Not sure that this is a great indicator of take-up for Meta’s Meta Verified product, but…
Over the last few months, Meta has been running a program which includes gifting Meta Verified to selected creators.
As you can see in this example, posted by @ayfondo on Threads (and shared by Matt Navarra), Meta’s informing some creators that they are eligible to get access to Meta Verified for free for one year, as a means to increase interest in its paid subscription offering.
Meta Verified offers creators enhanced support, more account protection, and add-on profile elements, in addition to a blue checkmark to signify identity in the app. Meta’s pitching this as a reward for “valued creators,” with its identity verification elements, in particular, helping to enhance their in-app experience.
Meta’s had a program in place to lure creators from other platforms for some time, which includes Meta Verified offers like this.
But the fact that Meta’s giving it away doesn’t really suggest that it’s been a big seller for the platform as yet, nor that it’s having the desired credibility boost that Meta had hoped.
Meta followed the lead of X in offering verification as a paid add-on element. That provides Meta with an additional revenue stream, and some apps have been able to convert their paid add-on offerings into significant revenue drivers, feeding more cash into their coffers.
But at the same time, paid verification undermines a key value proposition of what that blue checkmark initially offered, in lending credibility, and a level of notoriety, to an account.
It used to be that a blue checkmark meant that this person was important, and likely a valuable connection, because they were only awarded to people with high follower counts and or a high profile off the platform. But now, anyone can buy one, which erodes the value of the blue tick as a product, as the marker itself doesn’t really mean much anymore.
And given that these add-on subscriptions are never going to be a key revenue driver for each of the main social apps, it may seem like it may not have been worth selling checkmarks, and undermining that core value of the signifier.
But then again, Meta’s likely making a few hundred million per quarter from the offering, as are X and Snapchat for their respective verified packages, so it’s hard to argue with the logic.
Meta still hasn’t shared any official data on Meta Verified take-up, but taking a look at Meta’s Q1 performance numbers, it looks like Meta’s probably sold around 7 million or so subscriptions to Meta Verified, with its “Other” revenue stream increasing by around $280 million per quarter versus when the product was launched in Q2 2023 (note: its “Other” income excludes Reality Labs, so Ray Ban glasses and VR headset sales).
Using basic math, that would equate to an additional $93 million in revenue per month in this segment. Dividing that by the average cost of Meta Verified ($13), you get about 7.2 million subscriptions.
That’s obviously a ballpark estimate, as there are various other factors to consider, but that also makes sense, based on Meta’s overall userbase.
Meta has almost 4 billion users across its family of apps (Facebook, Messenger, IG, and WhatsApp), and 7 million or so subscribers would equate to less than 1% of its total user base, which is about the same rate that most social subscription offerings are seeing.
So while checkmarks are no longer the marker of prestige that they once were, and are no longer sought after in the same way, the cash that they generate for the platforms is significant. And for a product that didn’t exist till two years ago, that’s pretty good, even if it means that blue ticks don’t mean what they used to.
Will offering them to high-profile users increase interest, and get more people to stay on as paying subscribers after that trial period?
Seems like a worthy experiment either way.
