From Eli: I have never been comfortable as the FACE of anything. For the last 1.5 weeks, due to a series of mistakes on our end, bad UX design + ineffective customer service at Meta, my actual face has been the profile picture for our restaurants on Instagram. Below is the story from Mia of how this happened and the saga to get it fixed.
What’s been most interesting to me is the number of people who have reached out to me directly about it- it’s over 20 at this point. At first it was to see if I knew and warn we might have been hacked. After a day of that, the outreach was mostly about how funny people thought it was or how they might help us get it fixed. We have posted over 400 times on Instagram and I think I’ve been personally contacted about 2 of them, both times because we’d offended someone with the content.
What was it about this that cut through and prompted outreach? What does it say, if anything, about what people actually respond to on social media? Am I grossly overthinking this?
Mia- take it away!
This is how we got Eli’s face stuck as the profile photo on Shy Bird’s Instagram. Enjoy.
I’ve been interested in the verification process on Instagram for some time now. It seemed like a good time to verify Shy Bird’s page as we near 10,000 followers. Shy Bird’s Instagram is currently a personal account. We've held off on switching over to a business account for a few reasons, the main one being that we’d like access to all audios. Last week, we (attempted) to verify the account.
The Meta Verification process was as follows,
Upload a government ID that matches the account
Pay $14.99 monthly fee for subscription, added security, and support
The plan was to switch back to our Shy Bird logo after uploading Eli’s photo to match the Driver’s License and verify the account. We wanted to continue paying for the verification subscription as a personal account for the added security benefits. It took a few minutes to load everything onto Instagram, and then it became clear that no changes could be made.
The Meta Support chat feature through the Instagram app seemed like an automated response versus a real agent. Not surprised, but Java Bot thought we were inquiring about a business account versus a personal account.
The Meta Support email feature was similar, they recommended clicking the “cancel benefits” button in the Accounts Center. After requesting a handful of different screenshots from our Instagram page, we kept getting referred back to this page on Meta’s website.
I’d be interested to know if there’s someone with a personal or business account that actually has a cancel benefits button in their Accounts Center. We’ve now canceled the subscription via Instagram App, which directed us to the App Store. Similar to canceling another subscription through the App Store like Apple Music or Planoly. The subscription will remain through the month until it expires, and so will Eli’s smile. I looked to Reddit for similar experiences, and it seems like the Meta Verification feedback is ongoing.
While the Meta Verified waitlist does exist for both Instagram and Facebook, we keep reading about the waiting list being too long and never getting approved. It goes on and on. As they say, this is a developing story.
We do enjoy the comic relief, but if Meta is in the room with us right now, we would like to go back to our logo.
Instagram’s update on recommendations and originality is something we are pretty excited about. Earlier this week they announced four changes that are benefitting creators who curate original content. Mixed reviews from reading the comments under the post, but interested in what this means for a shift in the algorithm with brands and content creators.
Quite the learning experience!!