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A sports blogger with 250,000 followers barged into Twitter headquarters demanding to be verified
(Barstool Sports)
Dave Portnoy (center).
Even "Twitter-famous" people with hundreds of thousands of followers crave the blue check mark that comes with official verification.
Twitter verifies certain people, mostly famous people, to prevent others from impersonating them on the service.
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy found out on Tuesday that showing up unannounced at Twitter's headquarters is not the best way to get results.
Portnoy live-streamed his attempts to talk to Twitter's verification department at the company's San Francisco office on Tuesday. It didn't work.
Portnoy is the founder of Barstool Sports, a crude yet beloved sports blog, which was purchased by Peter Chernin's Chernin Digital Group last month for between $10 million and $15 million.
"Eventually you think someone like Jack [Dorsey] or someone will be like, 'This guy has a million followers. Oh, he owns a million shares of Twitter — maybe we should answer his questions,'" Portnoy said.
"I'm just trying to get verified by the company so people can't make fake Rico Bosco accounts," he said, referring to a Barstool Sports personality.
Over the past few years, Twitter has liberally given out verification to journalists and bloggers even at publications without a substantial readership. But in recent weeks it subtly changed its verification policy, stripping the blue check mark from controversial and offensive figures, such as Milo Yiannopoulous, a writer for Breitbart.
Barstool Sports writers often seem to skirt official Twitter rules, usually by encouraging their followers to harass users who consider the website's content offensive.
Last month, Sports Illustrated wrote that Barstool Sports "uses social media as a weapon."
Eventually, Twitter employees met with Portnoy, but did not verify him or his staff.
Didn't get verified but I got some free grapes https://t.co/uE8RXTRjcd
— David Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) February 2, 2016
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