The Twitter Verification Purge That Wasn’t

Public figures ranging from celebrities to journalists braced for their blue check marks on Twitter to disappear over the weekend if they weren’t paying for Twitter Blue, its subscription service. For the most part, this didn’t happen. Instead, the social network simply decided to update the description of verified accounts. But some rivals are using the disarray to talk up their own verification systems. 

Koo, an Indian microblogging service, announced on Friday that it will offer free “lifetime” verification for notable accounts. Koo’s co-founder Mayank Bidawatka called its yellow tick “a prestigious symbol that cannot be bought.”