Quit following J. Zee, Bruno Marz, and Jorge Clooney. None are Facebook verified.
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Facebook is rolling out a new name verification system today. How can you apply? Be a celebrity, or at least have a gang load of followers (a.k.a. Facebook celebrity). If you’re in one of these camps, don’t be surprised when Facebook asks you to send verification in the form of a scanned, valid identification card. So why would someone like Beyonce want to send in her driver’s license? Facebook says that if she verifies her account, it will place her into its Subscribe suggestions more often. For Beyonce that means more eyeballs on her page to market whatever she’s trying to sell – Blue Ivy needs a college fund.
For you (*and more importantly me), verified pages mean you can subscribe to celebrity pages with more certainty. No more updates from Beyond Say Noles!
According to Tech Crunch, the main reason Facebook wants to step into the name verification game is to challenge Twitter, which has had a name-verification system in place for a while. “Subscribe is a huge threat to Twitter’s long-term growth because it offers an interest graph subscription solution that’s ‘good enough’ for the mainstream. I’ve heard Facebook has teams aggressively recruiting celebrities to the feature, and Verified Accounts will let it dangle the carrot of even faster-growing subscriber bases.” “Interest graph?” What the heck!? That’s the trade social media marketing departments are bartering in these days. From Venture Beat: “while social networks like Facebook focus on what you have in common with your friends and how you react to friends’ recommendations, interest graph-based models (like the ones behind Pinterest, GetGlue or Foodspotting) make social connections based on shared interests, not the other way around.”
*As someone who shares the name of some guy who plays professional football, I say hooray!
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