Musk to relaunch Twitter’s blue check subscription on Nov 29; Once more warns Twitter staff

 (Reuters) – Billionaire Elon Musk said that Twitter’s sought-after blue check subscription service will be relaunched on Nov. 29, a minor delay from his initial tentative timeline to bring back the service on the social media platform.

“Punting relaunch of Blue Verified to November 29th to make sure that it is rock solid,” Musk said in a tweet.

With the new release, changing someone’s verified name will cause the loss of the blue check “until name is confirmed by Twitter to meet terms of service”, Musk said.

The coveted blue check mark was previously reserved for verified accounts of politicians, famous personalities, journalists and other public figures. But a subscription option, open to anyone prepared to pay, was rolled out earlier this week to help Twitter grow revenue as Musk fights to retain advertisers.

Last week, the Tesla chief had said Twitter Blue will probably “come back end of next week”.

Twitter had paused its recently announced $8 blue check subscription service on Friday as fake accounts mushroomed. The change came a week after Musk took over the social media company in a $44 billion deal.

Musk tells Twitter staff: opt in for ‘hardcore’ or take severance

Nov 16 (Reuters) – Elon Musk sent a message to Twitter staff telling them that they had until Thursday to consider whether they wanted to stay on for “working long hours at high intensity” or take a severance package of three months pay.

Musk told Twitter employees that anyone who had not clicked on a link confirming “you want to be part of the new Twitter” by Thursday evening New York time would be considered to have quit.

“Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful,” the message said.

A copy of the message, which was reported by The Washington Post, was reviewed by Reuters. A person who had received the message at Twitter confirmed its content.

“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,” the message from Musk said. “This will mean long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

Musk said Twitter would be “much more engineering-driven” under his leadership, adding that “those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway.”

Twitter laid off half of its workforce earlier this month shortly after Musk took control of the social media company. Musk has criticized Twitter’s spending and work culture and said the company needs steep cost cuts and a reboot of its services.

Some Twitter employees who had criticized Musk publicly tweeted earlier that they had been let go.