Instagram is kind of like a time portal. I mean, you can lose hours and hours of your day just scrolling through random people’s posts and videos. Instagram has been a significant part of our social media lives of the 21st century. With over a billion users, almost every known brand is on Instagram. All your favorite stars are on Instagram. Heck, even your favorite content creators are on Instagram. So whether you visit Instagram to stay intune with your friends or you go there to find some memes to share with your family – Instagram has something for everyone.
In the world of onlineshopping, one-clickorders, prime shipping, virtual reality, and metaverse, there is no surprise that everybusiness is going all-in with social media and online marketing. Whether it’s your local barber posting before and after shots of his clients or your neighborhood burger joint posting photos of juicy burgers on their stories – everyone is working to establish themselves on Instagram.
And it’s not just businesses. A person’s online brand can make or break their career. Human resource departments routinely Google search the applicants they are considering for a position. Your website, your Instagram feed, the articles that exist about you – everything matters. Not only for your career but also if you are a business owner. Everyone is looking everyone up. It’s how it is.
In this race by individuals and businesses to establish authenticity, credibility, and a fanbase in the world of social media, the one thing that holds the most benefit is the blue verified badge. Getting verified on Instagram instantly communicates to the audience that you are trustworthy, someone notable, an authentic entity, and so much more! And, with immense demand comes a matching supply! Queue in the Instagram Verification Service.
Why do IG Verification Services Exist?
Instagram has over a billion users. On average, people spend 53 minutes a day on Instagram. So clearly, Instagram has unimaginable amount of user traffic on its app all day, every day, throughout the year.
As of 2019, Instagram had launched the ability for users to request verification via the app. That is wonderful.Well, yes and no. Keep in mind that this is a public feature where anyone can request a verification badge.
It doesn’t matter if you’re famous or not – it doesn’t matter if you have tenor 10 million followers. It doesn’t matter if you have media coverage or not – everyone can make the application to request verification. Now, think about it for a second. Something as desirable as a verification checkmark, don’t you think everyone wants it? When you have a billion monthly active users, how many of them do you think keep applying for the verification regardless of whether they qualify or not? A lot!
Every user on Instagram can request a verification badge once every 30 days. That means, technically, a billion users can apply for verification every 30 days. However, let’s be conservative and assume only 10% of the monthly active population, say 100 million users, apply for verification every month. This comes up to approximately 3.3 million applications a day. This, in turn, translates to about 140,000 applications an hour. And finally, this translates to around 2300 applications every single minute.
Let’s back up a moment and understand the scale of this. For Instagram to review every application, they would need to employ a staff of approximately 7000 reviewers. So, you’d have three8 hour shifts of 2700 reviewers that collectively work around the clock – because the applications don’t come in at a ‘specific’ time since Instagram is global. And wait – that’s not all. Instagram would need to employ such reviewers for eternity.
Let’s now look at the backend of how these applications are processed. Once you get to know the insider info on how things happen, you’ll thank the handful of media agencies that provide an Instagram verification service.
How Does Instagram Process the Verification Requests?
So – how in the world are these millions of applications processed every single day? Of course, it’s not done by humans. AI does it. Artificial Intelligence. Whenever someone makes an application on Instagram – it is first reviewed by an AI – not a human. If the AI deems the request ‘valid,’ it then queues up to a human review.
Now – getting past this AI is close to impossible. The AI has been built to ensure no verification mistakes are made. Imagine if Instagram started verifying impersonators or accounts that promote hate speech. Yeah, that would directly impact the company stocks and investor sentiment.
So – if Instagram has to choose, it will choose a strict and safe system vs. an efficient one. Imagine this for a moment. With a billion users of all shapes and sizes, you don’t think there are millions of users on Instagram who try to ‘game’ the verification system? Don’t you think Instagram gets thousands of applications everyday where people try to pass as a celebrity of some country when in fact, they are not?
How easy is it to find a celebrity from a third-world country who has plenty of media coverage but does not use Instagram? Think of countries like India, Pakistan, Chile, Argentina, Indonesia, Philippines – it wouldn’t take more than an hour to find a celebrity in these countries but not on Instagram.
You could, within minutes, make a new account using this celebrity’s name. You could spend some $50 on a freelancer gig to get a fake ID created. Then, buy 100k fake followers, some likes, and comments. Check! Now, you have an account that looks like a celebrity, you have all the documents, lots of followers, and engagement – and you can easily apply for verification. Best part? You can even provide dozens of natural publication links too!
Yeah, no! Instagram cannot afford for that to happen. And this is why they have an AI – that is so strict that it barely lets anything through. And this is where social media agencies that provide anInstagram verification service come in.
Application via Media Partnership and Relation
So, how does one get verified in between all this noise? In other words, the question is, how does a person or a brand, who is eligible, get a human at Instagram to review their application?
And this is where boutique social media and digital marketing agencies come in. Digital marketing agencies have access to media partnerships with Facebook and Instagram, which gives them certain benefits. One benefit is being able to request verification directly with their contact at Facebook.
No, this is not a way to ‘buy’ a verification service. Instead, agencies can ensure that a human gets to review your application. In the end, the decision still lies in the reviewer’s hands at Instagram, of course. However, if you have some credible and notable PR, and your account is prepped, there is no way you can get denied for an internal request by an agency to their Facebook media relation to have your profile verified. Almost everyone who is verified has been verified this way. Think of this, how do you think people got verified before the public request form? Did Instagram employ thousands of individuals to research actors, singers, politicians, journalists, TV personalities, brands, NGOs – of every country out there? Nope! Instead, they provided media partnership support to agencies worldwide, who were then able to make requests for verification. And eligible individuals and brands didn’t sit around and wait for the blue badge to one day magically appear next to their username. They availed the Instagram verification service provided by the social media agencies and got their application raised internally. And that is how it’s always been done. 😊
