In the latest revenue generating effort for Elon Musk’s Twitter, the social media giant is reportedly set to make businesses pay $1,000 per month to keep their gold verification check.
Social media consultant Matt Navarra first reported the new charge, along with screenshots allegedly showing Twitter employees offering the price to businesses looking to sign up as a “Verified Organization.”
The Information confirmed the report Friday, adding that it is currently unclear when the change will take effect and when businesses that don’t pay will lose their gold check.
—Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) February 3, 2023
Twitter currently offers gold checks to verified businesses, and also allows them to place a small, hyperlinked version of their logo next to the gold check of other pages associated with their business. A current example is the SportsCenter account, which has a small ESPN logo next to its name.
In addition to the $1,000 per month for a business account, Twitter plans to charge $50 each for the affiliated accounts, according to The Information’s Erin Woo.
According to the screenshots shared by Navarra, the program is called Verified Organizations, which the Twitter Business account first advertised in January, along with an application for early access.
In addition to the gold check, the program will also include “Tweet Boosting, which will increase the reach and distribution for your organization and its affiliates whenever you tweet,” the message reported by Navarra states.
The new plan is the latest payment option added to Twitter since the release of the embattled Twitter Blue subscription service, which was suspended shortly after its debut due to the rise of impersonator accounts that came with the new $8 per month blue checks.
The plan was relaunched in December, when the gold checks were first introduced as an added layer of distinction between verified businesses and individuals who had just paid $8 for the blue check. Last month, Musk also advertised a yet-to-be-released subscription service for Twitter that would allow users to access the site without ads.
It has been an eventful week for other Twitter services, as Musk tweeted ideas to charge the operators of automated accounts at least $100 per month to remove the influence of “bad bots”
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Musk responded on Friday to a question about verification, claiming that the current “legacy” verification tag given to accounts which were verified before Twitter Blue’s introduction will be removed in the coming months.
