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Henry Okelue: How Nigerian celebs pay $5,000 to get verified on Twitter

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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