Elon Musk continues to look for ways to make profitable and make back his investment. The new strategy takes aim at businesses and their brands on the social media platform.
Well-known brands received a golden checkmark to distinguish them from the blue checkmarks, which now means they are subscribers of Twitter Blue. The gold checkmark meant that Twitter “verified” the business as legitimate.
However, with the change, if brands want to keep their golden checkmark they will have to pay $1,000 a month, according to a report from The Information.
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Social media expert Matt Navarra shared a screenshot of an alleged e-mail from Twitter confirming the new monthly subscription.
In addition, “affiliate account verification” will cost $50 a month. The latter are brands associated with another company at large.
Twitter asking for $1000 per month for gold check mark verification pic.twitter.com/A1mXq46wDl — Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) February 3, 2023
Charging businesses to keep their checkmark falls in line with Twitter Blue subscribers who pay $8 a month to keep their blue checkmarks. The monthly rate would also show subscribers fewer ads and rank their replies higher than non-subscribers.
Musk also recently tweeted about sharing ad revenue with creators with the catch being that they would have to be subscribed to Twitter Blue.
“Starting today, Twitter will share ad revenue with creators for ads that appear in their reply threads,” Musk tweeted. “To be eligible, the account must be a subscriber to Twitter Blue Verified.”
To be eligible, the account must be a subscriber to Twitter Blue Verified — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2023
Some notable figures on the platform continue to have a blue checkmark without subscribing to Twitter Blue, but Musk said that they will lose their verified status in the coming months.
“Twitter’s legacy Blue Verified is unfortunately deeply corrupted, so will sunset in a few months,” he posted.
Saito1337 on February 5th, 2023 at 15:08 UTC »
So he's going to alienate a ton of smaller businesses who will choose not to pay, and annoy the big businesses he relies on for advertising...ok then.
Repulsive-Office-796 on February 5th, 2023 at 14:53 UTC »
It’s like no one told him what the point of verification is…
Velkyn01 on February 5th, 2023 at 14:26 UTC »
Until the backlash and they reverse the policy in two to three days.