Instagram has announced a new game-changing update that allows anyone to request to have their account verified to receive the highly sought-after blue tick.
In 2014, Instagram followed in the footsteps of Twitter and introduced the blue tick which indicated to users that the identity of the account had been checked and confirmed by moderators. There was secrecy behind the process and little was known about how to become verified or the level of celebrity needed to be awarded this option.
Now, any user can request that their account receives the blue tick of verification. They simply need to hit ‘Request verification’ in the settings menu and send their full name and a picture of their ID to site moderators in order to be considered. The Facebook-owned platform is adamant however that submitting a request does not guarantee that the blue tick of verification will be granted.
Verified accounts attempted to fix the widespread problem of online impersonators fooling and scamming other social media users. In a statement, Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram said, “Our mission is to bring you closer to the people and things you love. That closeness can only happen if Instagram is a safe place. As the CTO of Instagram, keeping people with bad intentions off our platform is incredibly important to me. That means trying to make sure the people you follow and the accounts you interact with are who they say they are”.
Instagram will also be rolling out the new ‘About this Account’ section on popular user profiles that will list data on their country of origin, their use of ads and former usernames. On this new addition, Mr Krieger said, “Our community has told us that it’s important to them to have a deeper understanding of accounts that reach many people on Instagram, particularly when those accounts are sharing information related to current events, political or social causes”.
The new features come after a successful summer for Instagram. The Instagram stories feature achieved 400 million users per day, doubling Snapchat’s daily usage of 191 million.