The phenomenal success of Twitter in recent months naturally brings with it some challenges, particularly for the more well known names and personalities.
At the moment there is nothing to stop someone registering a Twitter account in the name of someone else or even a business and making posts that can be damaging to the reputation of those whose names have been hijacked.
Only recently US baseball manager Tony La Russa of the St Louis Cardinals filed a law suit claiming that his reputation had been tarnished as his name had been used on Twitter and that the whole thing had caused him a great deal of personal distress. However, he is not the only one to have fallen victim to the growing number of cyber squatters.
Just search for any well known personality on Twitter and you are likely to find several accounts in the name of that individual all claiming to be the real one.
Twitter do say that they will suspend or delete accounts if they are alerted to the fact that someone is hijacking someone else’s name and making misleading posts however, that is the point, unless it comes to light and the individual is aware, the practice will continue.
Now Twitter has said it will try and do something about it. What they intend to do is experiment with a beta version of “Verified Accounts” which will be tried out on a sample of users. The official accounts will have a tick to confirm they have been verified.
“Please note that this doesn’t mean accounts without a verification seal are fake. The vast majority of Twitter accounts are not impersonators,” said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone in a blog post.
“The experiment will begin with public officials, public agencies, famous artists, athletes and other well known individuals at risk of impersonation,” explained Stone.
One way you can identify if the account is real is to visit the official web page of the personality concerned to see if there’s a link back to their Twitter account.
Personally, I haven’t found it difficult to work out which accounts were real and which were not but I can see that certain content being twittered around the site would be upsetting for some regardless.
Another challenge facing Twitter is how to generate revenue from the hugely successful micro-blogging site, which is why the new system of verified accounts will only be limited to a small selection of Twitter users rather than rolled out across the entire Twitter site.
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