Elon Musk puts Twitter Blue on hold, to start hiring for key roles

This time the new Twitter chief executive has put on hold plans to relaunch the Twitter Blue subscription – which comes bundled with a verified badge or ‘blue tick’. A few days ago, Musk had said the revamped service would be relaunched on November 29.

“Holding off relaunch of Blue Verified until there is high confidence of stopping impersonation. Will probably use different colour checks for organisations than individuals,” Musk said in a tweet.

Following a surfeit of fake accounts on the platform after a hurried release of the revamped Twitter Blue, Musk had said last week the $8-a-month subscription service would be relaunched with ID verification.

“Punting relaunch of Blue Verified to November 29th to make sure that it is rock solid,” Musk had tweeted.

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

Firing to hiring

According to a report by The Verge, Musk and his team are done with layoffs at Twitter and are now actively looking to hire people.

During an all-hands meeting with Twitter employees, Musk said the company is actively recruiting for roles in engineering and sales and that employees are encouraged to make referrals, the report said.

“In terms of critical hires, I would say people who are great at writing software are the highest priority,” he added.

Encrypted DMs


In another report by The Verge,
Musk is planning to encrypt Twitter direct messages (DMs) to further enhance the platform’s features.

He told employees during a meeting that the company would also work to add encrypted video and voice calls between users.

“We want to enable users to be able to communicate without being concerned about their privacy, [or] without being concerned about a data breach at Twitter causing all of their DMs to hit the web, or think that maybe someone at Twitter could be spying on their DMs,” Musk said. “That’s obviously not going to be cool and it has happened a few times before.”

Musk said Moxie Marlinspike – founder of the messaging app Signal and a former Twitter employee who wanted to encrypt DMs during his stint – is potentially willing to help him work on the feature.

Twitter has tried several times to launch encrypted messages but in vain.