Meta Announces Fee for Verification
This week, Facebook parent company Meta announced that becoming verified on Facebook and Instagram will come with a fee, $11.99/month. This means that to be verified, you will have to pay. But what does that mean for your business page and your social media marketing efforts?
What is Verification?
Being verified on Facebook meant that your page was identified as a notable person or organization that posted quality content. You would also need to submit proof that the person or organization was real. There is generally a follower count threshold that you would have to meet as well. Verified pages were given a little blue badge next to their name. This little blue badge would tell followers that the page is run by the person claiming to run it. For example, your favorite celebrity. Facebook and Instagram verification has previously been free but now, Meta is exploring charging for this badge.
What happens now?
In the new model, in order to get the Facebook or Instagram verified badge, you will have to pay for it. Other platforms have tried doing this with varying success. YouTube and Snapchat have rolled this out and have been rather successful. Twitter suffered a massive PR blow and quickly canceled the program. For now, Meta is only testing it in select markets so there’s nothing that you need to worry about.
Why are they doing this?
Meta is seeing other companies trying it out and wants a piece of the pie for themselves. They could also be trying to shore up some income for other projects, such as the Meta-verse. Who knows the real reason that they are making the decision to charge for this but ultimately, it may not be as beneficial as they think.
What does 4/4 Solutions think?
Well, I don’t think this is going to be something that sticks around long because of lack of interest. I am slightly concerned that if it succeeds, it opens the door to charging for social media, though I don’t see that really happening for a long time.
Additionally, it’s going to de-value the ‘verified’ status. Where you once had to prove you were notable and real, now anyone willing to pay for it can be verified. If anyone and everyone can do something, is it really considered special? You’ll still have to prove you’re a real person so there will still be a level of trusting the content.
For years, people have feared Facebook becoming a pay-to-play platform. For businesses, it’s almost been that way for a while. I like to say Facebook is no longer used for discovery and more for encouraging customer loyalty. Unless you’re willing to fork out advertising dollars, people don't just stumble across your page like they used to. And while I’ve heard rumors that paying to be verified will push your content out to more people (which in my opinion might be the only real benefit for businesses), I have yet to see that confirmed anywhere.
For now, I don’t think this is something that will have any effect on small business social media pages. Some large businesses may find it as a necessary expense for their social media efforts but for pages with less than 5,000 followers, it probably won’t be worth the expense.
This is not something that I see becoming a requirement for pages or users. If that were to happen, Meta would see a massive exodus in accounts on both their platforms.