
The chaos has led to a number of companies suspending advertisements on the platform, including General Motors, General Mills, Audi, Volkswagen, and several others. One of the world’s largest advertising companies, Omnicom Media Group, has also paused ads on Twitter.
With the relaunched Blue, Musk says that changing your “verified name” will cause you to lose your check mark until that name is confirmed by Twitter. But after laying off half the company, thousands of contract workers, and firing some dissenting employees, there may not be many people left to actually do those confirmations.
With new release, changing your verified name will cause loss of checkmark until name is confirmed by Twitter to meet Terms of Service
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2022
Twitter didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. The company no longer has a communications department.