Can anyone verify how you get a verified Twitter account?

Posted by Justin Goldsborough | 0 comments

There are several Twitter mysteries out there — Who are these egg people that tweet spam at us? Why does Twitter search only show results for two or three days prior? How am I all of a sudden not following someone one day that I had been following for years?

But the greatest Twitter mystery by far is verified accounts. Not even close. Because if you ask 10 different people how you get a verified account, you will get 10 different answers.

And if you work in communications long enough, you are likely to get a request from a client for a verified Twitter account. Especially with all the fake accounts that have come up in the past (see @BPGlobalPR). It’s like claiming your website url. It’s a question we need to know how to answer. So let’s see if we can figure it out.

First of all, here is what Twitter has to say about verified accounts:

Twitter’s public beta version of account verification is no longer available. After a long period of manual testing, we’ve closed public applications. Our public verification request form is no longer available. In the meantime, we’re still verifying some trusted sources, such as our advertisers and partners. If you’re one of our partners or advertisers, please follow up with your account manager for details.

If you read between the lines, this statement basically says Twitter isn’t verifying accounts anymore unless you are paying them for advertising or you know someone at Twitter and are able to work the system. So we’ll start with that knowledge base…

Second, here is what I have heard about verified accounts through two discussions on #pr20chat and several other one-off inquiries:

• Twitter doesn’t do verified accounts anymore
• You have to be a celebrity to get a verified account
• You have to pay Twitter to verify your account
• Your Twitter account manager, if you have one, can get your account verified. So it’s all about who you know
• If you fill out a Twitter ticket I — also called a twicket, no really it is — you can get a verified account
• You have to show your brand has identity confusion issues on Twitter
• If your brand is Fortune 500, Twitter will verify it

Seems like what we have is a bunch of guessing and potential solutions, but no one answer on how to get your Twitter account verified. And we have a need for PR and marketing pros to understand the verification process because clients will ask.

So what’s the final answer? How does one actually get a verified account on Twitter? Virtual high five to the person that can figure this out and “verify” the answer by sourcing it back to Twitter.

Here’s to hoping we can solve the mystery.