Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

zanxnaz — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:41:53 -0000

We all know who is and who is not a celebrity. I absolutely think Twitter should verify celebrity accounts. Keep it real. If you want to be fake... go to MySpace.

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Shadow the Hedgehog — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:42:55 -0000

Big names like popes, leaders and such need to have 0 fakers.
With celebrities like Lohan or Hilton, I think fakes should be allowed.

I like the whole idea of an officially type seal, y'know, a little button or an * by the name to indicate that this user is for real. Because having a little seal on the user's profile isn't gonna help people who use 3rd party apps such as @twittelator.

I also like the seals idea because it could be extended upon. I think twitter should have little achievement seals as well. Mine would be "Total Badass"

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Chibisnake — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:39:04 -0000

To an extent we should have accounts verified. But I think twitter is great BECAUSE we have fake accounts. Like the fake micheal bay and such. If we could have a seal that said the celebrity is real, that would be cool, but I think banning fake accounts should NEVER happen.

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Lee — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 01:34:43 -0000

Celebrites\famous figures should have to verify their account. It's not right that anyone can go ahead and make an account with a celebrity name, and have hundreds to thousands of fans believing that they are hearing 'tweets' from a celebrity\famous figure. This fake celebrity can also say things that could ruin the celebritties name by false statements.

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

paul — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:27:29 -0000

in the future everyone will be famous...
(you know who said that)

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

matsonian — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:18:48 -0000

Truly a tough question. On the one hand, we don't like to be duped, I contributed as many of you didi to spreading the word about OHHDL (which was over 20,000 at its peak in less than 24 hours and is now at 471). But at the same time, would Twitter have to stop everyone from using all the possible variations like DalaiLama, HisHoliness, HHDalaiLama, TibetanMonk, or anyone purporting to be the noted celeb. Already, people have gone in a secured ID's for celebs without posting anything, kin of like parking domain names, but I doubt anyone would seriously pay for it. Someone has AbrahamLincoln, but there are no posts. @AshtonKutcher is set up with 80 followers but no posts, yet Ashton uses @aplusk, so how does Twitter regulate all the possible variations.
Ultimately, I agree that Twitter has a monetization opportunity here if it offers a premium service to celebrities and brands.

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Miss Attitude — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:13:44 -0000

I know it's already been said, but who decides who's a celebrity?
And how do you decide who owns a brand, unless it's trademarked...

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Marlena — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:13:34 -0000

If account verification is required, it should be required on all accounts, not just for "celebrities," which is far too subjective a designation.

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Kyle MacRae — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:47:57 -0000

Celebrity validation is already happening - see www.valebrity.com

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Tom van Brunschot — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:01:45 -0000

I would not have been surprised at all, if H.H. Dalai Lama really is using Twitter, regarding his following comment paraphrased from his Lincoln Center speech at the Healing the Divide Concert, Avery Fisher Hall, September 21, 2003

â€œIn order to achieve their potentials, spirituality needs digital technology and digital technology needs spirituality. At an essential level, the two traditions complement each other. Humanityâ€™s survival may depend on interaction between them.â€
--- H.H. Dalai Lama

Source: http://www.spiritualcomputi...

I agree and wrote the post "Engineering is Finding its Purpose again" on my weblog "Transformation Economy":
http://tomvanbrunschot.type...

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Shaun — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:44:58 -0000

Thanks for the mention Jez (http://celebswhotwitter.com)

Personally I'm not on a crusade to verify everybody claiming to be a celebrity on Twitter. I don't think it's my responsibility and i'm not even sure it's necessary to be honest. I think most people with common sense can figure out who is real or not and then the power of community can help us out the more difficult to spot fakes, rather than an official judgement. I see my site more to help people find celebs new to Twitter or who may not be using obvious usernames than as a detective agency.

That being said, I would never add a 'celeb' to my site knowing that they're fake, nor do I add any I have serious doubts about and I would immediately mark as Fake somebody later found to be a fake. But I think of it more as responsible

Finally, the spelling of Twitter with 1 't' was unfortunately completely unavoidable as Twitter restricts use of their name as a username.

Thanks again for the mention.

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Ramla Akhtar — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 06:30:46 -0000

Yes, celebrity accounts should be verified on Twitter. And Facebook.

Indeed I think Facebook should also have more vigorous account verification procedures for regular profiles given the speed at which dis-information can spread.

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Brijesh — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:02:41 -0000

Who verifies mother-of-all accounts - email?

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

CrisisBullshit — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 04:17:45 -0000

Well i think it is problem to decide who is celebrity and who is public figure. Then it comes problem how to verify it. All in all sounds very problematic and tomy mind if you can't control it effectively don't even try to do it

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Niels — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 03:14:27 -0000

I think they should work with a system like Google Adwords where copyrighted names are blocked for advertisement. This system should be added to Twitter to stop the twitsquatting.

