Elon Musk Spotted Using Unpaid Legacy Blue Tick On Twitter Despite Asking Users To Pay Up

It appears that the Twitter CEO himself is yet to pay for Twitter Blue.

Elon Musk has been quite vocal in asking users to pay for Twitter Blue. ( Image Source :Getty )

Starting April 1, Twitter will remove all blue-tick verified badges from those accounts that are yet to pay, as announced by CEO Elon Musk last week. However, it appears that the world’s third-richest person is yet to pay for Twitter Blue himself, as he is spotted using a “legacy” verified account. 

When Did Twitter Monetise Blue Tick?

Ever since his hostile $44-billion takeover of Twitter in October last year, Musk has been taking several steps to recover the company’s seemingly dwindling earnings. As a part of several measures introduced, Twitter began monetising its blue-tick verification feature.

These blue ticks help other users verify the genuineness of an account on the microblogging platform. Earlier, to get a blue-tick badge beside your account name, users had to submit government-approved ID cards (like Aadhaar) and provide a few additional official links as needed to get through Twitter’s own verification process. Getting a blue tick on Twitter used to be free of cost. 

However, as part of Musk’s new measures, Twitter announced that it will now charge users a monthly amount ot let them keep their blue ticks. The message was simple — if you don’t pay, you lose your blue badge.

Eventually, the blue tick verification feature was made a part of Twitter Blue, the company’s paid subscription service that offers benefits such as long-form tweets, undo tweets, edit tweets, bookmarking folders, and many more. SMS message-based two-factor authentication (2FA), which also used to be free, was also made a part of Twitter Blue benefits and put behind a paywall as well. 

The revamped Twitter Blue plan is set to be rolled out in India starting April 1. Here, Twitter Blue is priced at Rs 900 per month on iOS and Android, and Rs 650 on the Web client. Twitter offers a discounted yearly plan of Rs 6,500, which boils down to around Rs 566 per month. The Twitter Blue service was officially launched in the US back in December. 

Now, those users who had their blue ticks before Musk took over Twitter continued to have their “legacy” verified badges without having to pay. However, that is about to change starting April 1. If you haven’t yet paid for Twitter Blue, you will lose your blue tick.

Did Musk Not Pay For His Blue Tick Yet?

Musk has been quite vocal in asking “legacy” users to pay up for Twitter Blue ever since his takeover.

It’s more about treating everyone equally. There shouldn’t be a different standard for celebrities imo. https://t.co/rWi99sGPdq

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 27, 2023

So, it came as quite a surprise when the CEO himself was spotted using a “legacy” verified account. 

If you visit Musk’s Twitter profile page, @elonmusk, and click on the blue tick beside his name, a popup window shares this message: “This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable.”

If Musk had indeed paid for the blue tick, the “legacy verified” message ideally shouldn’t have popped up. Now, it could very well be possible that an updated badge is yet to be rolled out on Twitter and after April 1, the updated message will show up. 

How Much Revenue Did Twitter Blue Generate?

The Twitter Blue subscription service has only generated $11 million in mobile subscriptions in the three months since it was launched. 

The latest data from Sensor Tower shows that the uptake of the service has been underwhelming, although this figure does not include web-based subscriptions. Twitter has now made the Blue service available globally and has stopped sharing its daily and monthly active users, although it last reported 238 million monetisable daily active users. 

While Musk’s move to mandate monetisation of Blue ticks on Twitter could help the microblogging platform earn more revenue in the future, neither Twitter nor Musk has yet commented on the data for the Blue service's uptake.