How much is a verification tick on Twitter worth for your business? 

Clearly, there is value in having official recognition, and an indicator to visitors that this is your genuine, verified brand handle. 

Would you pay $50 per month for Twitter’s new gold checkmark for brands? What about $100? That feels a bit steep, right?

Hopefully it doesn’t, because Twitter’s actually considering charging $1, 000 per month for brands to be granted a gold tick. The new package would also then enable brands to effectively verify their own staff with its official brand logo marker, but that will cost you an extra $50 per employee added.

That… seems like a lot to pay, for not much in return.

The early pricing was communicated to some brand partners last week, while The Information has also viewed internal Twitter communications which confirm the proposed pricing. 

Which doesn’t definitively mean that Twitter is locking in that price point, and it could well be that Twitter’s just putting out the feelers at this point to see how the market reacts. But $12k per annum for a checkmark in an app seems like a very high price to pay, which, I suspect, many, many brands will not. 

The pricing strategy is consistent with a platform that’s owned by the (former) richest man on the world. In the initial discussions around Twitter Blue, Elon and Co. were considering charging $20 a month for a blue checkmark, which sparked much criticism and derision. Musk eventually settled on less than half that, then made several allusions as to how $8 really isn’t much to pay. 

Which it isn’t when you have an infinite pool of money to draw on - which is likely also why Musk suspects that $1, 000 is not much for brands to pay for a checkmark in the app. 

But it is, or it will be, for the majority of businesses. And similar to Twitter Blue, the bigger question is why would you pay? Musk and Co. aren’t offering much in return for your dollars, just a checkmark and the good feeling that you’ll get from supporting the app, and being part of Elon’s great Twitter experiment. 

I don’t personally understand the value. The status of verification ticks is tied to exclusivity, and the fact that not just anyone can go get one. But now, they can, so it’s valuable now because…?

I also can’t imagine Twitter turning down $1000 per month from anyone at this stage, given its financial challenges, which will likely see a heap of dodgy organizations locking in a gold checkmark, and further devaluing the option.

So, would you pay $1,000 per month for a gold tick? Should you?

I’m guessing the answers are ‘no’ and ‘heck no’, in whatever order you choose.