At long last Twitter has reopened the verification process since shutting the entire self request verification part of its platform down back in 2017.
In their statement about the relaunch of requests they said: “Over the past several months, we’ve been working to bring clarity to the verification eligibility criteria and launched a new policy shaped by public feedback. We also started enforcing that policy by automatically removing the verified badge from accounts that no longer meet the updated criteria for verification, such as those that are inactive or incomplete.”
Twitter closed the request service a while back following a deluge of undesirables requesting verification and the whole process being quite misunderstood. With this new move they have taken consultation from users and made who qualifies for verification a lot more clear.
Twitter are also releasing new categories later this year including: scientists, academics and religious leaders and will be executed in more of a tag style – more of that below. To stay up to date with verification, users are urged to follow the @Verified account on Twitter.
Verified badges from accounts which no longer meet the updated criteria for verification, such as those which are inactive or incomplete, will be removed automatically.
In a blog post announcing the change, the company said: “It gives people on Twitter context about who they’re having conversations with so they can determine if it’s trustworthy, which our research has shown leads to healthier, more informed conversations.”
How to apply for Twitter verification 2021
Your chances of succeeding through this self verification is quite small, and quite rightly – far too many people who are not of note seem to have a blue tick on Twitter.
We liken your chances of getting one to the chances of the Wikipedia community approving an official page from you – you need to be of note, think whether or not you have a chance of appearing in an encyclopedia, if the answer is yes then you might have a chance, otherwise don’t bother.
Step1: Select your category
To qualify for verification, you must fit the criteria of one of the six categories: Government; Companies, brands and organizations; News organizations and journalists; Entertainment, Sports and gaming; Activists, organizers, and other influential individuals
Step 2: Tell them who you are
You can upload government ID, an email and a website address. This should be enough for them to understand how you are of note. They have removed the bit where you get to submit a story along with that – I imagine they were painful to read most of the time!
As easy as that!
But wait…there’s more…
Twitter are also releasing more updates to profiles “Verification is just one part of our work to help people understand who they’re interacting with on Twitter. We know that it’s not always easy to evaluate the authenticity of accounts on the internet, and that understanding who you’re interacting with is core to the public conversation.”
There are a lot of brilliant bot accounts on Twitter – and to help people understand when they are looking at one they are rolling out bot labels as shown below.
A long awaited update is also coming in the form of memorialised accounts. This has been a struggle for nearly all social media platforms since launch – how do you go about letting people know that the owner of the account has been deceased, so we are a big fan of this update.
Business account updates.
Finally in recent announcements there may well be a change coming for company accounts referred to as ‘Professional Profiles’ there is now a live test on this on platform.
“Professional Profiles are a new tool that will allow businesses, non-profits, publishers, and creators – anyone who uses Twitter for work – to display specific information about their business directly on their profile.”
Professional profiles include more information about you and your business, including address and contact info, within the main profile frame, and an updated layout. There are other features in the works too, including: product displays panel or image gallery.
