Mark Zuckerberg is following in Elon Musk’s footsteps. The eccentric tycoon launched a subscription service on Twitter in order to get the blue mark that confirms users’ identities. After a chaotic start full of bugs and fixes, not only does the system work, but now it’s Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, the most powerful company in the world of social networks, who has decided to copy it.
This Sunday, Zuckerberg announced the news via an Instagram account: “Good morning. New Product Announcement: This week we began the rollout of Meta Verified, a subscription service that allows you to verify your account with an official ID, a blue badge, additional protection against phishing, and direct access to customer support receive. With this new feature we want to increase authenticity and security in all our services. Meta Verified starts at $11.99/month on web or $14.99/month on iOS. We will launch it in Australia and New Zealand this week and more countries soon,” he said.
Until Elon Musk’s move, account verification, which usually comes with a blue tick, was a service the social network gave its most prominent users for free to prevent identity theft. Musk decided anyone could have their account verified in exchange for a monthly subscription service. At first there was an imposter boom because of the disastrous implementation of the measure, but then the service was maintained.
Twitter has combined the blue tick for payment with a gray for public office and a gold for business. He is still in the process of completing the model. The subscription service costs $8 per month ($11 if purchased through the Apple App Store, which withholds a commission).
Elon Musk launched the blue subscription service on November 5th. He later suspended it to prevent falsely verified people from interfering in the United States general election on the 8th of this month. She restarted them on the 9th and suspended them again on the 11th due to the scammers’ chaos, which even caused some companies to collapse on the stock market. For the third attempt, he set a new date for November 29th, postponed it to December 2nd and finally went live in mid-December.
Twitter Blue offers a few other features, although not all are live yet. You may write longer messages, limit editing of posted tweets, group saved items, use alternative app icons, and customize the user experience with other services.
Verified accounts not only certify the identity of their owners, but in general the social network algorithm grants them greater visibility. According to Twitter, its subscription grants a priority position in the conversations, giving priority to subscribers’ replies in the tweets they interact with. Not as much of a priority as Elon Musk himself, of course. The social network owner has become ubiquitous in Twitter users’ accounts after asking its engineers to tweak the algorithm to give their tweets more meaning.
Meta didn’t specify if the new service will include more than just identity certification. In view of the decline in advertising, social networks are looking for alternative sources of income. In the case of Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, the company has suffered from the deterioration in the digital advertising market, but also from currency effects (due to the strength of the dollar) and the stricter privacy regulations imposed by Apple. that block ad tracking and hamper your business. Added to this is the competition from TikTok, the social network that, despite its controversial aspects, has triumphed among young people. In the meantime, the commitment to the Metaverse has yet to pay off and is a losing pit for now.
Meta last November announced it was laying off 11,000 workers, the largest pay adjustment in its history, which was identified as an extraordinary charge of $4.610 million. Currently, in 2022, the workforce has grown by 20% to 86,482 employees. In other words, Meta hired about 14,000 employees last year and then announced it was laying off 11,000. But now, according to various financial media, the company has given thousands of employees a low rating, which is interpreted as the first step in another wave of layoffs.
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