I wrote about this when Elon Musk pioneered it, noting that it would be a good feature for Meta (Facebook parent company) and LinkedIn. Today, it has been adopted: “‘Meta Verified’ will give you a blue badge along with several other benefits, including increased visibility, protection against impersonation, priority customer support, and more” for $12/month.

For years, nobody wanted to do this until the boldest entrepreneur in our generation, Elon Musk, did it, and it is going to become an industry standard henceforth. I am waiting for the LinkedIn one as that is the only one I will pay for; I will put it under business expense since LinkedIn is my CNN, NTA, BBC, NYTimes, Economist, etc combined for business and professional visibility.

Anything that will stop people writing “are you Ndubuisi Ekekwe” even though he/she is chatting with Ndubuisi Ekekwe right there. Hopefully, when LinkedIn does that, that question will disappear and we can build more trust to advance entrepreneurial capitalism.

This is a new revenue source for Meta. I can assure you that most times, we overestimate how customers will react. Those people paying at Twitter are still there because they get more than $20/month for that visibility.

Welcome to Internet Utility 2.0 where you will pay for the privilege of feeding aggregators with data and raw materials which they use to make money. Of course, you also get value in return.

Comment on Feed

Comment 1: Ndubuisi Ekekwe Prof.. Your prediction of business innovation is becoming so prevalent now, its getting to the point it is starting to look ‘ordinary’.

The normalization of showcasing this skill on LinkedIn has moved the bar for self declared ‘thought leaders’ ‘visionaries’ and ‘influencers’

Many of them have just taken an aggressive approach to network building on here, but their content is thin, unoriginal, formulaic, lacks a commitment of opinion, repetitive ( I could go on) and above all, uninspiring.

Show them the way, please. ?

Comment 2: Elon Musk is not just a technocrat but also a business mogul.

He’s currently considering a business model in which public influencers can earn from part of advert revenue.

Comment 3: Elon Musk is on a league of his own, those who taunt him obviously don’t fully understand what that guy embodies, he’s not just bold but also visionary. If Twitter gets 20 million people to pay for blue tick, $2 billion could be within reach per annum, yet for years Twitter was languishing in the hands of people who knew nothing about running a profitable enterprise, rather it was turned into an ideological battlefield, incapable of bringing meaningful returns.

For all the beatings Mark has taken over the last few years, finally the man Musk has shown him the light, a new revenue stream is here.

This verified badge model will also help aggregators negotiate better deals from advertisers, unlike before where anything goes, if a platform can boast of 30 million verified accounts, you atleast know that there are 30 million people capable of paying for something, it’s a better benchmark than what was previously obtainable.

Musk has transformed social media revenue model.

My Response: “This verified badge model will also help aggregators negotiate better deals from advertisers, unlike before where anything goes, if a platform can boast of 30 million verified accounts, you atleast know that there are 30 million people capable of paying for something, it’s a better benchmark than what was previously obtainable.” – very revealing. Amazon Prime number is an x-factor when it negotiates with vendors. Who do you deal with? The company where 100m+ pay to shop or the one that does not even know if people will come tomorrow.

The Nigerian economy faced complex challenges in 2022. One of the most significant of these challenges is the prolonged fuel scarcity, which appears to be slowing down economic activity, increasing inflationary pressure, eroding the purchasing power of the Naira, and pushing more Nigerians into poverty. 

While ordinary Nigerians and many businesses were devising strategies to mitigate the effects of fuel scarcity and rising inflation, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced plans to redesign the country’s currency, specifically the higher denominations, on October 26th, 2022. The announcement came with a tight deadline of January 31st, 2023, to phase out the old N200, N500 and N1,000 notes – which account for 95.6 percent of the total value of the currency in circulation. 

The decision by the CBN to redesign some Naira denominations is not unprecedented in Nigeria, given the history of currency redesigns as obtained in 2007 and 2009 with the lower denomination banknotes. The Naira redesign policy is authorised by Sections 18 (a) and (b) of Nigeria’s Central Bank of Nigeria Act of 2007. According to the Act, the CBN shall (a) arrange for the printing of currency notes and coin minting; and (b) issue, re-issue, and exchange currency notes and coins at the Bank’s offices and such agencies as it may establish or appoint from time to time.

 Both the reasons for the redesign of the Naira and the timing are important factors in examining the policy and the merits of the decision to redesign the currency notes. The CBN highlighted five (5) main reasons for its decision [1].

Apart from promoting economic activity, the Naira currency represents Nigeria’s pride and heritage, far more valuable than its face value and purchasing power – what it can buy. Cash is still central to economic activity in Nigeria, where about 90 percent of transactions occur using money. Therefore, chronic shortages, such as the Naira scarcity experienced since the fourth week of January 2023, due to limited Naira notes printed by the CBN, hoarding by financial institutions and digital financial platform breakdown/malfunction, have economic and sociocultural consequences for the Nigerian economy and the general populace. 

At a broader level, the Nigerian economy is facing continued exchange rate volatility, increased inflationary pressure, and other macroeconomic challenges. These issues have deteriorated socio-economic conditions, increasing insecurity, food shortages, and crime. While this is due to various structural problems, the effects of the pitiable execution of the redesign policy are exacerbating the economy’s situation, mainly because of the prominent role of “cash-in-hand” to economic activities and the unpreparedness of economic actors for the rapid changes which have taken place. This report details an analysis of the CBN’s Naira redesign policy to provide a critical way forward toward addressing the unintended realities emanating from policy implementation.

Download the full document here (PDF)