Twitter considers charging businesses $1k a month for a gold verification badge

Twitter is considering charging businesses on the platform $1,000 a month to retain their gold verified checkmarks.

Companies and organizations that fail to pay the fee will lose their badges, although it’s not clear when, according to a report from The Information. Internal messages viewed by the outlet suggested that it will cost $1,000 a month to keep gold badges and another $50 a month for each ‘affiliated account’.

That claim corroborates a leaked email from a Twitter staff member to an unknown organization in which it was offered ‘early access’ to ‘Verification for Organizations.’ In the email, dated February 2 and shared by social media analyst Matt Navarra, the staff member, Evan Jones, quoted the same $1,000 cost of subscription and offered the organization a ‘gold checkmark’ in return.

The change is the latest of many that Twitter’s new owner and CEO Elon Musk has overseen in attempt to boost revenue and turn the company profitable. That includes mass layoff that saw its work force halve in size from around 7,500 before the acquisition, WSJ reported.

It comes just months after Musk made the controversial decision to charge ordinary Twitter-users $8 a month for its classic blue checkmarks, which were previously given out by the company to whomever was deemed eligible.

Internal message suggest Twitter is considering charging businesses on the platform $1,000 per month to retain their gold verified checkmarks. Some reports have surfaced that the company has already begun asking for the money

The gold checkmark that is currently used on Twitter to signify that an account belongs either to an organization or business. It will now cost $1,000 a month to retain those gold markers

Verification for Organizations is the name Twitter is giving for a paid service that offers businesses verification with a gold checkmark

The introduction of the $8 subscription happened around the same time businesses and organizations were assigned the new gold checkmarks and square profile pictures, as opposed to the round ones of old. 

Ordinary users who had blue checkmarks in the old system have retained them so far, however, but they are now accompanied by a notice reading: ‘This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable.’

Musk posted a tweet on Friday saying that those checkmarks will eventually be removed: ‘Twitter’s legacy Blue Verified is unfortunately deeply corrupted, so will sunset in a few months.’

The change in December also brought about chaos as a number of imitation accounts showing up on the platform.

Musk later tweeted that Twitter will soon enable organizations to identify accounts associated with them. That is the service which will now allegedly cost companies an additional $5 per account.

The feature allows businesses and organizations to create small square tags that can be attached to accounts of employees or those affiliated with them, indicating an official connection.

In an email, dated February 2 and shared by social media analyst Matt Navarra, Twitter staff member Evan Jones quoted the price of subscription and offered the organization a ‘gold checkmark’ in return

Musk posted a tweet on Friday saying that current ‘legacy’ checkmarks will be removed in ‘a few months’

Fake accounts purporting to be big brands popped up with blue check marks, including Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX, as well as Roblox, Nestle, Lockheed Martin and Eli Lilly. 

The social media platform paused the service as the fake accounts mushroomed, and new owner Musk brought back the ‘official’ badge for some users.

But the damage was already done for some companies whose stock prices dropped due to the fake tweets. 

Eli Lilly fell 4.5 percent on Friday after a user tweeted from a verified account that looked like an official Lilly profile: ‘We are excited to announce insulin is now free.’

The company’s capitalization also decreased by more than $7 billion. Lilly posted an apology from its real account and executives later ordered a halt to all Twitter ad campaigns, the Washington Post reported. 

The same day, Lockheed Martin fell 5.5 percent after a verified account set up to look like the firm tweeted: ‘We will begin halting all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States until further investigation into their record of human rights abuses. #WeAreLM.’