Twitter Switches Brand Profile Avatars to Squares to Counter Impersonation

The hits keep coming from Twitter HQ, with the company’s endlessly perplexing verification revamp now taking a new turn, with brand profiles now becoming square shaped to better highlight them in-stream.

As you can see in this image, posted by social media expert Matt Navarra, brand profiles are now showing up as square tiles, in variance from the circle profiles for regular users.

Which actually, kind of, makes some sense. The big issue with Twitter’s new $8 verification program is that it immediately opened up a new pathway to impersonation in the app, which caused various headaches, for various brands, within hours of the option being released (which everyone, internally and externally, said that it would).

In order to counter this, Twitter has since added gold checkmarks for brands (which also recently got an update), that can’t be bought, so that users will know who the official brand account actually is, with these new square tiles adding another level of assurance, as people will eventually come to understand that real, official brand profiles show up as squares, not circles in the app.

So, it’s an extra level of protection against impersonation. Which makes sense, but only in the broader context of the initial verification revamp, which, in itself, actually makes no sense and was a confused, misguided, ill-informed strategy to begin with.

But given that it is the path that Twitter has chosen to take, then more protection against impersonation can only be a good thing. But you might have to update your business avatar for the new format.

Oh, and there’s also this:

Twitter’s also rolling out yet another impersonation-battling tool, with company badges that will appear alongside checkmarks for endorsed sub-profiles and employee accounts of a company, via a new ‘Twitter Blue for Business’ subscription offering.

As per Twitter:

“As a Twitter Blue for Business subscriber, a company can link any number of their affiliated individuals, businesses and brands to their account. When they do, affiliated accounts will get a small badge of their parent company’s profile picture next to their blue or gold checkmark.”

Twitter hasn’t shared Blue for Business pricing, but it says that it will continue to add new elements to the program to help brands get more out of their Twitter experience.

So now you have round profile images with checkmarks for Twitter Blue subscribers or ‘legacy verified’ accounts, and square for brands (though I don’t think non-verified brands can get them?), which will come with a gold checkmark. Unless they’re using an NFT profile pic, then it’ll be a hexagonal image.

Then you also have brand logo additions for approved affiliate profiles and people.

Super simple, right? Much better than just leaving verification as it was.

The new profile display for brands is being rolled out from today, and will likely be present till a new Twitter chief comes in and realizes what a dumb plan this whole verification update has been.

Twitter says that the new brand badges are now being rolled out to selected businesses, ahead of a broader roll out next year.