Facebook is now copying one of Elon Musk's worst ideas

Remember, way back in early 2022, when all you ever heard was: "I wish I could pay some money, every month, for a blue checkmark on Twitter".

Yeah, us neither. But somehow, Elon Musk thought it was a masterstroke business decision, and rolled out the opportunity to be fake-verified on Twitter late last year.

Was it a success? Not really.

Turned out charging $8-a-month for some pixels was a tough pitch.

In a recent report from The Information, they obtained a document stating just 180,000 people in the US were paying for subscriptions on the platform, including Twitter Blue, in mid-January.

The global number of subscribers would also be valued at around $28m in annual revenue. That sounds a lot, but it's a tiny sum for a major tech company.

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Undeterred, Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has decided to pivot to a paid blue check model, too.

Meta Verified will cost $11.99 a month on the web and $14.99 a month if purchased on iOS.

It will first launch in Australia and New Zealand but will be rolled out more widely eventually.

Those coughing up the sum will have to share a government ID to get verified. In return they'll get a blue badge, impersonation protection, and direct access to customer support.

The government ID is probably a good idea, given the chaos of Twitter's paid-for blue check rollout.

That free-for-all led to fake accounts posing as celebrities and businesses, prompting the tech billionaire to create tiers to identify official accounts.

Alas, the Twitter Blue subscription service may be proving to be Musk’s biggest failure yet.

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