The recent changes in Elon Musk‘s master plan to monetize Twitter have not only caused headaches for personalities but also for brands and businesses.
Here in South Africa, brands like Spotify, Nando’s, FNB, Standard Bank, and SuperSport TV are paying at least R18K per month to be verified on the platform.
Even the most-followed personalities like Trevor Noah, Burna Boy, Mo Salah, and Black Coffee went days without blue badges until Musk had to go back and reinstate them to such high profiles. Other users had no choice but to pay for the Twitter Blue subscription, which costs R200 per month and R2100 annually.
With this subscription, companies, brands, businesses, non-profits, and government institutions have to cough up to R18 100 per month to be verified.
Verified organizations receive a gold checkmark and a square avatar if they are a business or non-profit. Governmental or multilateral organizations receive a grey checkmark and a circular avatar.
You can already see the gold and grey badges on local accounts such as @spotifyafrica, @cyrilramaphosa, @nandossa and @fnbsa to mention a few.
In addition, organizations can choose to affiliate with any individual or entity associated with them. An affiliated account receives verification (denoted by either a blue, gold, or grey checkmark) as well as an affiliate badge, a small image of their parent company’s profile picture, displayed next to their checkmark. Clicking or pressing this badge takes a user directly to the affiliated organization, making it a great driver of followers from your whole network on Twitter.
However, this feature will cost an organization an extra R910.
For example, a company can affiliate their leadership, brands, support handles, employees, or teams. A government can affiliate its precincts, officials, or other entities. There is no limit to the number of affiliates an organization can have or to who they can affiliate with (as long as they are related).
Of course, this can have some sort of effect on brands that opt not to pay for the subscription service. For instance, the image of a brand or business can be wrecked or even be questioned if they’re verified on other platforms like Instagram and Facebook but there’s no checkmark on their Twitter account.
Do you think this is the way for Elon Musk to make money for his platform? Let us know…
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