Twitter Flips Us the Bird

We know I don’t think much of Twitter, even though I Tweet Boles Blogs Network updates.  I’m sort of the lonesome stepchild standing in the street yelling to everyone around me — “But the bird has no feathers!” — while the restless crowd around me Tweets about Twitter’s beautiful plumage. 
Over the weekend, my Twitter rage was redeemed by Twitter itself as it finally confessed its utterly dark yearnings in an official blog post telling us they only value protecting the identity of celebrity and fame and not the everyday ordinary Twit like us.

Here’s Twitter flipping us the bird straight from their selfish beak:

We do recognize an opportunity to improve Twitter user experience and clear up confusion beyond simply removing impersonation accounts once alerted. We’ll be experimenting with a beta preview of what we’re calling Verified Accounts this summer.

The experiment will begin with public officials, public agencies, famous artists, athletes, and other well known individuals at risk of impersonation. We hope to verify more accounts in the future but due to the resources required, verification will begin only with a small set.

Can it be any clearer?

If you’re rich and famous and popular and well known, Twitter will “authenticate” you — but if you’re just a regular person, Twitter doesn’t have “the resources required” to verify your identity.

Twitter is, and always has been, an elitist advertising schema impersonating a social networking tool.

Twitter is not about Tweeting your life; Twitter is, and must always be, about big companies trying to sell you something and the first step in that transformation is a separation between those that are verified and those who are not.

Twitter could easily find the resources to verify everyone who wanted to be authenticated by simply charging a small fee for the service — but even that change of meme from free to “pay to play” stings those who helped shoot Twitter to the top.

When you are authenticated, you will surely also be paying, and you will be given deep access to the mounds of data Twitter has been keeping about every Tweet sent since its inception.  You can see which topics are popular and who and what is hot. 

Remember, Twitter was founded by ex-Googlers, so they know how to mine data and sell access to privatized public information.

These Twitter changes will be a loyalty test.  Will a for-pay service lose its free playing minions that provide it mass but little depth? 

Or will Twitter become what it was always meant to be:  The new electronic Pennysaver where everything and anything has a price and is for sale even if it’s your local “authenticated” celebrity inviting you to dinner at McDonald’s Friday night for the Early Bird Twitter Special.