Twitter will roll out verified gold and grey checkmarks as it relaunches the coveted blue check service next Friday, CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet, after holding off the roll-out 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.

“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 US$8 blue check subscription service as fake accounts mushroomed, and had said the sought-after blue check subscription service will be relaunched on 29 November.