Pay for your blue badge on Instagram and Facebook

While Twitter has all sorts of issues with badges, Meta is about it. You can get a blue badge on Instagram and Facebook to show you’re ‘verified’. It’s also coming to the UK now, and we expect it won’t be long before we get it in the Netherlands too.

TwitterBlue

Twitter Blue was the first company to get really crazy about asking for money for ‘verified’ accounts, and Zuckerberg seemed to like it too. However, you might be surprised at how much it’s catching on: 290,000 people have Twitter Blue, 180,000 of which are Americans. In the Netherlands, although we don’t have any official statistics, we also observe some people who do.

The big problem with Twitter Blue is that it has made badges a paid feature open to abuse. If you want such a badge, the requirements you have to fulfill are mainly financial, rather you have to prove your true self. You have to prove something, but it’s less than a badge comes without cost. In any case, Musk has inspired others, because as we wrote in February, that blue verification mark is now called MetaVerified on Instagram and Facebook, and will now appear in more countries.

Meta checked

The choice of a blue color is surprising: on Twitter it made sense, because a blue check mark is blue, similar to Twitter’s color, but a check mark on Instagram is bright blue. This is a special choice, especially if you feel connected to the US ‘Blue Badge’ because you are in a wheelchair and therefore have a special parking space (for example). And somewhat confusing, probably.

Either way, Meta Verified is expanding, and it’s not cheap. It costs $14.99 per month on the iPhone and $11.99 per month for the browser. Once it lands in mainland Europe, we expect it to cost something like this in Euros. Meta Verified has more than just that badge: you get direct access to customer service, and your account is better protected against identity fraud. The latter is especially noteworthy: shouldn’t it be for everyone? Of course, this paid subscription means that your posts are more likely to appear on other people’s timelines, and therefore you have more reach.

Blue badge

As for the meta, the old checkmarks aren’t gone yet, but they will be long gone. However, nothing has been said about it yet, so now you can still get a badge with enough popularity. So do what you can without paying. However, this also applies: What is the badge worth if you simply pay? Why would you pay for a badge that you can currently score with enough popularity? As far as we are concerned, Meta Verified may be away from the Netherlands for a while, but we fear that hope is in vain.