Hear ye hear ye all you Insta baddies and fitness savants, your road to social media fame just got a whole lot shorter thanks to a new Instagram feature.
Users can now apply to be verified on Instagram, and get their own little blue badge without having to pray to the Insta gods or spend a pretty penny on the black market. Simply go to your profile, click on “settings,” then tap “request verification” to submit your application. After providing your account name, full name, and legal or business ID, the request is sent. Eventually, IG will get back to you on whether or not you’ve been approved.
Of course, just because you can now apply to be verified doesn’t mean it will happen. IG will likely still reserve most of its blue badges for major celebs, public figures, big businesses, and people with a lot of followers. In a blog post, the company said it will "review verification requests to confirm the authenticity, uniqueness, completeness and notability of each account,” and will definitely focus on accounts that reach a lot of other users.
Another addition for accounts with lot of interaction is that Instagram is adding an “About This Account” feature that will display when the user joined the platform, the country they’re located in, any username changes in the past year, and any ads the account runs.
In probably more important, but less interesting news, IG is also updating its security with third-party authenticator apps to match its parent, Facebook. Basically you can now lock down your two-factor authentication in the settings to receive codes through third-party apps and make your account more safe.
"We've been focused on the safety of our platform since the very beginning, and today's updates build upon our existing tools, such as our spam and abusive content filters and the ability to report or block accounts," Instagram's chief technology officer, Mike Krieger, said in a blog post. "We know we have more work to do to keep bad actors off Instagram, and we are committed to continuing to build more tools to do just that."
