Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed and Something Blue →

In the upheaval surrounding Twitter’s changes to its verification system, many were left wondering how accounts posing as politicians, journalists, musicians, athletes and others could be noted as official. As it turns out, the checkmark was the way to go after all.

Jay Peters at The Verge has more:

Twitter is rolling out another type of checkmark to help distinguish accounts that users actually need to know are real. Although you can pay for a blue checkmark with the new version of Twitter Blue, select accounts for governments, companies, or public figures will get a gray “Official” checkmark, according to a thread from Twitter’s Esther Crawford, who is heading up the new Twitter Blue initiative.

“A lot of folks have asked about how you’ll be able to distinguish between @TwitterBlue subscribers with blue checkmarks and accounts that are verified as official, which is why we’re introducing the ‘Official’ label to select accounts when we launch,” Crawford says.

“Accounts that will receive it include government accounts, commercial companies, business partners, major media outlets, publishers and some public figures.”

Being previously verified doesn’t automatically mean you’ll get the new “Official” label, and you can’t buy the new label, meaning Twitter will be the one making the call on who gets to have it.

It really feels like someone is making this stuff up as he goes along.

Update: A couple hours after this rolled out, it stopped, with Elon tweeting “I just killed it.” ROFFFLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.