
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 itās here, verification feels like desperation.
Whatās in a verification?
So letās be really clear on something: verification means nothing. It doesnāt get you anything, and it doesnāt profoundly change your Twitter experience.
The āverifiedā badge simply means that whoever is verifying Twitter accounts at the company feels confident that youāre you and not some bot or imposter. Do you have an email and maybe a website? Cool, youāre you.

Who should be verified?
Thatās tricky to answer, and highly subjective. But the short, snide answer is this: not everyone, and probably not you ā and maybe not even me.
Verification is a tool that should be used to filter real people, companies and services from imposters ā and to my mind, only those that are at risk of being (or have already been) mimicked on Twitter should get it.
Because itās entirely possible that some confused soul would ping one of many troll accounts rather than the real person or company. In typing ā@ā followed by some text, the verified badge should help filter those results.
Case in point: verification itself. Or himself. The ā@verifiedā handle is Twitterās own for verified users, but ā@verificationā 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 donāt learn which ā or what kind ā 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 wasnāt Android Central, yet there was no verification for it until this open process.
Iām happy for AC (Theyāre all really good people, go follow it if youāre not already), but where was the proactivity from Twitter to verify them long ago? Why wasnāt that account verified once it established a strong following?
This open verification enrollment scheme is starting to feel like desperation on Twitterās part.
Like when Google+ handed out vanity URLs.
ā Nate Swanner (@NateSwanner) July 20, 2016
Verification feels desperate, and thereās no good look for Twitter in all of this. If theyāre 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, theyāve 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 canāt help that.
And verification doesnāt bring more users because itās 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 doesnāt solve that either.

Itās not bad, just not necessary
As someone whoās been trolled on social media, I can tell you that itās not fun, or funny. A verified badge at least helps people I do business with know Iām the real me.
But so does email, or simply checking The Next Web to see which social account Iāve got listed in my articles.
Verifying brands is more useful, but ultimately not necessary either. A simple peek into a brandās 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 thatās probably short lived if they canāt find other value in the service. The only āwinā for verified users is that they get a surge of new followers, but how many followers you have is also a vanity statistic. Twitterās new video initiatives are impressive, and I really like Moments, but itās 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 heāll tweet more than once every 114 days.
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