Twitter will roll out verified gold and grey check marks as it relaunches the coveted blue check service next Friday, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said in a tweet, after holding off the rollout earlier this week.
"Gold check for companies, grey check for governments, blue for individuals (celebrities or not). Painful, but necessary," Musk said in a tweet.
All verified accounts will be manually authenticated before the check is activated, Musk said.
"Individuals can have a secondary tiny logo to show they belong to an organisation if verified as such by that organisation," Musk said in another tweet, adding that he will give a longer explanation next week.
The company had paused its recently announced $8 blue check subscription service as fake accounts mushroomed, and had said the sought-after blue check subscription service will be relaunched on November 29.
The blue check mark was previously reserved for verified accounts of politicians, famous personalities, journalists and other public figures.
The Pentagon said on Wednesday that US strikes 10 days ago had degraded Iran's nuclear programme by up to two years, suggesting the US military operation likely achieved its goals despite a far more cautious initial assessment that leaked to the public.
Hundreds of firefighters battled a blaze Thursday on Crete island, which burnt swathes of forest and olive groves and forced the evacuation of over 1,000 people, officials said, underscoring the region's vulnerability to destructive wildfires.
Five people were injured, including a seven-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl, in a Russian attack on the southern Ukraine port of Odesa overnight, Ukrainian authorities said on Thursday.