I wrote about this when Elon Musk pioneered it, noting that it would be a good feature for Meta (Facebook parent company) and LinkedIn. Today, it has been adopted: “‘Meta Verified’ will give you a blue badge along with several other benefits, including increased visibility, protection against impersonation, priority customer support, and more” for $12/month.
Meta’s testing paid verification for Instagram and Facebook for $11.99 per month on web and $14.99 per month on mobile. In an update on Instagram, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced having a “Meta Verified” account will grant users a verified badge, increased visibility, prioritized customer support, and more. The feature’s rolling out to Australia and New Zealand this week and will arrive in more countries “soon.”
“This week we’re starting to roll out Meta Verified — a subscription service that lets you verify your account with a government ID, get a blue badge, get extra impersonation protection against accounts claiming to be you, and get direct access to customer support,” Zuckerberg writes. “This new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services.”
For years, nobody wanted to do this until the boldest entrepreneur in our generation, Elon Musk, did it, and it is going to become an industry standard henceforth. I am waiting for the LinkedIn one as that is the only one I will pay for; I will put it under business expense since LinkedIn is my CNN, NTA, BBC, NYTimes, Economist, etc combined for business and professional visibility.
Anything that will stop people writing “are you Ndubuisi Ekekwe” even though he/she is chatting with Ndubuisi Ekekwe right there. Hopefully, when LinkedIn does that, that question will disappear and we can build more trust to advance entrepreneurial capitalism.
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This is a new revenue source for Meta. I can assure you that most times, we overestimate how customers will react. Those people paying at Twitter are still there because they get more than $20/month for that visibility.
Welcome to Internet Utility 2.0 where you will pay for the privilege of feeding aggregators with data and raw materials which they use to make money. Of course, you also get value in return.
Comment on Feed
Comment 1: Ndubuisi Ekekwe Prof.. Your prediction of business innovation is becoming so prevalent now, its getting to the point it is starting to look ‘ordinary’.
The normalization of showcasing this skill on LinkedIn has moved the bar for self declared ‘thought leaders’ ‘visionaries’ and ‘influencers’
Many of them have just taken an aggressive approach to network building on here, but their content is thin, unoriginal, formulaic, lacks a commitment of opinion, repetitive ( I could go on) and above all, uninspiring.
Show them the way, please. ?
Comment 2: Elon Musk is not just a technocrat but also a business mogul.
He’s currently considering a business model in which public influencers can earn from part of advert revenue.
Comment 3: Elon Musk is on a league of his own, those who taunt him obviously don’t fully understand what that guy embodies, he’s not just bold but also visionary. If Twitter gets 20 million people to pay for blue tick, $2 billion could be within reach per annum, yet for years Twitter was languishing in the hands of people who knew nothing about running a profitable enterprise, rather it was turned into an ideological battlefield, incapable of bringing meaningful returns.
For all the beatings Mark has taken over the last few years, finally the man Musk has shown him the light, a new revenue stream is here.
This verified badge model will also help aggregators negotiate better deals from advertisers, unlike before where anything goes, if a platform can boast of 30 million verified accounts, you atleast know that there are 30 million people capable of paying for something, it’s a better benchmark than what was previously obtainable.
Musk has transformed social media revenue model.
My Response: “This verified badge model will also help aggregators negotiate better deals from advertisers, unlike before where anything goes, if a platform can boast of 30 million verified accounts, you atleast know that there are 30 million people capable of paying for something, it’s a better benchmark than what was previously obtainable.” – very revealing. Amazon Prime number is an x-factor when it negotiates with vendors. Who do you deal with? The company where 100m+ pay to shop or the one that does not even know if people will come tomorrow.
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Elon Musk is on a league of his own, those who taunt him obviously don’t fully understand what that guy embodies, he’s not just bold but also visionary. If Twitter gets 20 million people to pay for blue tick, $2 billion could be within reach per annum, yet for years Twitter was languishing in the hands of people who knew nothing about running a profitable enterprise, rather it was turned into an ideological battlefield, incapable of bringing meaningful returns.
For all the beatings Mark has taken over the last few years, finally the man Musk has shown him the light, a new revenue stream is here.
This verified badge model will also help aggregators negotiate better deals from advertisers, unlike before where anything goes, if a platform can boast of 30 million verified accounts, you atleast know that there are 30 million people capable of paying for something, it’s a better benchmark than what was previously obtainable.
Musk has transformed social media revenue model.