Twitter is preparing to charge businesses $1k per month for a gold verified badge and an additional $50 for affiliate business accounts.
- Twitter messages imply it will charge companies $1,000 per month for verification
- Reports have surfaced that the company has already started asking for that money.
- Accounts affiliated with them can be officially tagged for an additional $50 p/m each
Twitter is considering charging businesses on the platform $1,000 per month to retain their gold verified checkmarks.
Businesses and organizations that don’t pay the fee will lose their credentials, though it’s unclear when, according to a report by The Information. Internal messages seen by the outlet suggested it will cost $1,000 per month to maintain the gold badges and another $50 per month for each ‘affiliate account’.
That claim corroborates a leaked email from a Twitter staffer to an unknown organization offering ‘early access’ to ‘Verification for Organizations’. In the email, dated February 2 and shared by social media analyst Matt Navarra, staffer Evan Jones cited the same $1,000 subscription cost and offered the organization a “gold checkmark” to change.
The change is the latest of many that Twitter’s new owner and CEO Elon Musk has overseen in a bid to boost revenue and make the company profitable. That includes the mass layoff that saw its workforce cut in half from around 7,500 before the acquisition, WSJ reported.
It comes just a few months after Musk made the controversial decision to charge ordinary Twitter users $8 per month for their classic blue checkmarks, which the company previously handed out to whoever was deemed eligible.
The internal message suggests that Twitter is considering charging businesses on the platform $1,000 per month to retain their gold verified checkmarks. Some reports have surfaced that the company has already started asking for the money.
The gold checkmark currently used on Twitter to indicate that an account belongs to an organization or business. Now it will cost $1,000 a month to keep those gold bookmarks.
Organization Verification is the name Twitter is giving to a paid service that offers verification of businesses with a gold verification mark.
The introduction of the $8 subscription happened around the same time that businesses and organizations were given the new gold checkmarks and square profile pictures, instead of the round ones of yore.
However, common users who had blue checkmarks in the old system have kept them until now, but now they are accompanied by a notice saying: ‘This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be noticeable.
Musk posted a tweet on Friday saying those check marks will eventually be removed: “Unfortunately, Twitter’s Blue Verified legacy is deeply damaged, so it will be gone in a few months.”
The change in December also caused chaos as several imitation accounts appeared on the platform.
Musk later tweeted that Twitter will soon allow organizations to identify the accounts associated with them. That’s the service that will now supposedly cost businesses an extra $5 per account.
The feature allows businesses and organizations to create small square tags that can be attached to or affiliated with employee accounts, indicating an official connection.
In an email, dated February 2 and shared by social media analyst Matt Navarra, Twitter staffer Evan Jones cited the subscription price and offered the organization a “gold checkmark” to change.
Musk posted a tweet on Friday saying the current ‘legacy’ checkmarks will be removed in ‘a few months’
Fake accounts purporting to be big brands with blue checkmarks popped up, including Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX, as well as Roblox, Nestlé, Lockheed Martin and Eli Lilly.
The social media platform halted the service as fake accounts proliferated, and new owner Musk returned the ‘official’ badge for some users.
But the damage was already done for some companies whose share prices fell due to the fake tweets.
Eli Lilly fell 4.5 percent on Friday after a user tweeted from a verified account that looked like an official Lilly profile: “We are excited to announce that insulin is now free.”
The company’s capitalization also decreased by more than $7 billion. Lilly posted an apology from his real account, and executives later ordered a halt to all Twitter ad campaigns, the Washington Post reported.
On the same day, Lockheed Martin fell 5.5 percent after a verified account set up to look like the company tweeted: “We will begin halting all arms sales to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States until further investigation is conducted.” history of human rights abuses. #We are LM.’
