Twitter Blue is a subscription service from Twitter that primarily provided premium features like link aggregation and tweet editing. However, after the acquisition, the service primarily let people acquire a fancy blue checkmark. Stuart A. Thompson, for The New York Times, used data collected by Travis Brown to show who paid for their checkmarks.

It’s a big scatterplot. Each dot represents a Twitter user, plotted by registration date on the x-axis and follower count on the y-axis. The scrolly piece guides you through the dots.

Tags: followers, New York Times, Twitter