The days of the faux celebrity may have reached their end. At least they have on Twitter as they launch a first attempt to verify account user identities. Following a lawsuit brought by Major League Baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals’ Manager, Tony La Russa, Twitter is taking a hard stance on users creating profiles that pose as celebrities and is testing it out on select accounts. Although La Russa’s case has thus far resulted in no settlement, Twitter has decided to take action as they reconsider the strength of the terms of service in preventing such incidents from occurring.
According to the current terms of service, if Twitter is to discover that an account is an impersonation of a celebrity, business, or other person than that account will be permanently suspended. While this policy has sufficed until this point, Twitter’s proactive approach of verifying identities will most likely receive a highly positive response by users of the site.
In order to obtain a verification seal, the user and twitter must get in contact and have an information exchange that will prove the authenticity of the tweeter’s identity. The verification seal will appear on the upper right hand of the profile as it appears below:
To recognize a real verification badge keep in mind that it will always have the following characteristics:
- Location will be on the top-right potion of profile above the name, location and biography.
- The badge will be followed by the words “Verified Account.”
- It will also appear next to the usernames in the Find People section.
- The badge color will always be the same twitter blue color regardless of the customized colors on the person’s page
Any deviations from the characteristics listed above will indicate that it is not a verified account.
As this is still in a testing phase with a limited selection of public figures, there will still be many celebrity accounts that do not display the Verified Account badge. Lacking the badge doesn’t automatically mean that the profile is a fake, it will just mean that the identity hasn’t been authenticated by Twitter. Many real celebrities and public figures will continue not to have a Verified Account badge on their profile.
While not open to the public at large or organizations yet, Twitter has indicated this program could grow to verify businesses sometime in the future. Twitter has provided a form for businesses to fill out if interested in this service once available. The feedback form is quite simple and can be found at http://twitter.com/account/verify_request?type=business. Until they do offer verified accounts for businesses, as an alternative, it is recommended that links to the company’s twitter account be made accessible on their webpage to validate that account.
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