If you’re an author, or a publisher, or if you work in the entertainment field, getting your social media accounts Verified — or “socially proofed” for a condescending spin on a ridiculous social media marketing term — is important because Verification gives you status on the social networks and it provides you private avenues of access that regular accounts do not accord.

Getting Verified on Facebook and Twitter can be confounding. You can’t get a “yes” unless you ask — but finding the how and the where of making that ask can be impossible.

Sure, if you’re a hot new international entertainment commodity you’ll get proactively Verified, but if you’ve had a 40-year career that started long before any notion of a social networking was even thought up, you’ll have a tougher time making the invisible “notoriety” hurdle that trips up many wants for Verification.

My Facebook page is finally Verified — but it was a long task to get that blue checkmark, but the enhanced access to Facebook ephemera is worthwhile and positive. I have no idea why I was more Verifiable to Facebook now than I was a year ago, but mine is not to wonder why. Just take the gift and go!

Twitter, on the other landing, is even more desperate and darkening when it comes to trying to figure out the how and the why of their Verification process.

After Facebook anointed me with a blue checkmark — I thought, after waiting a year between asks — that Twitter might, finally, maybe, perhaps, actually Verify my @DavidBoles account; and I also decided not to try them again on my own. I instead engaged a for-pay PR firm that specializes in social media and guarantees Verification results or you get your money back. The PR company was “extremely confident” they could get me Verified on Twitter.

I got my money back in two days!

Getting Verified on Facebook is who you are and what you’ve done; getting Verified on Twitter is who you know at Twitter.

I don’t mind paying to play. Over the years, I’ve equally spent thousands of dollars on Facebook and Twitter advertising and none of that money appears to have meant anything in the Verification scheme of things — despite what you might read on the internets — and all the modern entertainment superstars have paid PR companies managing their social networking and Verification needs, so finding the proper PR person with the right connections can, indeed, get you Verified if all the wants fall into synchronization.

After a dedicated two-year effort of posting at least 10 image-connected Tweets a day, 24/7/365, on my @DavidBoles account, I am now giving up on Twitter and Verification. I’m quieting all my minor Twitter accounts.  I have no interest in promoting or propagating tons of original content on that network — and I will instead concentrate most of my social media attention, and advertising budget, on Facebook.

I’ll still be on @DavidBoles every day — just not as often.  As I’ve said many times here before, “Go where you’re wanted.” It’s odd 90% of the new people I follow on Twitter send me a DM asking me to connect with them on Facebook instead.

It’s painfully ironic I’ve spent much more human time with Twitter advertising employees on the phone and in email than I ever have with one Facebook employee.

Personal interaction: Twitter = 100% and Facebook = 0%.

Verification: Facebook = 100% and Twitter = 0%.

The maths of the human condition is off!

In a $1,000 media buy, Facebook reliably gives me back what I value as a 125% return on investment, while Twitter has always been a negative return for the same effort and money spent. I understand why Twitter is failing and their stock is tanking — they do not deliver on the promise earned for the dollar spent.

That said, I do like the “Wild Westiness” of Twitter where the grittier world unravels before you, in real time, and the horrors of the hell of other people is in full evidence in every timeline update. I do not enjoy Twitter’s short-fingered, vulgar, pornography problem. All of Twitter is non-filterable or escapable. Making your account private is not the answer.

Facebook is more predictable, reserved, and curated — there’s always someone home behind-the-scenes — and there is a sense of strength and confidence in that sort of closed system, and that has made Facebook a mighty social network that not only covers the arc of the world, but enraptures the entire universe as well.

UPDATE 11.05.16
The PR company mentioned in this article is now out of business. Their decline started when Twitter permanently suspended their account. I am now Verified on Twitter and here’s a social media update on how that happened in an episode from my Human Meme podcast:

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