How I got Verified on Twitter

For those asking how I got Verified on Twitter, what I wrote on the application etc. here are the details:

I used the new “Twitter Request to verify” tool found here: https://www.producthunt.com/tech/twitter-request-to-verify
I had experience filling out things like this, to justify why I’m an ‘extraordinary individual’, as I’ve previously gone through the O1 visa and EB1-A green card processes. (If anyone needs help with that, feel free to email me).

Before filling out the form, I had to make sure that my real name and date of birth are listed on my Twitter profile; you can do that by visiting your profile and clicking ‘edit profile’.

When filling out the form, there are only really two sections to complete:

1. Link to 2–5 websites that help identify the user

I linked to the following sources:

My linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacksmith112
My Product Hunt profile: https://www.producthunt.com/@_jacksmith
My blog: http://jack.vu
My Crunchbase profile: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/jack-smith
My Angellist profile: https://angel.co/jacksmith

2. Tell us why the account should be verified

I don’t remember the exact text of what I wrote here; but I wrote a few concise sentences drawing on the sort of evidence that I’d provided to get my visa + green card; namely:

I received quite a lot of press attention for a ‘Linkedin Hack’ that I pulled off a few years ago: http://thehustle.co/the-linkedin-hack-that-made-me-120000
I have quite a high profile amongst startup founders due to being very active on Product Hunt. I’ve ‘hunted’ more products than any other user (currently over 1050 submitted). Lots of founders reach out to me on Twitter due to this.
I’ve co-founded startups including Vungle (which has raised over $25m from investors including Google and does hundreds of millions $ in revenue each year); I also advise a number of other startups: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/jack-smith#/entity

That’s all there was to it really. After filling out the form, it asked me to upload a copy of my driver’s license. It feels a bit weird to be ‘verified’ when other people more high profile than me on Twitter got rejected by the process; but hopefully some of the material that I included above will help others apply.

The benefits of being ‘verified’ are really minimal at this stage; you get some basic extra features in the mobile app and a tick symbol next to your name when people view your profile. I think it just appeals to people due to the exclusivity of only a limited number of people being verified.

The process took about ~8 days to get the approval email after submitting my application.