How Meta Verified works, the paid version of Facebook and Instagram

Meta is preparing a paid subscription service for Facebook and Instagram that will be called Meta Verified and that will work in a similar way to how other ‘premium’ versions do on other social networks such as Twitter (which owns the Twitter Blue service) or Snapchat ( Snapchat Plus ).

Meta Verified will begin testing in Australia and New Zealand in the coming weeks

With this service, paying subscribers will be able to access additional advantages and functionalities on these social networks. The subscription will cost $11.99 per month if it is purchased from the desktop or through the Google Play Store, while if it is done from the iOS application it will cost 14.99 euros.

These prices are unitary per social network, so to subscribe to Facebook and Instagram you would have to multiply the amount by two. By making this payment, users will access additional benefits, such as obtaining a pre-verification badge for user identification. According to Meta, the service would also provide “proactive account protection, access to account support and greater visibility and reach”, as a company executive has pointed out to the Bloomberg agency.

According to this statement, Meta Verified subscribers would get more reach for their posts, thus getting around the Facebook algorithm and the Instagram algorithm , and making their content more visible than those who don’t pay for a social networking service that Until now and since its creation, it had been free. Your content would also appear prominently in the search results, as well as your comments and recommendations.

How to access Meta Verified

The Meta Verified service will be available to personal users and content creators on Facebook and Instagram, and will not be available, at least for the moment, for business accounts.

In order to access Meta Verified, you must be at least 18 years of age and the profile must be complete, with a profile photograph showing the user’s face.

It will also be necessary to meet a minimum of activity in the profile and have double authentication activated.

Once a user has been verified through Meta Verified, if they change their username on Instagram or Facebook, they will need to go through the verification process again.

What’s included in Meta Verified

Meta has released the list of features that Meta Verified subscribers can enjoy on each of the social networks to which they subscribe:

-A verification badge.

-Personalized customer service, something important, since it is not usually very easy to contact Facebook and Instagram.

-Priority of the comments made by people who are part of Meta Verified in the publications of other people.

-Featured recommendations from people who are part of Meta Verified in other people’s search results.

-Exclusive stickers for stories

When can you hire Meta Verified

For now, it is known that Meta will start testing this subscription service in the first week of March in Australia and New Zealand only. Depending on the results obtained, it will extend the testing period to more countries.

With this measure, Meta joins other social networks that have launched payment services, such as Twitter and Snapchat. The decline in advertising revenue caused by the current economic situation and the war in Ukraine has led the company to announce major layoffs in recent months and to think of new ways to monetize the service beyond just serving ads.

This is why the creation of social networks with first and second category users is being considered, depending on whether they pay or not, which could completely change the way of using these platforms that, until now, had been totally free. However, once the need has been created in the users, Meta considers making them pay for certain services or for accessing additional functions. It will be necessary to see what acceptance the Meta Verified programs have among Internet users.