Twitter to relaunch its Blue subscription on Monday, increase tweet character limit to 4000

After a lot of delays, Twitter is now set to relaunch its subscription service Twitter Blue on Monday. The main feature of the service will be the addition of a blue checkmark. Twitter gave users the option to have one about a month ago, but this was eventually pulled after trolls used it to impersonate public figures and companies and post inappropriate content.

Now, for Twitter Blue subscribers to receive their blue checkmark, they will need a verified phone number. According to Twitter, the checkmark will appear after an account has been reviewed. Subscribers can change their handle, display name, or profile photo, but they will temporarily lose their blue checkmark until Twitter reviews their account again.

What's more, Twitter Blue subscribers will soon be able to post longer videos, and upload clips in 1080p. They will even see "half the ads," and be prioritized when it comes to mentions, replies, and search — a move that Twitter claims will help fight scams and spam.

To help differentiate between Twitter Blue subscribers and other verified accounts, Twitter will replace the "Official" label with a gold checkmark for businesses and a grey checkmark for government and multilateral accounts.

Goodbye 280-character tweet limit, hello 4,000?

In other Twitter news, the company's new CEO Elon Musk confirmed in a tweet that the company plans to increase the maximum tweet length limit from 280 characters to 4,000. He did not share any further details, such as when it will roll out and if it will be available to everybody.

When Twitter launched, tweets were limited to 140 characters, which forced users to get right to the point of what they wanted to say instead of writing long essays. Because users found this limiting, the character limit was increased to 280 by 2017.