The coveted blue check mark that indicates you're a Very Important Person on Twitter is now making its way to Facebook.
You can get verified on Facebook as of Wednesday. But you can't request a blue badge, as Facebook will verify users and pages as it sees fit. Expect to see celebrities, politicians, big companies, and journalists pop up with blue check marks next to their names. The badges will show up in search results and in your timeline.
Unless you're a tabloid staple like Selena Gomez, the new badges probably won't affect you in the slightest.
Being verified probably won't change much for Facebook's Chosen Ones, either. On Twitter, the badges are useful because fake accounts proliferate--some are very obviously and intentionally ridiculous, while others offer much more subtle impersonations. But because Facebook is so much more personalized, it's a little more difficult to actually fake an account. That's not to say Facebook fraud never happens, of course. You can report a fake account (even if you're not a verified VIP) if someone is pretending to be you.
Twitter doesn't accept verification requests, either, but that doesn't stop people from issuing desperate pleas to @Verified. Maybe Facebook users will also wage campaigns for verification.
But the real question is whether Facebook will soon adopt another famous Twitter feature: the almighty hashtag.
