
When Twitter decided to make account verification a simpler process, many rejoiced at the opportunity to be branded. Some accounts were obviously lacking verification, while some just covet it.
And now that itâs here, verification feels like desperation.
Whatâs in a verification?
So letâs be really clear on something: verification means nothing. It doesnât get you anything, and it doesnât profoundly change your Twitter experience.
The âverifiedâ badge simply means that whoever is verifying Twitter accounts at the company feels confident that youâre you and not some bot or imposter. Do you have an email and maybe a website? Cool, youâre you.

Who should be verified?
Thatâs tricky to answer, and highly subjective. But the short, snide answer is this: not everyone, and probably not you â and maybe not even me.
Verification is a tool that should be used to filter real people, companies and services from imposters â and to my mind, only those that are at risk of being (or have already been) mimicked on Twitter should get it.
Because itâs entirely possible that some confused soul would ping one of many troll accounts rather than the real person or company. In typing â@â followed by some text, the verified badge should help filter those results.
Case in point: verification itself. Or himself. The â@verifiedâ handle is Twitterâs own for verified users, but â@verificationâ is some dude with one tweet from 114 days ago.
A new user curious about how to get verified may be totally lost without the badge @verified gave itself.

Twitter looks desperate
Data suggests Twitter is verifying users at a much more rapid clip, but we donât learn which â or what kind â of users are being verified.
Some were entities that should have been verified all along. My favorite example was Android Central; there was no way that account wasnât Android Central, yet there was no verification for it until this open process.
Iâm happy for AC (Theyâre all really good people, go follow it if youâre not already), but where was the proactivity from Twitter to verify them long ago? Why wasnât that account verified once it established a strong following?
This open verification enrollment scheme is starting to feel like desperation on Twitterâs part.
Like when Google+ handed out vanity URLs.
â Nate Swanner (@NateSwanner) July 20, 2016
Verification feels desperate, and thereâs no good look for Twitter in all of this. If theyâre trying to curry favor with average users, the patina of having a badge wears off quickly. It changes very little about your experience, save for the random celebrity response because their PR person filters out unverified users.
And if Twitter is trying to win brands over, theyâve got other battles to concern themselves with. Sites like ours are far more concerned with how people find us than being one of the cool kids on Twitter.
Twitter does a good job of referring site traffic, but Facebook almost always does far better. Verification canât help that.
And verification doesnât bring more users because itâs meant for existing users. If you listen to the pundits, Twitter needs more users, not happier mainstays.
Twitter also needs to get a handle on abuse, and verification doesnât solve that either.

Itâs not bad, just not necessary
As someone whoâs been trolled on social media, I can tell you that itâs not fun, or funny. A verified badge at least helps people I do business with know Iâm the real me.
But so does email, or simply checking The Next Web to see which social account Iâve got listed in my articles.
Verifying brands is more useful, but ultimately not necessary either. A simple peek into a brandâs tweet history should prove to you it is the right company.
Verified users may like Twitter a bit more, and use it more often as a result of feeling special, but thatâs probably short lived if they canât find other value in the service. The only âwinâ for verified users is that they get a surge of new followers, but how many followers you have is also a vanity statistic. Twitterâs new video initiatives are impressive, and I really like Moments, but itâs not yet clear how powerful those features are across the board.
Verification sparked a lot of interest for Twitter, though. The company is set to announce its Q2 2016 earnings on July 26, too; just in time to talk about overall user numbers as well as daily and monthly active users. Maybe if Twitter verifies @verification heâll tweet more than once every 114 days.
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