➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Blue is back

• ✅ Twitter blue check marks return today; 8/mo on the web, 11/mo on iOS

• 🔜 Soon: Gold checks for businesses, gray for gov’t and “multilateral” accounts

• ☎️ Subscribers will need to provide a phone number

• 🔍 Display name changes of subscribers will trigger re-verification

• ❌ Signups aren’t available as of this writing

• 🤖 Android users will have to pay the $8/mo via the web

Twitter Blue returns today – over the weekend, Twitter said it will be here “on Monday.” The subscription verification service, we’re told, will initially enable 1080p video uploads, the ability to edit a tweet, reader mode and, of course, a blue checkmark. This comes over a month after its troubled November launch saw users – including some high-profile celebrities – taking advantage of the rushed feature to impersonate other people of note, including the Elon Musk.

The launch was quickly scuttled, and has since been delayed several times, while the company works out an implementation that doesn’t enable imposters. A 90-day wait before new accounts can subscribe, a requirement for subscribers to provide a phone number, and removal of the verified badge, pending re-verification, if the account’s display name is changed are the fixes the company has come up with so far.

Other changes will include Twitter beginning replacement of the “official” label with a gold checkmark for businesses and, later this week, a gray one for “government and multilateral accounts.” Twitter user NIH Llamas quickly pointed out that the use of color to convey meaning – particularly blue and yellow combinations – is problematic for those with color blindness or color deficient vision.

As observed in Forbes, we have no clues about how the company plans to approach actual verification – will it be automated, or will Twitter manually verify accounts as it did before? Given an account’s display name change will purportedly trigger re-verification, my guess would be Twitter is returning to verification by a human, but we’ll have to wait and see. 

Different strokes (subscription fees) for different folks (iOS users)

When the feature launches, there will be a cost differential depending on how you sign up. Those who sign up via the website will pay $8 per month, while iOS users will pay $11 per month to shore up Twitter’s revenue after paying Apple’s 30% cut. At the moment, Android users will have to pay for Twitter Blue through the web to get the features.

Sign-ups to the subscription service don’t appear to be available, as of this writing.

Clicking the “Twitter Blue” link on the website only gave me an overlay with a list of features that are “coming soon,” including preferential visibility on the platform, half the ads of non-subscribers (before November 1, subscribers enjoyed an ad-free experience), and the ability to post longer videos. At the bottom, a message states “You can only subscribe on the Twitter iOS app (for now),” but if there’s a way to do so, I couldn’t find it.