Other firms may not have to pay Twitter $1,000 monthly for verified status and checkmarks. According to The New York Times, Twitter is exempting the top 500 advertisers and 10,000 organizations by the following numbers.
Twitter is poised to overhaul verification. Twitter Verification for Companies and the traditional verified program will be phased down in April. The latter allows $1,000-a-month corporations to maintain verification and mark accounts as “associated.”
The Verge could authenticate its journalists to prove that the individual requesting an interview works there. However, Vox Media does not intend to accomplish this. Instead, businesses might validate linked accounts like Twitter does with its Help and Blue accounts.
The feature is expensive. Each associated account costs $50 per month on top of Verification for Organizations’ $1,000 monthly fee. That might be expensive.
Offering at least part of that package for free to marketers and groups with many followers might help Twitter’s community cope with the substantial verification fee bump. Those who use the service as a source of information want to know that it’s coming from a verified account, and it sounds like a lot of the key players won’t lose their checkmarks, even if they don’t want to pay Twitter $12,000 a year.
It’s also a peace offering to Twitter’s advertisers. After Elon Musk’s acquisition, big advertising agencies cautioned customers to avoid Twitter, causing its ad income to plummet. If Twitter offers it for free, marketers won’t have to decide whether to pay $1,000 each month.
That might make it difficult for new firms to create an audience on the platform, as they’ll either have to compete with verified brands or pay $1,000 a month to receive the checkmark.
Companies are especially susceptible to imitation, as we witnessed when Twitter Blue verification allowed users to buy a blue checkmark. Twitter will temporarily remove the checkmark whenever you alter your profile image, display name, or @ handle to prevent it from occurring again. At the same time, it analyzes your profile to make sure you’re not impersonating someone.
Impersonators and other bad actors will likely test Twitter’s safety mechanisms as it prepares to remove “legacy” checkmarks from persons and organizations unless they pay for Blue or Verification for Organizations. We’re used to seeing The New York Times, the White House, and LeBron James with blue or gold checkmarks.
Pranksters and fraudsters might create an account that appears more legitimate if they don’t pay for a checkmark. However, that won’t be a problem for Twitter’s targeted firms.
