Twitter is considering charging businesses $1,000 per month to keep their gold-verified checkmarks.
Companies and organizations that do not pay the fee will lose their badges, according to The Information, though it is unclear when this will happen. Internal messages viewed by the outlet suggested that it will cost $1,000 a month to keep gold badges and another $50 a month for each ‘affiliated account’.
That claim is supported by a leaked email from a Twitter staff member to an unknown organization, in which the organization was offered ‘early access’ to ‘Verification for Organizations.’ Evan Jones, a staff member, quoted the same $1,000 subscription cost and offered the organization a ‘gold checkmark’ in the email, dated February 2 and shared by social media analyst Matt Navarra.
The change is the latest in a series implemented by Twitter’s new owner and CEO Elon Musk in an effort to increase revenue and turn the company profitable. This includes mass layoffs, which saw its workforce halve from around 7,500 before the acquisition, according to the WSJ.
It comes just months after Musk’s contentious decision to charge regular Twitter users $8 per month for the classic blue checkmarks.
The $8 subscription was introduced around the same time that businesses and organizations were assigned new gold checkmarks and square profile pictures, rather than round ones.