WASHINGTON: The Twitter Blue paid monthly subscription will be available starting next week, the social media platform has announced.

"We're relaunching @TwitterBlue on Monday," Twitter said on its official page on Saturday, adding that web subscription will cost US$8 a month, while subscription on iOS will cost US$11 a month.

The paid features include the blue checkmark, the ability to edit tweets, higher quality video uploads, and reader mode, said Sputnik.

"We'll begin replacing that 'official' label with a gold checkmark for businesses, and later in the week a grey checkmark for government and multilateral accounts," Twitter said, adding that "subscribers will be able to change their handle, display name or profile photo, but if they do they'll temporarily lose the blue checkmark until their account is reviewed again".

In late October, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk finalised the US$44 billion acquisition of Twitter, a US company founded in 2006 with its headquarters located in San Francisco, California. Following the takeover, Musk changed the company's day-to-day operations, including the termination of Twitter executives who were responsible for the platform's privacy, cybersecurity and censorship, as well as about two-thirds of Twitter's employees.

On Friday, Musk said that the company had been working on a software update to let users know if they were "shadowbanned" and why.

-- BERNAMA