Zuckerberg announces paid subscription for Facebook and Instagram, Like Elon Musk

Zuckerberg announces paid subscription for Facebook and Instagram, Like Elon Musk

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Sunday announced a new paid subscription service for Facebook and Instagram, handing users a holy blue check for a monthly fee.

Meta Verified will cost $11.99 per month on web and $14.99 per month on iOS. It’s launching in Australia and New Zealand this week ahead of a wider rollout.

Membership “lets you verify your account with a government ID, get a blue badge, get additional impersonation protection against accounts claiming to be you, and get direct access to customer support,” Zuckerberg said.

The Facebook founder said that providing direct access to customer support would cost “a significant amount”, which would be made up with subscription revenue.

The new option comes after Twitter launched a new version of its own paid service, Twitter Blue, which allows users to get a verified profile and other benefits.

Elon Musk launched Twitter Blue shortly after completing a $44 billion deal to buy the company last year. He said at the time that Twitter was seeing a “huge decline in revenue” due to an exodus of advertisers from the platform.

Meta has faced its own problems over the past year and a half, with shares of the company down nearly 54% since its September 2021 high.

The social media giant has laid off nearly 11,000 workers in recent months, part of a wider slump among big tech companies.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk called it ‘inevitable’ after a Twitter channel swiped at Meta head Mark Zuckerberg for copying the Twitter Blue model by rolling out paid subscriptions.

It wrote, “Zuckerberg copies Twitter: $12 bucks a month to get verified and get a blue badge”.

It shared Mark Zuckerberg’s post announcing the new product in a broadcast channel. “This week we are launching Meta Verified – a subscription service that allows you to verify your account with a government ID, earn a blue badge, get extra impersonation protection against accounts claiming to be you, and get direct access to customer support.

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