Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has finally begun offloading ‘legacy’ blue ticks from accounts verified before new owner Elon Musk introduced paid subscriptions, having threatened the move for months.
Around 300,000 users had blue ticks designed to show their accounts were legitimate before Musk moved to monetise the system following his US$44bn October takeover.
Months of threats to begin removing the verification stamps from unpaying users came to fruition on Thursday though, hitting the likes of footballer Christiano Ronaldo and singer Beyonce.
Users opting for a blue tick have to pay a minimum of US$8 for a new Twitter Blue subscription, introduced as part of Musk’s bid to take the social media to profitability.
Twitter had said unpaying accounts would lose blue ticks on April 1, though changes to previously verified accounts only appeared on Thursday.
The UK’s Conservative and Labour political parties also lost verification marks, showing neither had opted to pay the US$1,000 monthly charge on organisations.
Many organisations are set to be let off the charge, including 10,000 of the most-followed on the site, as Musk looks to keep a grip on Twitter’s main source of revenue.
Spending among Twitter’s largest advertisers, including Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) and The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) was estimated by Bloomberg last month to have fallen by 89% to US$7.6mln since Musk’s controversial takeover, which has seen him cut headcount from 8,000 to 1,500 people.
Despite murmurings that Twitter’s daily revenue was down 40% early this year, Musk reassured the social media was “roughly breakeven” in an interview last week.