Verification on Twitter and Meta: What Brands Need to Know

What’s happened so far.

Background: At the end of 2022, Twitter launched its Twitter Blue program for individuals, priced at $8 USD per month ($84 USD annually).

• This paid verification program also offered features that “improve the user experience”—including prioritized rankings, editable/undo-able tweets, longer tweets, longer videos, two-factor authentication, and more.

The Latest: Last week, Twitter announced that as of April 1, they will begin winding down their legacy verified program.

• With this update, the platform will no longer grandfather in previously verified accounts.

Instead, brands will be pushed to purchase Verification for Organizations—a significantly more expensive version of Twitter Blue designed for brands and their affiliates.

What is Verification for Organizations?

Twitter’s new Verification for Organizations program enables brands to join a waitlist to purchase a gold checkmark for their main account, and verify their employee profiles as affiliates.

The package is priced at $1,000 USD/month, with $50 USD/month for each additional affiliate account (secondary handles, execs, employees, etc.)

Key features include:

• A gold checkmark
• A square profile picture
• An affiliate badge
• Affiliates displayed on the main brand page
• Twitter Verification for Organizations dashboard
• Premium support
• Twitter Blue access for all brand and affiliated accounts, including prioritized reach (however, it’s difficult to quantify exactly how much of an increase in reach brands can expect to see)

• In theory, brands could purchase Twitter Blue at the less expensive rate of $8 per month to test performance shifts over the span of 1-3 months. Then, they could evaluate the increase in reach over that time period to help determine if it is worth it, and then consider purchasing the more lucrative Verification for Organizations.

How can brands assess the value of Twitter Blue?

• Slow adoption of Twitter Blue: For brands weighing the value of verification (especially the priority reach offered with Twitter Blue), it is important to note that so far only 450,000 users have signed up for Twitter Blue. This is relatively low considering the platform has approximately 450 million monthly active users as of 2023 (i.e. this only accounts for 0.18% of total users). If such a low volume of accounts are being given priority on the feed, this limits the overall platform’s diversity of voices in users’ “For You” feed, which ultimately goes against Musk’s initial intention of building a “digital town square.”

• Condensed competition: That said, advertising partners may soon find themselves competing within the same space, as reports have stated that Twitter has been giving away the gold checkmark to its top 500 ad partners and the top 10,000 most-followed organizations in the app. To add to this, the level of credibility associated with the new program may suffer if some organizations are being gifted participation while others have to pay up.

• Anticipating Musk’s next steps: As a further attempt by Musk to drive registrations up, Twitter also recently announced that as of April 15, only tweets from Twitter Blue subscribers will be recommended in the main “For You” feed. However, we cannot quantify exactly how much additional exposure users are getting from the ‘For You’ feed display, nor do we have data on how many users default into ‘For You,’ as opposed to the ‘Following’ stream (though users will still be able to view tweets from the accounts they currently follow in your ‘Following’ tab).

• Authenticity vs. readiness to pay: Twitter’s original premise for the verification system was that a paid system would increase authenticity within the platform, on the belief that “the only accounts who would pay the subscription rates would be legitimate users and not bots”. However, considering the low adoption rate among legitimate users, this would likely not be for a very long time. It is also difficult to predict whether or not a verification mark would be considered a sign of authenticity per Twitter’s contention, or a sign of spuriosity since anyone could obtain the mark by paying. In the coming weeks, we will likely see Twitter finding new ways to deprioritize the reach of non-verified accounts in an effort to grow its adaptation rate.

The response from companies and institutions so far.

• Major media brands including The Los Angeles Times, New York Times, BuzzFeed, POLITICO, Vox Media and the Washington Post have announced they will no longer be paying for Twitter Blue.

• The White House has announced that it will no longer be paying for its staff’s official Twitter profiles to be verified. However, official organizations such as The White House will continue to be verified with a gray checkmark, with some officials such as the President and Vice President maintaining the same gray checkmark.

Next steps for brands.

All that said, here are the key questions to ask yourself before making the decision to pay-to-play:

1. Is Twitter a priority platform for my brand’s social presence? How big is my audience on that platform? How quickly is it increasing/decreasing?
2. Is increased reach on the platform important for my brand? To that point, it’s worth noting that brands are also able to simply purchase Twitter Blue to access this feature at this time, which is significantly less expensive.
3. Can my team secure the necessary funding of $1,000 USD per month for the program, noting that there will be an additional $50 for all affiliated brand accounts (e.g. executives, employees, secondary handles, etc.)? Additionally, how many affiliate handles will I need to purchase?
4. If stakeholder buy-in is necessary to fund, how can I correlate my Twitter metrics with sales results in order to build the case?
5. If Twitter verification is now pay-to-play, how will that change the way our audience views the credibility of content shared by verified accounts within the app?

But what about Meta?

In mid-March, Meta announced that it will be rolling out its Meta Verified program to users in the US, offering users on both Facebook and Instagram the opportunity to purchase a blue checkmark for $11.99 USD per month on the web or $14.99 USD in-app ($23.98 USD per month for both platforms collectively).

Unlike Twitter’s original blue checkmark program, however, Meta’s version will no longer offer increased performance metrics such as reach, engagement, etc.

At this time, the verified checkmark on Meta is available across Instagram and Facebook in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. It is for people 18 years or older and is not yet available in all places or for businesses.

However, this will likely change in the near future just as it did on Twitter, at which time it will be important for brands to consider whether additional security measures and account support will be a necessary investment.