Twitter Verification is coming for everyone

Twitter announced on 29th July that from now on, they will be rolling out their verification badge to all users.

What is it?

The Twitter verification badge is essentially a little blue symbol with a white checkmark designed to help you spot the difference between parody/fake accounts and real people or organisations. Most big celebrities and businesses have the badge and are verified, in the past, it has only been available to such organisations or individuals, however from now on all accounts will extend the system to include all users, especially those at high risk of being impersonated

Tina Bhatnagar Twitter’s vice president of User Services has said;

“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. 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.”

Why hasn’t this happened before?

Previously, Twitter had allowed users to apply for verification, but pulled the feature years back, presumably due to the number of new and otherwise non-worthy (spam, parody, etc.) accounts seeking verification.

Since then it’s all been done manually- a behind the scene process, done without the ability for users to request it – only 0.06 percent of the companies 310 million monthly users are verified.

Why now?

We believe that Twitter may be trying to tighten security and work towards making the platform a safer, nicer place to be and this is just another step in that process. With the number of severe trolling cases being covered by the news (most recently, Leslie Jones from the new Ghostbuster film) going up this might be another step towards decreasing the number of fake accounts in use by trolls and other internet pests…roll on Twitter verification for everyone!