Elon Musk launched the Twitter subscription back on Monday, priced at $8 on his website and $11 on Apple | technology

After a remarkable delay, Elon Musk is trying again to launch his Twitter subscription that gives a blue check mark on Monday, As announced by the company. Twitter Blue will cost $8 per month for those who sign up through its website and $11 for those who do so through Apple’s App Store, which is used on iPhones and iPads, to offset the commission charged. She runs the largest company in the world. The world of its purchases channels. in parallel, Musk said he would increase the length of Twitter messages from 280 to 4,000 characters. But as often happens with a billionaire, it is not known if or when this was the case.

The social network did not specify in its new announcement the markets in which it is launching, but in previous attempts (solved with a resounding failure) the subscription was available in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

The price was rounded to $7.99 as the service initially launched without success. According to the company, Twitter Blue subscribers with a verified phone number will get the blue tick once the company approves it, without specifying a deadline for it. Subscribers will be able to change their username, nickname, or profile picture, but if they do, they will temporarily lose the blue tick until their account is reviewed again, the company explained.

With these precautions, Twitter wants to avoid a repeat of the previous launch fiasco. The chaos created by the scammers attack canceled the launch, which he launched at full speed despite warnings of phishing risks and without verification checks. Not only have users impersonated politicians and celebrities, but they have also impersonated companies, earning the seal that has always been used online to certify the authenticity of an account. There was even “verified” the existence of Jesus Christ.

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Subscribers will be entitled to an edit button and will be able to upload high-quality videos, but many of the services included in the subscription are not yet available. In the future, verified subscriber accounts will have priority in replies, mentions, and searches. They will also be able to upload longer videos and receive half of the ads that unverified users get. There is no implementation date for these services nor is it clear if they will mean a further price increase. Twitter says the current $8 price is a “limited time offer.” The company did not clarify the regular price when the promotion ended.

The company plans to start replacing the sticker that identifies the account as “official” (which now accompanies a lot of unofficial accounts) with a corporate gold one as well. Later next week, he promises that he will start assigning a gray flag to the accounts of governments and multilateral organizations.

Although the explanations are brief and leave many doubts in the air, the plans announced by the Pretoria (South African)-born billionaire on November 25 seem to be moving forward. “Golden verification for businesses, gray for governments, blue for individuals (popular or not-so-popular), all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before verification is activated. Painful but necessary.” Then he tweeted.

In another later answer, And he insisted that no distinction would be made between the personalities of the rest of the users with the approved identity. All verified humans will have the same blue tick, such as the limits of what constitutes noticeable It is very subjective. Individuals can have a small secondary logo stating their membership in an organization if they are verified by the organization. [Habrá] A longer explanation next week,” he announced then. The truth is, those explanations didn’t arrive and Musk’s promise that the service would start on December 2 has been broken again.

The company has not explained what will happen to those who currently have the blue check mark and do not subscribe to the new service, especially in the case of users from countries where Twitter Blue is not available. a few weeks ago announce it “Within a few months” those who had the blue mark in the previous system will lose it if they do not pay, but the criteria have changed so many times that it is no longer known what will happen.

Twitter launched its blue-branded subscription service on November 5. Later, he suspended it to prevent the falsely verified persons from interfering in the United States legislative elections on the 8th of that month. I fired it again on the 9th and turned it off again on the 11th because of the scammers’ chaos that caused some companies to crash on the stock exchange. Set a new date of November 29 for the third attempt, pushed it back to December 2, and are now announcing the launch for Monday, December 12.

war with Apple

One reason for the delay may be the development of a proprietary subscription management tool. Elon Musk declared war on Apple, one of its biggest advertisers, accusing it of withdrawing advertising after a change of control, which, on the other hand, did most of the major clients of the social network. And his attack extended to other areas in a series of tweets: “Did you know that Apple charges a secret tax of 30% on everything you buy through its App Store?” , Wrote. He also tweeted in another message: “Apple has also threatened to remove Twitter from its App Store, but has not told us why.” Later visited Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino (California), at the invitation of Tim Cook, The head of the tech giant, in what appeared to be a truce.

Now, Twitter is launching the service at this double price, $8 a month through its website and $11 via iOS, Apple’s operating system, which comes to make up for that “secret tax,” which is actually quite well known. A controversial topic on other occasions, such as the battle with Fortnite video game developer Epic Games.

During these weeks of launch delays, Musk has repeatedly shifted the focus of his Twitter interventions to politics. He disclosed internal messages from the company that, in his opinion, reveal biased use of the social network’s moderation policies. He made internal documents available to a couple of journalists so they could write some threads on Twitter with his findings, which are less explosive at the moment than he seems to suggest.

It has shown that appearances on the network have been reduced to news from New York Post about the discovery of a computer belonging to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, which contained intimate photos of him and messages that seemed to indicate he tried to use his father’s influence when he was vice president to do business overseas, though nothing conclusive. Evidence that the current president is involved in some way. He also revealed messages about the deactivation of the accounts of some far-right conspiracy theorists or about the internal controversy that led to Donald Trump’s indefinite suspension after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The revelations, Trump even indicated, were enough to suspend some of his articles. Constitution and frequent elections, which earned him criticism even from within his own party.

Most of these exposed internal letters show the names of the company’s employees and then its employees. Of course, after praising the transparency, he threatened to sue workers who leak company information.