Twitter introduces gold, gray and blue badges

Twitter's billionaire owner Elon Musk announced Friday that the platform would be launching differently coloured badges to distinguish between accounts.

"Sorry for the delay, we're tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week," he tweeted.

"Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates."

In another tweet, Musk said that all verified individual accounts would have the same blue check, but some would eventually be able to display a "secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an organization if verified as such by that organization".

The Tesla and SpaceX boss' proposal for users to be able to pay to be "verified" and obtain a blue badge on their profiles has caused confusion since he acquired the social media giant last month.

Musk proposed a subscription fee of $8 a month to allow users to obtain the blue check -- which was previously free but reserved for organizations and public figures in an attempt to avoid impersonation and misinformation.

The first rollout of Musk's subscription plan in early November quickly went south, with many accounts paying for the blue check and then impersonating world leaders, celebrities or companies.