You’re a Product Manager at Instagram and you've been asked if Instagram should stop supporting the verified accounts feature—what do you do?

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You’re a Product Manager at Instagram and you've been asked if Instagram should stop supporting the verified accounts feature—what do you do?

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Abhijeet Das · Answer 1 · 2025-06-22T08:29:26+0000

Problem statement - If Instagram should discontinue the verified accounts feature

To begin with, Instagram's verified accounts feature (denoted by a blue tick) signifies that Instagram has validated that the account is an authentic one belonging to a real person of a public figure, celebrity or a global brand.

Objective -

Avoid impersonation, frauds
Enhance customer trust
Increase user engagement
Increase revenue through more marketplace sales

Why is this being considered?

Cost
Irrelevance
Abuse
Reputational risk

Metrics -

Qunatitative -

What is the current % of verified accounts? 5%
Have we seen any dip in the creation of verified accounts recently? No dip, but no increase either
Have we observed any increase in the churn of verified accounts? Not really
Have we received any customer complaints recently related to verified accounts? No
- Is it specific to any category of folks?
- Is it specific to any geography?
- Is it specific to any platform?
What is the current engagement rate of verified users v/s normal users? On an average, 25% more for verified users
What % paid transactions are happening for verified accounts? Much higher than non verified accounts

Qualitative -

Do we have any data around perception of verified users about how they feel about the verifid account feature?
- Has it helped them bring more visibility
- Are they able make more money compared to when they ahd a non verified account

Feedback suggests these people are able to get more followers faster and are able to build credibility. This is further helping them to get higher visibility from the big brands and they are able to make more money which they were not able to do so earlier

Competitor analysis

Competitors like Tiktok also have this verified account feature and in their case as well the verified accounts is a very small proportion of the overall accounts. However, since it is directly related to customer trust and credibility, Tiktok continues to have this feature

Recommendations

Pros -

Feature parity with competitors

Higher engagement rate

Higher visibility and higher sales

Cons -

Very small user base

Infrastructure cost (though may not be high)

Loss of trust

Based on the above discussion, in my opinion, Instagram should continue to have the verified accounts feature, in order to ensure that the verified users continue to be part of their platform and not churn to other platforms. Additionally, they run the risk of losing customer trust, if they drop a feature related to account authenticity. So, the risks of discontinuing outweigh the cleanup of infrastrucure used for verified accounts and hence they should continue the feature. However, they can focus to improve the feature by -

Add tooltips to clarify what does verification mean and what are its benefits
Introduce benefits of having a verified account, e.g, access to different features which non verified accounts don't have
Introduce tiered verification levels (identity, credibility, content worthiness, etc.)

Metrics to monitor -

% verified accounts
User engagement rate of verified users
# avg monetary transaction per verified account

So to summarise, rather than discontinuing the verified accounts feature completely, Instagram should redesign the feature to show perceived beenfits for their users and try to increase the penetration of verfied account users.