Twitter Blue is back. Again. The service took a short holiday to give the Twitter higher-ups some time to realise how completely stupid the idea was in the first place. Of course, backtracking after tripling down on the service is out of the question. So, the service has been relaunched – with newly coloured checkmarks – because that worked so well last time.

To counter the many counts of impersonation that plagued the service before, the platform will take “a number of other steps to detect and prevent impersonation,” which includes the requirement to have a valid phone number to sign up for Blue.

Feelin’ Blue

Twitter Blue is still only available in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Twitter says plans are in motion to expand to more countries eventually, but it failed to go into detail. Those foolish enough to sign up will need to pay $8/m (R140) or $11/m (R190) if they sign up on iOS. Android subscription signup is still on the way.

Blue does have a bit more to offer this time around. Where before it only offered users a false sense of entitlement and a blue checkmark, now there are actual features and perks to show off to your smarter-than-you ‘poor’ friends. The blue checkmark is still a perk (though it’s far less “cool” now, but we’ll get to that later), the ability to edit tweets, reader mode and 1080p video uploads.

Oh, and Blue subscribers will only see around half the ads that they would normally see. Until Twitter Blue Pro launches next year, at least. There are a few other perks available to Twitter Blue subscribers now.

Should Musk find you’re breaking Twitter’s impersonation rules, your account could be suspended without a refund. What a waste that would be.

Colourful Redundancies

Twitter Blue’s initial selling point (when Musk joined) was to give people a way to feel important. It gave people access to the then coveted blue checkmark, suddenly giving “ordinary people” the same status as that guy who owns Twitter. That is until Musk started playing around with the idea of multiple checkmarks.

The second Musk began adding more ‘types’ of checkmarks, it made the allure of Twitter Blue far less appealing. Suddenly all the people that paid to be on the same level as the checkmark people were shunned to become ‘This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue’.

And once again, Twitter is messing around with its checkmark system. Where we are used to seeing the ‘Official’ label on actually important accounts – they will now be replaced by a gold checkmark. The grey checkmark is making a comeback, which will be reserved for government and ‘multilateral’ accounts.

All of this could be unimportant tomorrow. Well, it may already be unimportant depending on your level of happiness. Musk could change his mind following an outburst on his own platform. In other words, take all of this with a grain of salt.