Taking a page out of Twitter's book, Meta Platforms
In an announcement on Instagram, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that for $11.99 a month on web and $14.99 per month on iOS
"The new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services," Zuckerberg wrote.
Prospective users are required to be at least 18 years of age or older, submit a government ID that matches the name and photo you have on Facebook and Instagram, and meet the platforms' minimum activity requirements.
Additionally, users subscribed to the service will get exclusive stickers for Instagram Stories and Reels, and will also receive 100 free stars per month, or the digital currency for tipping creators on Facebook. Businesses will not be eligible for the service for now and users will not be about to change their profile name, username, birth date, or profile pictures without applying to the verification process again.
"Long term, we want to build a subscription service offering that's valuable to everyone, including creators, businesses and our community at large," Meta wrote in a separate blog post. "As part of this vision, we are evolving the meaning of the verified badge so we can expand access to verification and more people can trust the accounts they interact with are authentic."
Meta has previously offered verified badges to users like celebrities, politicitions, and other notable people and organizations on its social media platforms.
This new reimaged subscription verification is similar to Twitter's service called Twitter Blue, which charges a monthly fee of $8. This service was criticized by users, with some abusing the new paid option soon after launch by impersonating celebrating and brands. Twitter has since relaunched the service, applying similar rules to Meta like profile changes require the user to re-verify their account.
Bank of America
The analysts described Meta's new paid service as a positive offering for creators and influencers --not the average consumer -- making it attractive to those users as it could "help them increase visibility and reach with a badge and potentially higher positioning in search and content results."
"Given a broader audience reach and bigger revenue opportunity for creators, we believe Meta could outperform the subscriber ramp (as a percent of users) of peer subscription offerings (the service will likely be refined and improved over time)," the analysts added.
