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Mark Zuckerberg follows in the footsteps of Elon Musk. The eccentric tycoon launched a subscription service on Twitter to achieve the blue verification mark, which certifies the identity of users. After a chaotic start-up, full of errors and rectifications, the system is not only working, but now it is Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, the most powerful company in the world of social networks, which has decided to copy it.
This Sunday, Zuckerberg has announced the news through an Instagram account: “Good morning. New Product Announcement: This week we started rolling out Meta Verified, a subscription service that allows you to verify your account with an official ID, get a blue badge, extra protection against phishing, and direct access to customer service to the client. With this new feature we want to increase authenticity and security in all our services. Meta Verified starts at $11.99 [11,2 euros] per month on the web or $14.99 per month on iOS. We will be launching it in Australia and New Zealand this week and in more countries soon”, he said.
Until Elon Musk’s move, account verification, which is normally given a blue tick, was a service that the social network provided to its most prominent users for free, to prevent impersonation. Musk decided that anyone could have their account verified in exchange for a monthly subscription service. At first there was a boom in impostors due to the disastrous implementation of the measure, but then the service has been maintained.
Twitter has combined the blue checkmark for payment with a gray one for public office and a gold one for business. He is still finishing developing the model. The subscription service costs eight dollars a month (11 if contracted through the Apple application store, which retains a commission).
Elon Musk launched the blue-branded subscription service on November 5. Later, he suspended it to prevent false verified people from interfering in the United States legislative elections on the 8th of that month. He launched it again on the 9th and suspended it again on the 11th due to the chaos of the impostors, who even caused the collapse of some companies on the Stock Market. He set a new date of November 29 for the third attempt, postponed it to December 2, and finally went live in mid-December.
Twitter Blue offers a few other features, though not all of them are live yet. You are allowed to write longer messages, limited editing of posted tweets, grouping saved items, using alternate app icons, and customizing the user experience with other services.
Verified accounts not only certify the identity of their owners, but generally the algorithm of social networks gives them greater visibility. According to Twitter, its subscription grants a priority position in the conversations, in such a way that it gives preference to the responses of the subscribers in the tweets with which they interact. Of course, not as much priority as Elon Musk himself. The owner of the social network has become omnipresent in the accounts of Twitter users after asking his engineers to adjust the algorithm to give more prominence to his tweets.
Alternatives to Falling Ads
Meta has not specified whether the new service will include more than just identity certification. Social networks are looking for alternative sources of income in the face of the fall in advertising. In the case of Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, the company has suffered from the deterioration of the digital advertising market, but also from the currency impact (due to the strength of the dollar) and the stricter privacy rules imposed by Apple. , which block advertising tracking and hinder your business. To this is added the competition from TikTok, the social network that has triumphed among young people despite its controversial aspects. Meanwhile, the commitment to the metaverse has not yet paid off and is for now a pit of losses.
Meta announced last November the dismissal of 11,000 workers, the largest payroll adjustment in its history, for which an extraordinary charge of 4.610 million dollars has been noted. At the moment, in 2022, the workforce grew by 20%, up to 86,482 employees. In other words, Meta hired some 14,000 people last year and then announced the dismissal of 11,000. Now, however, according to various financial media, the company has given a low evaluation to thousands of employees, in what is interpreted as a first step for another wave of layoffs.
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