Twitter is considering charging businesses on the platform $1,000 a month to retain their gold-verified checkmarks.
According
to a report from The Information, companies, and organizations that
fail to pay the fee will lose their badges, although it's not clear
when. Internal messages viewed by the outlet suggested that it will cost
$1,000 a month to keep gold badges and another $50 a month for each
'affiliated account'.
That claim corroborates a leaked email
from a Twitter staff member to an unknown organization in which it was
offered 'early access' to 'Verification for Organizations.' In the
email, dated February 2 and shared by social media analyst Matt Navarra,
the staff member, Evan Jones, quoted the same $1,000 cost of
subscription and offered the organization a 'gold checkmark' in return.
The
change is the latest of many that Twitter's new owner and CEO Elon Musk
has taken in an attempt to boost revenue and turn the company
profitable. That includes mass layoff that saw its workforce halve in
size from around 7,500 before the acquisition, WSJ reported.
It comes just months after Musk made the controversial decision to charge ordinary Twitter users $8 a month for its classic blue checkmarks.
The
introduction of the $8 subscription happened around the same time
businesses and organizations were assigned the new gold checkmarks and
square profile pictures, as opposed to the round ones of old.
