Despite concerns over its radically high pricing, Twitter is pushing ahead with the rollout of its ‘Verification for Organizations’ offering, which enables brands to purchase a gold checkmark for their main account, and verify their employee profiles as affiliates.
Twitter first put out the call for selected businesses to sign up to the program back in January, as part of its broader revamp of verification, which aims to both democratize access to checkmarks in the app, while also establishing a new revenue stream for the business.
Now, more brands in more regions are being invited to register their interest, which could soon see a lot more gold checkmarks and square profile pictures appearing in your feed.
If they’re willing to pay up. Twitter’s currently looking to charge businesses $1,000 per month for the option, which seems like a high price to pay for a different colored tick – and really, not much else.
As per the communications being sent out to businesses, for your $1,000 monthly investment, Verification for Organizations will give you:
- A gold checkmark on your brand account
- A square profile picture on your brand profile
- An affiliate badge, a smaller version of your brand profile image that’s added to approved accounts in the app
- Affiliates display on the main brand page, which shows all the accounts linked to the main brand profile
- Twitter Blue access for all brand and affiliated accounts
So you do get access to all the Twitter Blue features, for your main account and any profiles that you approve as affiliates. But you do also have to pay for each affiliate you register – if you want to approve your staff, and get them both an affiliate marker and a blue tick, you’ll have to pay $50, per month, for each profile you add in.
That seems like a lot – especially considering you can just pay $8 per month to sign your brand profile up to Twitter Blue and get a regular blue checkmark in the app. Maybe Twitter will eventually look to cut off Twitter Blue access for brand entities, but right now, you’re really paying an extra $992 per month for a different colored tick.
Is that worth it?
I guess, Twitter’s hoping that it can reach a critical mass of brands that sign up for a gold checkmark, which will then make it the new gold standard in brand recognition, and in turn, raise questions about the legitimacy of other brand accounts that don’t have that gold tick endorsement. That could force more brands to sign-up to the program, in order to ensure that they’re seen as the official brand entity in the app.
I’m not sure that’s going to work, but that seems to be the principle that Twitter’s going with, effectively using the value of exclusivity that was once afforded to the regular blue checkmark to make the new gold tick more desirable, thus boosting interest.
But it’s a lot. $1000 a month is likely beyond the reach of most SMBs, and it’ll be hard for any brand to justify the expanse, for so little in return.
Some reports have also suggested that Twitter’s giving away the gold checkmark to approved ad partners, as another means to make it a bigger thing, and that could be another effort to further incentivize take-up, by using competitive sensibilities to prompt other brands to want one as well.
Again, I don’t know that it’s the right approach, but Twitter’s, at the least, going to kick the tires on the option, at its current price point.
And it’s coming to more regions – Verification for Organizations is now available in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the UK, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, India, Indonesia, and Brazil.
With a heap of advertisers still not coming back to Twitter, Elon and Co. definitely need the extra money – but do you need the ‘benefits’ that this program provides?
