If anyone had said that being verified on a social media platform would be a paid feature back in 2022, I wouldn’t have been surprised. I also would have thought that was really stupid.
Apparently, LinkedIn thinks so too! While other social media companies like Twitter and Meta continue to push their paid verification services, LinkedIn has announced that it will be rolling out a few methods to be verified on its professional network — for no charge at all.
The company started rolling out verification options back in 2022, but today it announced three more ways that users can get verified on LinkedIn. The first is CLEAR, an identity platform that most people use to get through airport security faster.
We’re partnering with CLEAR, a secure identity platform, to provide verification for our LinkedIn members in the US. Beginning this month, you can display on your profile that you verified your identity with CLEAR. All you need is a U.S. government-issued ID and U.S. phone number.
The platform is also going to start using company-issued email addresses to verify your identity since you can prove you work at the companies you list on your profile.
Available now to 50 million members globally on LinkedIn, you can verify where you work using your company-issued email address. There are over 4,000 companies, and this is one more way to demonstrate the authenticity of your profile. Over time we will be rolling this out to more companies and expanding eligibility.
The last way users can verify themselves on LinkedIn is through Microsoft Entra. The company says that companies will be able to “leverage the Microsoft Entra Verified ID platform to issue digital workplace IDs for free, enabling workers to display the verification on their LinkedIn profile.” That will start rolling out in April.
As LinkedIn continues to offer free verification, Twitter now charges users $7.99 per month for Twitter Blue for the blue checkmark. Meta also recently rolled out paid verification for both Facebook and Instagram.
