You might have already heard of this from an earlier piece we did, but in case you didn’t – Twitter is looking to charge a rather hefty sum for its new business verification checkmark. From the title alone, would something that costs this much be worth it for your business? While there’s clearly a value in having official recognition, as well as indicating to visitors that you have a genuine and legitimate brand handle, there’s also something that’s called ‘being too much.’

An Excessive Badge

Would you pay even just $50 for Twitter’s new Gold brand check mark? $50 already feels a bit pricey, right? Well, we hope that it doesn’t, because Twitter’s considering charging $1000 monthly for brands looking to own a gold tick. The new offering would also allow brands to verify their own staff, at a cost of an extra $50 per employee.

The early pricing was communicated to some brand partners just last week, while The Information looked up some internal Twitter communications that confirm the proposed pricing. This doesn’t mean that Twitter is locking in the price point, and it could well be that Twitter’s just putting out feelers to see how the market would react. Nevertheless, $12,000 a year does sound rather costly.

The pricing strategy is consistent with a platform that’s owned by one of history’s richest men. In initial discussions about Twitter Blue, Musk and co. considered charging $20 a month for a Blue check mark, prompting much criticism and scrutiny. Eventually, this boiled down to the current $8 Blue subscription that most of us know and love.

Granted you have a nigh-limitless pool of money to draw from, $8 doesn’t sound like a bad deal, which is likely also why Musk suspects that $1000 isn’t much for brands to pay for a unique in-app check mark. Sadly for Elon, it is, or at least it will be for the majority of businesses. Similar to Twitter Blue, the bigger question is why would you pay? Musk and his team don’t really offer much in return for your precious ad dollars outside of a uniquely-colored tick and that good feeling that you get from supporting the app.

The Wrap

Personally, we don’t understand the value. The most that anyone can get from verification badges, regardless of the platform, is exclusivity, and the fact that not just anybody can get them. Besides these, unless Musk can offer something that no other platform has offered paying subscribers before, you can bet that most brands would simply laugh at the option.

Then again, it’s both kind of funny and sad to know that Twitter won’t turn down anyone who would be willing to pay $1000, given all of its financial challenges, which would likely see heaps of shady-looking organizations locking in on its gold checkmarks, further reducing its value. In the end, the biggest question to ask yourself is should you even be paying for verification? We envision a high variety of ‘no’ answers flooding our ears, but we could be wrong; this is Elon Musk, after all.

Sources

http://bit.ly/3X965dW