It looks like some companies may not have to pay Twitter $1,000 a month for the privilege of keeping their verified status and checkmarks. Twitter gives a free pass to the 500 advertisers who spend the most on its platform as well as the top 10,000 organizations by number of followers, According to a report from New York times.
The decision comes as Twitter prepares to make major changes to the way verification works on Twitter. He will reportedly begin winding down the legacy verification program in April and announced plans for it Check Twitter for organizations. The latter is intended to allow companies willing to pay $1,000 per month to retain verification as well as refer to specific accounts as “affiliates.”
For example, a newsroom like the edge The journalists working for it can be verified, proving that the person reaching out for an interview actually works there. (Although Vox Media currently has no plans to do so, to be clear.) Brands can also use it to verify affiliate accounts; Twitter is currently doing this with Twitter support And Blue Twitter accounts.
Businesses that don’t get a free pass can run up a big Twitter bill
However, this feature is not cheap. On top of the $1,000 monthly rate for organizations verification, you also have to pay $50 per month for each affiliate account. Price can add up quickly.
Twitter offering at least part of this package for free to advertisers and organizations with a lot of followers could help keep the price hikes sharp in check impacting the Twitter community a lot. People who use the service as a source of information want to know it’s actually coming from a verified account, and it looks like a lot of the major players aren’t going to lose their checkmarks, even if they don’t want to go over $12,000 a year for Twitter.
It’s also clearly an olive branch for advertisers whose relationship with Twitter has been strained lately. Twitter Ads revenue It has reportedly fallen sharply Since the Elon Musk acquisition, major advertising firms have warned clients to be wary of them. A $1,000 monthly bill would very likely be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for a lot of advertisers, but if Twitter offered it for free, they wouldn’t have to make that decision.
However, this can make it difficult for new businesses to build an audience on the platform, as they will either have to compete with verified brands when they aren’t or pay $1,000 per month to get verified too. .
Brands are one of the categories most vulnerable to impersonation, as we saw from the wave of fake accounts that emerged when Twitter Blue verification was first launched, allowing people to purchase a blue tick. Twitter has Put some guardrails in place In an effort to prevent this from happening again – if you change your profile picture, display name, or @handle, you’ll lose the checkmark temporarily until Twitter reviews your profile to make sure you’re not violating its rules against impersonation.
But as Twitter prepares to remove “old” checkmarks for both people and organizations unless they start paying for Blue or Verification for Organizations, impersonators and other bad actors will almost certainly test these security systems. There are a lot of people we’re used to seeing with blue or gold checkmarks next to their name, like New York timesAnd White HouseOr LeBron James.
If they choose not to pay for a checkmark, there is a chance that scammers and scammers will create an account that at first glance appears to be more official than the real one. For the companies that Twitter is specifically interested in protecting, it seems like this wouldn’t be much of a concern.
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