Adeline
What Exactly is Twitter?
Social media is a big part of people’s lives now. It is a daily ritual people partake in; waking up and checking their notifications on different social media platforms they have accounts on. And Twitter is a very big part of this ritual for a lot of people around the world. And according to statistics this is a daily ritual for about 328 million people globally.
People can pick a screen name known on Twitter as a ‘Twitter Handle’ and tweet to their hearts content. A user’s Twitter handle is their identity on Twitter and it is through their Twitter handle can people find them on Twitter and follow them.
So what exactly is Twitter? Twitter calls itself a microblogging platform. Twitter limits your character limit for every post that you send out. A post on Twitter is referred to as a ‘Tweet’. The character limit till earlier this year was 140 characters per tweet however just this year Twitter increased this limit to 280 characters!
On Twitter people can tweet just about anything they are thinking. Users can follow people, when a person follows someone they get all their tweets on their timeline. And if someone follows you, they see your tweets on their timeline.
There is a list of ‘Trending’ hashtags on Twitter. Hashtags are a way to synthesize tweets about a particular topic into one place and connect people talking about the same thing to one another as well as show people that their tweets are about something in particular. This feature is incredibly popular and can be changed according to your location.
Famous personalities and as of late companies; everyone has official accounts on this website. And while there are a lot of accounts which are either fake or parody accounts there is one way to know if an account is genuine or not and that is if the account is verified. To get verified on Twitter you need a few details however. Let’s get into it in detail below!
What Does it Mean to be Verified on Twitter
The most prominent part of being verified on Twitter is the ‘blue tick’. Everyone is after the elusive blue tick next to their Twitter handle on their profiles. The blue tick signifies that the account in question has been authenticated by Twitter to belong to the person or entity it says it represent. Since there are a lot of instances on various websites where people make fake accounts of celebrities impersonating them thus a blue tick indicates that a particular account is verified hence it is the official account and does indeed belong to the person it shows it is of.
As of late, it has become very popular for companies to make official accounts on Twitter to release official statements, answer queries and even plug products and services, as well as other things for good public relations with their audience. These companies accounts can now also be verified and this is a great way for customers and the relevant audience for the company to follow them. This is a great way for brands to engage with their audience and promote their company free of cost.
Twitter however is very quick to point out that while it does verify account, the verification in no way means Twitter endorses the person or the views they share through their Twitter account.
What Does Twitter Say About How to Get Verified on Twitter
As with any other social media platform Twitter has rules on how an account can get verified on Twitter. They have laid these out on their policies page and anyone can go and read them. They are straightforward and explain the process and conditions one needs to go through and meet to be able to get verified on Twitter.
According to Twitter the way you get verified on Twitter is when your account meets these conditions and standards:
- Your account needs to be one which has some type of public interest
- If you are working in music, fashion, acting, government, politics, journalism, media, sports, religion and business you have a greater chance to get verified on Twitter
- If you work in a field which you feel as some element of public interest then you also have the opportunity to get verified on Twitter since it is not limited to the people in the fields mentioned above
The conditions Twitter has set for you to be able to get verified on Twitter are not tough at all. This feature is not only reserved for celebrities, politicians or multinationals. If your account has some value in terms of public interest then you have a shot to be able to get verified on Twitter!
Twitter always maintains that there is only one way to get verified on Twitter and there are no shortcuts. They have their own procedures which have to be followed no matter what. However there are some that claim they were successful able to get verified on Twitter more quickly by following some unorthodox methods. Keep reading to find out what those methods are!
How to Increase your Chances to Get Verified on Twitter
These are a few unofficial tips not at all endorsed by Twitter on how you can get verified on Twitter faster than the tradition method. These are tricks and techniques which other people have used to get verified on Twitter and say have worked for them. Just because these tips helped someone get verified on Twitter does not mean they will work for you and help you get verified on Twitter.
The first thing you can do is to get connected with an agent who has connections at Twitter. The assumption being made here is that you are a public personality and thus are looking to get your account verified. Since a lot of public figures usually have agents anyway, it might be a good idea to get one who has connections in various social media websites especially in Twitter in this case so you can get verified on Twitter quicker through them.
Work with a company that has relations with Twitter so that you have a bigger chance of being verified. If your company has good professional terms with Twitter there is a higher chance for you to get verified on Twitter and for it to be a priority more than it would otherwise would have been for Twitter.
Get in contact with someone at Twitter. No this does not mean message their official Twitter account but contact a point person who can directly look into the matter and provide you with updates.
Advertising on Twitter, gets you on their good books and makes you into a priority account of sorts. While this does not mean that merely advertising on Twitter will make you get verified on Twitter but it can definitely increase your chances since Twitter will see you as a legitimate account.
And last but not the least and the most unconventional method in terms of you trying to get verified on Twitter is to have your followers campaign for you. If you have a strong following then you can appeal to them to tweet Twitter on your behalf to help you get verified on Twitter. They can tweet the official Twitter account about how your account needs to be verified. This has allegedly worked for a few accounts but Twitter has never commented to let on that they verified an account just because their followers asked.
But if nothing works, you need to be patient and trust Twitter to go through the procedure and finally verify your account.
What is the Difference Between Verified and Normal Accounts
According to statistics there about more than 950 million accounts on Twitter and of those only 190,000 accounts are verified. This means being verified gets you into an exclusive club of the Twitter elite. But don’t be fooled; just because an account is verified does not mean they are in any way better than other accounts in terms of the content they publish.
The most followed Twitter account belongs to Katy Perry; an American pop music star. She has over a 100 million followers! She is closely followed by Justin Bieber another American singer who has about 103 million followers. The third most followed account belongs to former American president Barack Obama who has over 90 million followers.
The difference these accounts have with other normal accounts which are not verified is the fact that these are accounts which belong to well known personalities who are very much in the public eye. However, the content that they post does not differ from what other people post on Twitter; thoughts, jokes, feelings, concerns and memes. Except maybe with the slight difference that since their work is directly for the public the will usually post about projects they are working on. Mostly their Twitter is to keep their fans updated on what they are doing.
So even if you are not successful in your quest to get verified on Twitter, you can still make full use of the website and should not worry about not being successful in getting the elusive blue tick badge which signifies verification. And of course, you can always try again!
