Twitter wants to charge businesses on the platform by charging them $1,000 per month to keep their gold checkmarks.
Brands that don’t pay up risk losing their gold badges, as reported by The Information.
The social media platform is also adding an extra $50 a month charge to add badges to each account affiliated with the business, as evidenced by internal messages viewed by the outlet.
This aligns with a screenshot posted by social media consultant Matt Navarra, which shows what appears to be an email between Twitter product manager Evan Jones and an unnamed business.
‘As an early access subscriber, you’ll get a gold checkmark for your organization and affiliation badges for its associates,’ says the email.
‘If you’d like to subscribe, Verified for Organizations is $1,000 per month, and $50 per additional affiliated handle per month with one month of free affiliations.’
However, it’s unclear when businesses will lose their checkmarks for not complying.
The changes will mean that companies will now have to spend $12,000 a year for a feature that had previously been free of charge.
Gold checkmark is a recent addition to Twitter, introduced in December as ‘Verified for Organizations’, formerly known as Blue for Business.
This was after Twitter’s disastrous initial implementation where anyone could buy a blue tick for $8 a month as part of the premium Twitter Blue service.
Chief Executive Elon Musk allotted colours for the categories – gold for companies, grey for governments and a blue check for individuals including celebrities.
‘Painful, but necessary,’ he said, adding that verified accounts will be manually authenticated before a check is activated.
MORE : Bird charity banned from Twitter for repeatedly posting woodcock photos
MORE : Twitter to hike its paid subscription to £11 a month for Android users
