The badge of the elites, seen on politicians, celebs, journalists, sports personalities amongst others, all across Twitter has now been opened up to the general public – in the form of applying to obtain the prestigious blue verified tick. Users now have to fill in a form and ensure their profile has a verified phone number, confirmed email address, a bio, profile picture, a birthday set for the account, a website URL as well as being a public profile.
Previously, Twitter only manually handed out the verification mark to accounts it believed fit its mostly secret specifications, one being that your account is of public interest. It is important to mention, however, that although Twitter has opened up their blue tick verification to an application process that not all accounts will be verified.
Sorry Little Johhny, I’m afraid your 3 followers and 2 tweets won’t cut it.
In a statement, Twitter announced: “We want to make it even easier for people to find creators and influencers on Twitter so it makes sense for us to let people apply for verification,” said Tina Bhatnagar, Twitter’s vice president of User Services. “We hope opening up this application process results in more people finding great, high-quality accounts to follow, and for these creators and influencers to connect with a broader audience.”
To help evaluate user verification requests, Twitter has said in their help center that part of the process will be asking you why they should verify an account, to help them understand what impact such person has in their field. They’ve also said that if such account represents a corporation or company, that they’d like to know their mission. Other things Twitter asks for is for the requestee to provide URLs to support their request that signifies newsworthiness or relevancy to such account, they also state that they may request a scan of government-issued ID to confirm an identity.
To submit a verification request for your personal, or business account you can do so here.