Elon Musk’s Twitter is looking for new sources of revenue and the billionaire CEO has proposed a monthly fee of $1,000 for companies and brands to get verified check-marks on the social media platform. This new pricing is part of the newly launched Twitter Blue for Business service, which allows businesses to verify and distinguish themselves on Twitter.
According to social media consultant Matt Navarra, Twitter is asking organizations to pay $1,000 per month, with an additional $50 monthly fee for each affiliated sub-account, to maintain their gold check-mark verification badges. Tech news site The Information confirmed the details, but noted that the pricing is still being finalized and may change.
Under the Twitter Blue for Business service, customers can link affiliated individuals, businesses, brands, and even “movie characters” under their primary account. The linked accounts will display a small badge of the parent company’s profile picture next to their own blue or gold check-mark. In addition, Twitter has introduced new square profile pictures for companies and brands, and has applied gray check-marks to governmental accounts.
Musk has announced that Twitter will discontinue all legacy verified check-marks within the next few months, meaning that only paying individual and corporate customers will have verified status on the platform. He stated that the way in which check-marks were previously given out was “corrupt and nonsensical”.
Since acquiring Twitter for $44 billion and incurring $12.5 billion in debt, Musk has been looking for ways to increase subscription revenue to meet these obligations. The reduction in Twitter’s headcount has led to many advertisers halting their spending on the platform. In an effort to win back advertisers, Twitter recently announced partnerships with two brand-safety analytics vendors, promising new tools to ensure ad-adjacent tweets are not offensive.
On February 3, Musk announced that Twitter would start sharing ad revenue with creators for “ads that appear in their reply threads”, but provided no details on how the program will work, including how much users can expect to be paid. The program is only available to Twitter Blue subscribers, who pay $8 per month on the web and $11 per month through Apple’s iOS.
As the CEO of Twitter, Musk is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. He recently won a legal case where a federal jury found him not liable for Tesla investor losses over tweets he made in 2018 claiming he had “secured” funding to take the electric-vehicle maker private for $420 per share.
In conclusion, the new pricing for gold check-mark status under Twitter Blue for Business is part of Elon Musk’s efforts to generate more revenue for Twitter and meet his debt obligations. The fee will likely only apply to businesses, as individuals can still purchase a blue check-mark through Twitter Blue for a much lower monthly fee.
