Twitter has done a great job at keeping the whole “blue badge” verification process a mystery. If curiosity eats away at you like it does me, you’re in luck. A new video from comedians Hari and Ashok Kondabolu, featuring Anil Dash who has around 500k followers, shows the magical transformation from start to finish.
First off, it’s important to know that you can’t ask to be verified. Twitter only offers this blessing upon those with enough followers and popularity to deserve it. However, the company promises that follower count has no bearing.
We don’t accept verification requests from the general public, but we encourage you to continue using Twitter in a meaningful way, and you may be verified in the future. Please note that follower count is not a factor in determining whether an account meets our criteria for verification.
If you have been chosen, the Twitter account @verified will hit you up to let you know you’ve been selected, and tell you that you’re only “three steps away” from having that bright blue badge pinned to your account.
But Twitter’s process for verifying its users has absolutely nothing to do with verifying identity, so don’t worry about whipping out a drivers’ license or anything. Instead, Twitter uses a painfully easy multiple-choice quiz to test your badge-worthiness. It asks questions like, “Which tweet is more likely to double your followers?”
It then gives the option of a live-tweet about the Oscars, complete with hashtag, or option B, “I watched the #Oscars last night.” Anyone with enough followers to be verified knows that Twitter is about real-time communication. All three questions are of the same stock and breed, all stupidly simple.
Chances are, Twitter probably does go through some sort of analysis of your Twitter feed and other things to verify that @LadyGaGa and @finkd and @aplusk are legit. But this quiz is pretty silly, considering that all it verifies is that people with a lot of followers are good at Twitter. Which, of course, seems obvious.
We’ve reached out to Twitter to see if they can possibly shed a little more light on this. We’ll update if we hear anything.