Elon Musk Twitter Takeover Update: Musk Is Bringing Back Vine, Charging $20 for Twitter Verification, Lay-off and More

As Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently took office, major changes to how Twitter is run are now being implemented at a breakneck pace. According to reports, the bird app is now planning to charge for Twitter's blue tick verification.

Twitter Blue Checkmark for Sale

The blue Twitter checkmark, also known as the blue Verified badge in the app, is something the company has implemented to notify the public that a specific account is of public interest and authentic. For an account to be eligible for the coveted blue checkmark, it must meet three criteria: it must be authentic, notable, and active.

Elon Musk, the new Twitter CEO who now calls himself "Chief Twit," appears to have a different idea about how the app's verification mechanism should work. The world's richest man now intends to stack his pocket a little bit more by charging Twitter users at least $20 per month to be labeled as a Twitter verified account.

Elon Musk has been very vocal about the changes he plans to make to one of the world's most powerful social media platforms, so it must be a hectic week at Twitter's headquarters. The new new Twitter owner has been actively discussing his upcoming changes on the app over the last few days, even soliciting feedback from his followers.

A subscription service called Twitter Blue was introduced by Twitter last year. Blue subscribers received an Undo Send option and a few customization options for $2.99/month. Last July, the company made the decision to raise the price to $4.99/month and pair it with the eagerly anticipated but hotly contested Edit feature.

Elon Musk appears keen to increase Twitter's paid features by charging for the Verified feature, but this appears to be just one part of Musk's plan to revamp the app. The Twitter CEO tweeted, "Whole verification process is being revamped right now."

According to a report from 9to5Mac, this would imply that anyone could obtain a blue checkmark by paying the fee alone. In order to keep their checkmark, owners of currently verified accounts would also need to subscribe; Musk reportedly gave them 90 days to do so.

Bringing Back Vine

Aside from changes to blue ticks and subscriptions, the new Twitter executive plans to reintroduce Vine, a short-form video hosting service that became worldwide in 2015. Musk has started a poll on Twitter to see what his followers think about bringing back Vine and incorporating it into Twitter. And it resulted in a landslide thumbs up.

According to Mashable, YouTuber MrBeast adds his two cents. "If you did that and actually competed with tik tok that'd be hilarious," he says. "What could we do to make it better than TikTok" Musk responds.

Major social media platforms have recently followed TikTok's vertical short video trend by incorporating their own spins on the feature. This conversation between the two personalities may result in a new algorithm-run video feature that many of us will be able to waste time on soon.