Facebook Parent plans to sell ‘meta verified’ accounts

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 ticks.

A new subscription service called Meta Verified will be available this week in Australia and New Zealand and will soon be rolled out to other countries, Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta, said in posts on Facebook and Instagram on Sunday. For $11.99 per month (or $14.99 if purchased on Apple’s operating system, iOS), users will receive a blue badge and direct access to customer support. The company described the effort as a “gradual test.”

“This new feature is intended to increase the authenticity and security of our services,” Zuckerberg wrote. To become eligible for Meta Verified, users will need to submit government ID to prove their identity, and subscribers will only be allowed to use their legal names on their profile pages, the company said. Subscribers will receive “additional impersonation protection against accounts pretending to be you,” Zuckerberg said.

The service will expand to the United States in the coming weeks, a spokeswoman for Meta said. She declined to name other countries where Meta Verified will be available. Facebook and Instagram accounts must be registered separately in Meta Verified — meaning those who want blue badges on both sites must pay at least $24 a month — but Meta plans to eventually offer bundled memberships, it said. she stated.

Those who already have verified accounts on Instagram and Facebook will be able to keep them for free, for now, Meta said in a blog post. The company described the new paid service as a way for it to “help up-and-coming creators grow their presence and build a community faster.”

Meta’s subscription move follows Twitter’s push under new owner Elon Musk to charge users $8 a month for blue ticks through its Twitter Blue service. Twitter announced last week that it will soon be disabling SMS two-factor authentication for users who are not subscribed to Twitter Blue.

Meta, which relies heavily on ad revenue, has recently been cutting costs and looking for new revenue streams — even as it continues to invest billions in its move to the so-called Metaverse. As Facebook released its latest quarterly results this month, Mr Zuckerberg said his management theme for 2023 was “the year of efficiency” and said his company was “focused on becoming a stronger and more agile organization”.