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Twitter is now inviting businesses to sign-up for its coming ‘Verification for Organizations’ subscription offering, which will effectively be Twitter’s replacement for the current verification process for business users.
We will soon launch Verification for Organizations, formerly known as Blue for Business. Today, you can apply for early access via our waitlist here: https://t.co/wNdVPXHQRq
— Twitter Business (@TwitterBusiness) January 13, 2023
As per the above tweet, you can now sign-up for the waitlist for the new business verification offering, by adding your business’s Twitter handle and contact details to the list.
So what will you get if/when you get approved for the program?
Twitter hasn’t provided a heap of info as yet, outside of this description:
“As a subscriber, you and your business will receive business accounts and affiliation badges through our self-serve administrative portal.”
So you’ll get the new gold checkmark for your brand, with the current blue ticks set to eventually be taken away from legacy verified accounts. Twitter hasn’t provided a date as to when that will occur, but essentially, if you want to keep your business verification, you’ll eventually have to sign-up for this new program – which will also see your brand logo added to employee accounts, as approved by you.
How much will it cost? No idea.
Twitter hasn’t released that info either – so you’re effectively signing up to get advanced access to a gold checkmark, as opposed to a blue one, a square profile picture and affiliate badges. For a fee of some description.
You would also assume that Twitter will be looking to charge more than the $8 per month that it’s currently offering its personal Twitter Blue verification package for – but again, we have nothing definitive to go on at this stage.
Will it be worth it?
Well, without the detail of the full Verification for Organizations package, it’s hard to say, but based on what info we do have, it doesn’t seem like it’ll be worth paying to maintain your official status on a platform that’s been slowly degrading over time, while it’s also allowing many extremists and conspiracy theorists that had previously been banned back on the app, which is probably not great for brand placement.
But some brands will pay. How many we can’t determine, but some will have signed up for the waitlist already, and various businesses will be willing to pay for a perceived level of authority that comes with that subscription to Twitter 2.0.
But when everyone can pay for a checkmark, there’s no real authority there anymore, right? Like, as soon as Twitter started letting users pay for a blue checkmark, it immediately lost the value that they’re charging for, and the same with brands. If Twitter’s not thoroughly vetting applications (as it’s not doing with Twitter Blue sign-ups), then that ‘verification’ doesn’t really mean anything.
If this is the case, then any business, even the most questionable operators you can imagine, will soon be able to buy a gold tick, and present themselves as legit.
Which, again, seems to immediately erode the value proposition of the offering – but maybe there’s more to it, with enhanced analytics, content management, maybe Twitter has a broader package it’s working on for the program, and it just hasn’t revealed all as yet.
Maybe that’s why Twitter is cutting off third-party apps and tools, as this is part of a broader push to keep that info in-house, and add similar functionalities into its own offerings.
We don’t know, but you can sign-up for the program right now, if you’re really keen.
Twitter says that it will be reviewing applications and opening up access ‘to a limited group on a rolling basis in the coming weeks’.