Twitter announced that users can now apply to have their accounts verified. The social media service has created an online application that users can fill up to earn the blue verified badge.
A verified Twitter account is marked with a blue check icon, and this means that the person claiming to own the account is who s/he says s/he is. Verified accounts include those accounts owned or maintained by celebrities, public figures, and organizations in government, politics, music, film, TV, fashion, media, sports, business, religion, and other key interest areas.
According to The Daily Mail, Twitter said that it will grant an account a "verified" status if it has determined that the said account is of public interest. If the request is denied, the user may fill out the form again and send it after 30 days of the rejection e-mail.
To complete the first step of the application form, users must already have listed specific information, including verified contact number, confirmed e-mail address, profile photo, header photo, bio, website, and birthday (for those that are not a company, an organization or a brand). Additionally, privacy settings for the user's tweets should have already been set as public.
The second step involves answering a few questions related to the account, including why it should be verified. An individual user will also have to explain his or her impact to his or her field. If the account represents a brand, a company or an organization, it will have to explain its mission. Twitter may also request a copy of a government-issued identification card.
Twitter has 300 million monthly active users and has been verifying user accounts since 2009. Verification is a tool against harassment, as users with verified accounts get more rigid privacy tools, as well as ways to filter out spam and negative or offensive comments through filtered notifications. They can also opt out of group direct messages.
A user can lose his or her verified status if his or her tweets become protected or private and if the original purpose of the account has changed.
Twitter Vice President for User Services, Tina Bhatnagar, said in a press release that they hope opening the application process would result in more users "finding great, high-quality accounts to follow." Through verification, the company hopes that users can better find creators and influencers on Twitter, and for these creators and influencers to connect with a broader audience on Twitter.
USA Today noted that the service has long been criticized for failing to make enough moves to stop users from engaging in extended harassment of other users. This criticism rose again after comedian Leslie Jones shared the sexist and racist comments that other users targeted at her, including photos that compared her to gorillas and a fake account set up in her name that was tweeting racial slurs. Jones called on the service to intervene.
See what Jones has to say about her Twitter bashers in this video below: