Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg declares a paid Instagram and Facebook subscription service

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, made the announcement of a new paid subscription service for Instagram and Facebook on Sunday that gives users a hallowed blue check for a monthly fee. His social media accounts were Meta Verified. He stated that testing will begin this week in New Zealand and Australia and soon expand to other countries.

Meta Verified will cost $11.99 per month for iOS users and $14.99 for web users. This week, it begins its wider rollout in Australia and New Zealand.

Meta will use government identification to verify a user’s account and issue a blue badge for $11.99 per month on the web or $14.99 per month on the Apple and Android operating systems. Before, Meta’s blue badges were free and only given to famous people or businesses.

Subscribers will likewise get extra protection against account impersonation and direct access to customer support, Meta said.

Mark Zuckerberg stated that the subscription “lets you verify your account with a government ID, get a blue badge, get extra impersonation protection against accounts claiming to be you, and get direct access to customer support.”

The founder of Facebook said that giving customers direct access to customer support will cost “a significant amount of money,” but that subscription revenue will cover that cost.

After Twitter launched a redesigned version of its own paid service, Twitter Blue, the new option gives users access to benefits like a verified profile.

Shortly after completing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter last year, Elon Musk launched Twitter Blue. He stated at the time that an exodus of advertisers from Twitter was causing a “massive drop in revenue.”

Over the course of the past year and a half, Meta has had its own issues, as evidenced by the fact that shares of the company’s stock have declined by approximately 54% since the peak in September 2021.

The virtual entertainment monster has laid off around 11,000 specialists lately, part of a more extensive slump among enormous tech organizations.

In his message, Mark Zuckerberg stated, “This new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services.”

According to Meta, the change will not affect previously verified public figures or other individuals. Meta Verified is for people who use social media for business but aren’t well-known in the public eye, such as influencers and others.

In launching a subscription service, Meta is following Twitter’s lead. Twitter Blue, which provides users with a blue check to verify their accounts, began charging users $8 per month at the end of last year.

Twitter took the service one step further on Saturday by announcing that users would no longer be able to secure their accounts using two-factor authentication unless they paid the $8 per month subscription fee for Twitter Blue.

As online advertising slows, social media companies have been trying to find new ways to make money. Despite an increase in users, Meta announced earlier this month that revenue had decreased for the third quarter in a row. In November, Meta made the announcement that it would be cutting 11,000 employees or 13% of its workforce.

Meta joins other platforms with subscription-based business models like YouTube, Reddit, and Discord.

After being forced to remove the feature due to the emergence of fake “verified” accounts, Twitter relaunched its own verification subscription service, Twitter Blue, in December. In order to distinguish between accounts, the check mark options now come in a variety of colors: gray checks for government agencies and other organizations, gold checks for businesses, and blue checks for individuals, celebrities included.

After purchasing the platform for $44 billion, owner Elon Musk is making an effort to expand his subscription business by charging iOS and Android users $11 per month for Twitter Blue.