Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, wants power users to start paying for some of its sites’ features, taking a page out of Twitter’s playbook by charging for verified blue checkmarks.
A new subscription service called Meta Verified will be available this week in Australia and New Zealand and will soon expand to other countries, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, said Sunday in posts on Facebook and Instagram. For $11.99 a month (or $14.99 if purchased on Apple’s iOS operating system), users will get a blue badge and direct access to customer support. The company described the effort as a “gradual trial.”
“This new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across all of our services,” Zuckerberg wrote. To be eligible for Meta Verified, users will need to submit a government ID to prove their identity, and subscribers will be able to use only their legal names on their profile pages, the company said. Subscribers will receive “additional phishing protection against accounts claiming to be you,” Zuckerberg said.
The service will be expanded to the United States in the coming weeks, a Meta spokeswoman said. She declined to name other countries where Meta Verified will be available. Facebook and Instagram accounts must sign up separately for Meta Verified, which means those who want blue badges on both sites must pay at least $24 per month, but Meta plans to eventually offer bundled subscriptions, she said.
Those who already have verified accounts on Instagram and Facebook will be able to retain them at no cost, for now Meta said in a blog post. The company described the new paid service as a way to “help up-and-coming creators grow their presence and build a community faster.”
Meta’s subscription move follows Twitter’s push under its new owner, Elon Musk, to charge users $8 per month for blue checkmarks through its Twitter Blue service. Twitter said last week that it would soon disable two-factor authentication via text messages for users who aren’t paid Twitter Blue subscribers.
Relying heavily on ad revenue, Meta has of late been cutting costs and looking for new revenue streams, even as it continues to pour billions into its shift to the so-called metaverse. When Facebook reported its latest quarterly earnings this month, Zuckerberg declared his management theme for 2023 would be “the ‘Year of Efficiency'” and said his company was “focused on becoming a stronger, more agile organization.” “.
