Itâs the first of the month, and if youâre anything like me you may have spent the first part of your morning scrolling through your bank account because the first means itâs time to pay some bills. As I was scrolling through my bankâs app, contemplating how on earth I justify paying so much in rent in Southern California, I noticed a delightful little reminder that I need to reassess my spending habits that read â-$14.99â from none other than Instagram.
Yup, for less than a Netflix subscription, Instagram allows you to be up there with the stars and slap that pretty cyan-blue checkmark right next to your name.
Your mom wonât care. Neither will your significant other. But for just a moment, someone who hasnât been paying attention to the latest news in social media might just think youâre really important.
If you canât tell, I feel a little silly for subscribing to Meta Verified. I mean, I would have submitted my ID for some sort of verification, but it didnât have to be the blue check. They could have chosen any other color, but Iâm sure the folks at Meta knew people outside of those truly concerned about security would bite. And it worked.
According to Investopedia, Meta Verified stands to generate $2B in 2023 in the first year. Thatâs a whole lot of verified accounts.
By contrast, Twitter Blue, which gave some real features and a blue check only added $27M in new subscription revenue to Elonâs platform. (According to QZ.com). Of course, Twitter Blue was is at half the cost of Meta Verified, but even so itâs still way off.
Twitterâs version of this at least gave you some real features, like formatting your text, getting served half the amount of ads, prioritized ranking in search and more.
Meta Verified?
Nada.
Well, they tell you that you get extra stickers for Stories and Reels, dedicated account support, and âproactive account protectionâ which is essentially 2-factor authentication (Twitter Blue calls it what it is). But really, you donât get anything. I still get emails every day saying someone was trying to hack into my account. I donât care about the stickers at all, like seriously who uses stickers on reels anyway?
As of right now, Meta Verified is kind of a load of $14.999 crap, pardon my language. I canât help but think that the massive uptick in imposter profiles and hacked accounts over the last year was gearing up for this - but then again I may just be coming off a Succession binge.
The thing is, Meta didnât need a tactic like that to get people to subscribe. Iâve heard horror stories of influencers paying tens of thousands to get their accounts verified for years. Millions of other influencers, personalities, and wannabe superstars wanted more than anything to get the validation of a Blue Check, and they got it.
Who am I kidding? We got it.
I almost unsubscribed. Almost. But I didnât.
About a month before Meta rolled out Verified, someone faked my account to try and scam people out of CashApp access. It was actually pretty violating; they used all my pictures and captions, followed a bunch of my friends and DMâd all of them to try and get them to buy into a financial scam. Meta did nothing to resolve the issue, even after dozens of my friends reported the account.
It wasnât until comments were left on the photos that whoever was managing the account deleted all the information and posts, and picked someone elseâs profile to impersonate. Somehow when I searched the fake name the new profile came up.
This wasnât the first time, either. Years back, my Instagram and Facebook accounts were impersonated, mocking the quotes I shared. That one was deleted by Meta (then Facebook) but then again, that was 6+ years ago.
So before I clicked that unsubscribe button, something thoughtâŠ.well the last thing I want is for someone to try and impersonate me again and attempt to scam someone who actually trusts me. So I swiped out of the unsubscribe screen and submitted to the slightly embarrassing fact that yeah, I too, paid for my Blue Check.
So would I recommend it to anyone else?
If your profile is public and you intend to keep it that way, then yes. Itâs as simple as that. So many of my friends have had their content and name used to promote pornographic content, hate content, and more. For that reason alone, I think itâs worth it. Protect your identity, all of these deep fakes the AI-generated content⊠itâs only going to get worse before it gets better.
I donât listen to Gary Vee much anymore, but when it comes to social media, heâs pretty much always right. Hereâs what he has to say about it:
I wholeheartedly believe that if you publish content thatâs meant to be consumed by the general public, itâs a good idea to invest in some sort of verification. It doesnât matter if you have a million followers or one thousand. If the general public is supposed to trust your content, get your account verified. Will it feel kinda silly? Totally. Is it kind of silly? Totally. But itâs just too easy to get ripped off, and itâs too easy for someone to try and impersonate you.
Read My Texts
A few weeks ago, I posed the question to a few of my entrepreneur friends: How do you define work-life balance and how do you achieve it? One friend of mine replied after I published the replies, but she gave such a vulnerable, raw answer from a womanâs perspective I had to share it.
Her name is Elle, and sheâs an entrepreneur that helps indie brands get to mass. She also has her own line of swimwear and is seriously one of the smartest people Iâve ever met. Give her a follow.
For all of you managers, team leads, and founders, I found a podcast youâre going to love:
So many podcasts are just influencers interviewing other influencers, and eventually, you just end up hearing the same thing over and over again. I was getting tired of it and needed a podcast I could directly apply to my professional life, and I happened to stumble upon Harvard Business Reviewâs âCoaching Real Leadersâ.
Executive coach Muriel Wilkins records single sessions of organization leaders to navigate challenges spanning from career changes to building credibility with your team. Iâve found it insanely valuable and I hope you do, too. Check it out here.
Give me a prompt!
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