Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced Meta Verified, which will be a subscription service offered by Facebook and Instagram. The Meta Verified subscription service features a verification badge for just $12 a month or $14.99 if purchased via the company’s IOS apps. Some of the other features of Meta Verified include access to account support and active impersonation monitoring for accounts. Here’s a link to all the features that the subscription includes. Users must verify their identity with a government ID.
Social media platforms have always been free to use and the way they generated revenue was by displaying ads and selling users’ data. Unfortunately, ad revenue is declining amongst social media platforms.
In Q4 of 2022, Meta, the parent company for Facebook and Instagram reported a 4% decline in revenue for the third consecutive quarter. Twitter’s Q4 revenue also took a hit as it fell 35% from last year.
In an attempt to generate revenue, Twitter introduced Twitter Blue. This subscription costs $8 a month, and some of the features users receive include a blue verification mark, the capability to edit tweets, 60-minute video uploads, the ability to write 4,000-character tweets, and more. Also, after March 20th, you will no longer be able to enroll in the text message/SMS method of two-factor authentication unless you are a Twitter Blue subscriber.
On Twitter, many people are creating parody accounts and abusing Twitter Blue by impersonating brands and celebrities. However, it seems Meta Verified is taking additional steps to combat this problem by actively monitoring accounts that may be an impersonator.
It remains to be seen whether users feel the features being offered in these subscription services are worth paying for.
