Guwahati: Nothing in our world is free and it appears that Elon Musk the new CEO of Twitter has taken this adage to heart.
Musk intends to charge users USD 19.99 (more than Rs 1600) for the new Twitter Blue subscription, which adds more functionality like edit and undo tweets, according to a report by The Verge.
Verified users would have 90 days to subscribe under the existing arrangement in order to keep their blue checkmark. The project’s team was informed that failure to launch the functionality by the deadline of November 7 would result in termination.
The specific report appears a day after Musk said in a tweet that Twitter would be changing its user verification policy. He provided no information about the charges, though.
“Whole verification process is being revamped right now”, he tweeted.
The Twitter Blue membership became publicly available over a year ago as a way to read articles from some publishers without ads and make other changes to the app, such changing the colour of the app’s icon on the home screen.
Twitter agreed to accept Musk’s offer to purchase and privatise the social media platform in April. Musk quickly cast doubt on his willingness to uphold the deal, claiming that the business had not fully disclosed the quantity of spam and phoney accounts using the site. Elon Musk, who had previously expressed interest in purchasing Twitter, abruptly ended the agreement in Jul. The Tesla CEO said that by exaggerating the quantity of spam and false bot accounts on its network, Twitter had broken the terms of their mutual purchase agreement.
The market had a strong fall following Musk’s announcement of the contract termination. Later, Twitter sued Musk, alleging that he had used bots as a cover to back out of a transaction. Last week, Musk reiterated that he will proceed with the purchase of Twitter at the initially agreed-upon price of USD 54.20 per share.