Ever wondered how the celeb (and not so celeb)
folks you follow on twitter got verified? How the likes of Brymo, MI, Iyanya,
etc got into that quasi-exclusive group with the blue ribbon beneath their
names? Well, wonder no further as we bring you the how-to, just in case you
have made it a life’s dream of getting on that blue-ribbon club, or probably
just curious.
In a recent informal conversation between our
man-in-town correspondent and a little know Nigerian celeb who resides
somewhere in the Middle East, the question of how he got verified on twitter
came up. He had quite a lot to say, but we will go straight to the point and
give you the skinny on this “verified” stuff. Twitter definitely isn’t running
a charity.
So let’s take MI as the case study.
For MI to get his blue ribbon, he had to
satisfy the prerequisite of having at least 5000 followers. Small deal right?
he already had more than 10000 before they asked.
Okay,
he then had to part with a “tracking fee” of $500 [yes USD] to Twitter.com. Maybe
that is for them to be sure he isn’t tweeting insults at Jack Dorsey, or maybe
to learn the pattern of the things he tweets about. Who knows.
After the period of tracking is completed,
twitter sends a message notifying him of his success at the tracks. He then
gets an invoice for his lifetime blue bloodish blue ribbon, that piece of
binary jewelry that confers upon him twitter royalty. It will cost him a token
of $5000 [yes again, USD!]. If he has that kind of money, then he can have that
kind of ribbon. Vic-O and Tonto Dike, hope you are reading this.
As
soon as his money hits twitter offshore accounts, he refreshes, sees his ribbon
and posts his tweet of triumph – he is now verified! The blogs pick it, Linda
Ikeji writes about it [makes about $5,000 back for herself from ads enabled by
her army of anonymous commenters, though she wasn't the one that paid for a
ribbon], other blogs copy her, copy themselves, and the whole place goes gets
in a frenzy about him too getting that magnificent ribbon. He probably
gets a few 10s of DMs. Some asking him to come unleash the power of his blue
ribbon upon them (they must think it is the blue pill). Peace settles upon
everyone again after a while, maybe a few insults here and there, a few
complimentary twitfights, while we wait for the next guy to fork out $5500 for
blue binary bling . This is at the core of twitter.com‘s business model.
That’s it. You now know what you need to do to
get verified. No, I don’t know if $11,000 will get you 2 blue ribbons, making
you the first bad guy in history to be double verified by the highest verifying
body in the land I mean cyber land).
So if you see the rich kid in your class in
UNILAG suddenly get verified, don’t slit your wrist, just go get the money, and
you and him will be at par in life again.
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