Elon Musk continues to look for ways to make Twitter profitable and make back his investment. The new strategy takes aim at businesses and their brands on the social media platform.
Well-known brands received a golden checkmark to distinguish them from the blue checkmarks, which now means they are subscribers of Twitter Blue. The gold checkmark meant that Twitter “verified” the business as legitimate.
However, with the change, if brands want to keep their golden checkmark they will have to pay $1,000 a month, according to a report from The Information.
Social media expert Matt Navarra shared a screenshot of an alleged e-mail from Twitter confirming the new monthly subscription.
In addition, “affiliate account verification” will cost $50 a month. The latter are brands associated with another company at large.
Charging businesses to keep their checkmark falls in line with Twitter Blue subscribers who pay $8 a month to keep their blue checkmarks. The monthly rate would also show subscribers fewer ads and rank their replies higher than non-subscribers.
Musk also recently tweeted about sharing ad revenue with creators with the catch being that they would have to be subscribed to Twitter Blue.
“Starting today, Twitter will share ad revenue with creators for ads that appear in their reply threads,” Musk tweeted. “To be eligible, the account must be a subscriber to Twitter Blue Verified.”
Some notable figures on the platform continue to have a blue checkmark without subscribing to Twitter Blue, but Musk said that they will lose their verified status in the coming months.
“Twitter’s legacy Blue Verified is unfortunately deeply corrupted, so will sunset in a few months,” he posted.