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Tag: Verified Profiles

  • Facebook Mentions App Opens to Verified Profiles

    Facebook Mentions, the company’s app for celebrities, is becoming a little less exclusive.

    Starting today, Mentions is available to anyone with a verified profile.

    “People love reading articles from and connecting with their favorite journalists and public figures on Facebook. Today, we’re making Facebook Mentions and Live available to public figures with verified profiles to help them engage their followers and interact with their peers,” says Facebook.

    Facebook first launched the Mentions app for public figures back in July of 2014. Facebook calls it “a better way for actors, athletes, musicians and other influencers to stay in touch with their fans and the people and things they care about.” It basically allows celebs to filter out the noise and better manage their pages.

    Last month, Facebook added livestreaming capabilities to the app in order to compete with the surging Periscope (Twitter-owned) and Meerkat.

    If you’re a public figure and you think you should be verified, you can apply for that here. Then you can enjoy Mentions and live streaming. You’re probably not a public figure, however, but maybe all of us will someday get livestreaming capabilities.

  • Dating Site Zoosk Is Basically Rolling Out Verified Profiles

    Apart from he was a stalker or I got catfished, the most common complaint from online daters has to be, they didn’t look anything like their picture!. Call it superficial, but people don’t want to be fooled when it comes to anything – especially a potential partner’s looks. Now, one online dating site is attempting to make it harder for people to misrepresent themselves.

    Zoosk, a top dating site/app with over 25 million visible profiles, is launching photo verification.

    Users can submit video selfies to the Zoosk team, which are supposed to capture their faces from multiple angles. Zoosk will then review the videos, and determine whether or not the user’s profile photo is an accurate representation of how they actually look.

    If Zoosk gives users the green light, a “Photo Verified” badge will appear on their profile.

    It’s basically like getting a Twitter verified check mark, but for dating.

    “One of the most important concerns of online daters is going out with someone who doesn’t really resemble their profile picture,” said Shayan Zadeh, co-founder and CEO of Zoosk. “By innovating a system for our members to validate the accuracy of existing profile photos, we believe we can create better first-date experiences that will lead to lasting relationships.”

    Obviously, the goal is to engender more trust in the online dating process. It’s common for people to use photos in their profiles from when they were 20 pounds lighter, or 20 years younger. Zoosk says that inaccurate profile pictures are a top concern of its users.

    Image via Zoosk

  • Twitter Gives Verified Users More Features

    Twitter announced some new features for verified users, making verified status all the more sought after by those who haven’t been graced with the illustrious blue circle with a checkmark in it.

    Verified users are getting alerts when other verified users follow them from Twitter’s Android and iOS apps, and the option to view their verified followers from their own profile. That second feature is on iOS only for the time being.

    “Similar to how we help businesses make advertising simple and effective on Twitter, we occasionally build features that enable these public figures — verified users — to engage more easily with the world through Twitter,” says Twitter product manager Jinen Kamdar.

    “We hope these two features will help verified users easily connect with each other so we can continue to deliver those only-on-Twitter conversations to users,” he says.

    The feature is likely a direct response to Facebook’s recent launch of Mentions, an app specifically for for celebrities and other “public figures”. At least one celebrity isn’t a fan of that, mostly because it’s a separate app. Twitter is smart to just boost its functionality from within the Twitter apps people already use.

    If you don’t have a verified account on Twitter, and feel like you deserve one, good luck. Even though the feature launched like five years ago, Twitter still isn’t even letting people submit their accounts for consideration. You basically just have to wait for Twitter to give you one on its own.

    Twitter says on an FAQ page, “If you think you meet the criteria for verification and have not yet received a badge, please be patient. We are working within key interest areas to verify accounts that are sought after by other Twitter users. 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.”

    The official (and verified) “Verified Accounts” Twitter account hasn’t even tweeted or responded to a tweet for two years.

    Image via Twitter

  • Facebook for iOS Gets Verified Checks, Fixes That Annoying News Feed Issue

    Facebook has just released a minor update to their iOS app – but if you were one of the users who had been suffering with a slow news feed for a while then it’s more like a hallelujah update.

    Version 6.3 brings verified celebs, public figures, and pages – you know, that little blue check mark next to the names of famous people or brands. The blue verification doesn’t show up in the news feed, but you will see it when you visit their actual page. Like Twitter, Facebook “verification” lets you know when you’re interacting with the real Barack Obama – or simply one of the many fake Barack Obama fan pages.

    Facebook first launched verified profiles on the web back in May. Facebook isn’t accepting applications yet – they’re simply going around verifying whomever they feel deserves it.

    The update also improves places editing on the iPad to “fix categories, phone numbers and other info.”

    But the fix that thrills me the most is the one that improves the speed of the news feed. You see, for many Facebook for iOS users, the past few weeks have been rather annoying. Much of the time, the news feed would be slow to load – or sometimes it wouldn’t even load at all.

    Facebook says they have fixed this – and in my experience they have.

    You can grab the update over at the App Store today.

  • Facebook Launches Verified Pages, Profiles

    Somehow, Facebook is just getting round to this, but today, the company announced that it is launching verified Pages and Profiles.

    “Today we’re launching verified Pages to help people find the authentic accounts of celebrities and other high-profile people and businesses on Facebook,” the company says. “Verified Pages have a small, blue check mark beside their name on timelines, in search results, and elsewhere on Facebook.”

    Specifically, the badges will appear next to the name of a Page, when hovering over the name of Page, in Graph Search queries, in stories about people liking a page, and in News Feed ads on a Page.

    Facebook Verified Page

    Facebook verified page

    It looks pretty similar to Twitter’s version.

    Facebook is offering the feature to “a small group” of prominent public figures, including celebrities, journalists, government officials, popular brands and businesses, who have large audiences.

    Facebook says it proactively verifies authentic Pages and profiles, but if you believe you’re being impersonated, you can report a fake account.

    No action by Page admins is needed to obtain a verification badge. Facebook is simply verifying the largest Pages on the social network, and is not accepting requests. At least not for now.