Twitter Blue to be relaunched on November 29 to ensure it is ‘rock solid’: Elon Musk

Elon Musk has announced that his newly acquired social media company, Twitter, will be relaunching its subscription-based service, Twitter Blue, on November 29. In a post on Twitter, the billionaire tycoon said, “Punting relaunch of Blue Verified to November 29th to make sure that it is rock solid”.

The service was stopped by the social media giant after its initial launch when a number of fake-but-verified accounts began to pop up. These accounts also created major disturbances in the stock market.

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One account imitating pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly announced that the latter would be giving out insulin for free. This caused the company’s share price to fall by 6%, leading to Eli Lilly losing billions of dollars in its market capitalization.

The company has reportedly stopped advertising on Twitter post this fiasco.

Musk himself has been the subject of fake verified accounts. A number of accounts posing to be the richest man in the world popped up in the wake of Twitter Blue, which led the 51-year-old CEO to announce that any account that parodies another individual needs to have the word “parody” mentioned in its name. 

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Twitter has been going through a number of ups and downs since Musk took over. It has earlier launched, cancelled, and again relaunched the “Official” tag on several accounts. Twitter will be keeping the blue tick available for important media personalities, publishing houses, government offices, and others while giving them the “Official” tag.

Musk himself has become the subject of much controversy. While he calls himself a “free speech absolutist”, he ended up sacking a number of engineers working for the company who criticised his decisions publicly. Musk has almost fired almost half of the company’s staff since he took over and forced the remaining to work from office. He has also stopped serving free food to Twitter employees at the offices.