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Frank Dux — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:19:50 -0000

twitter.com/highmikephelps is clearly real. I think this might be his only true outlet...

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Lina DeMartinez — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:50:41 -0000

Yet another article on the topic:

When Seth Godin isnâ€™t Seth Godin
http://tinyurl.com/problogg...

Turns out that, for the trouble they represent, some prefer to not even open an account. Take a look at Seth's reasoning:

http://tinyurl.com/SB-notseth

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Kris C — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:22:42 -0000

The account is back online, and says "unofficial" but that is NOT enough. For one thing, tweets are still in the account & would still be found in searches that state:

This site is maintained by the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. OHHDL is responsible for all media pertaining to HH.
5:21 PM Feb 7th from web in reply to (name removed)

His Holiness thought it was prudent to make his office open and assessable to a more youth and technologically advancing audience.
6:53 PM Feb 8th from web

These statements are not the work of a fan... they are bold lies. I don't know why morons create fake accounts - maybe they love to fool people because it gives them a false sense of power. I do agree verifiying *in advance* puts too much burden on Twitter, but I'd like to request that if they reinstate accounts that they suspend for misrepresentation of public figures, they actually clean them out and make them start over. There's nothing wrong with saying, "nope, you have to create a new account" so that they can get rid permanently of false statements. In this case, even the dude's initials for his Twitter account MEAN "OFFICE of HIS HOLINESS, the DALAI LAMA", and therefore the sham continues.

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

LIna DeMartinez — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:48:26 -0000

I am just wondering.

If a platform as "sophisticated" as Facebook has not been able to solve this issue, what makes any one think Twitter will?

By all standards, they rely on the know-how of third party developers for most everything...

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

OfficialChrisDuncan — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:37:50 -0000

I don't think this is really twitter's responsibility. Fact-checking should be left to journalists. Common sense should be left to... everybody.

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Lisa | zenatplay — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:20:42 -0000

I think the option to have a verified account would be useful, if only for the safety of other users.

How many of the pretend Dalai Lama's followers would have happily stepped forward if he'd asked for donations or personal information? A lot. That's how many.

In the meantime, I have my own verification method. When I discover a famous person I'm interested in on Twitter, I go to their official website to see if they mention their account there. If they don't, I generally assume they're a fake. Recently, I've made two exceptions: @OHHDL and @gtdguy (David Allen). One down...

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Deborah — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:19:04 -0000

I think they should be verified and in terms of what "qualfies" someone as a celebrity - I really think that is pretty clear. A friend of mine on Myspace who is in the business required that he either meet them in person or have a phone conversation. It worked well... If it's a fan site or something of that nature then a certain label must be applied.

You would hope that the world is in a bad enough state that people would not continue to feel the need to impersonate others to somehow validate their worth...but it seems that things have not evolved to that state yet. His Holiness is fact on Myspace. So when that site cross references to twitter you will probably be in good shape.

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

MarkOLMâ„¢ — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:50:30 -0000

I think this is an excellent opportunity for Twitter to engage their community and solve the problem of name squatting.

The option to open a 'celebrity' account should be given at sign up. Twitter can open up a whole level of celeb accounts to offer each one the opportunity to have their name not being taken by a squatter. The celeb accounts can be assigned to brands/companies, and people. Something like http://twitter.com/celeb/OHHDL would give people peace of mind that the account is accurate. These accounts could also include a more extensive service that provides them built-in functionality (follow-backs, auto dm's, etc).

With these new accounts there should be a specialized application process that allows the applicant to specify what industry, type of work they are involved in. I like the idea of taking a photo with something recent. If there was a randomly generated image that the applicant could print out, take a picture with, and submit it for approval, then using some recognition software, verify that the image in the applicant's photo is a match.

The photo is posted on a dedicated Twitter site, where users are asked to verify the celeb's authenticity. By messaging to an assigned hashmark (#) votes are tabulated by software calculating the number of yes and no's they receive. In addition to this, after the original application process is accurately completed, the applicant is granted a temporary 7-day account, where they are able to communicate with the Twitter masses. There they can type out places to verify their celebrity by their own mentioning of their Twitter authenticity vote, on their own sites, blogs they write on, shows they'll be in, youtube video messages, etc.

Of course there are a lot of details to consider, but the framework of something like this is exciting. If anything, this idea can become an opportunity for celebrities and brands to get the word out on Twitter that they've joined up, creating buzz for themselves. This benefits Twitter by potentially bringing them more exposure as the celebs/brands will try to make mention of the site in different media. This also allows users the opportunity to feel like they're making a valuable contribution to the community by being a part of a fun authentication process. I can see it being a big draw to a lot of mainstream users who have yet to adopt Twitter.

It'll be interesting to see how Twitter decides to handle this, but the possibilities are unlimited.

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Octavio Zuniga — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:37:19 -0000

@OHHDL is back ONLINE as of about 20 minutes ago.... The UNOFFICIAL Twitter page of the Dalai Lama!

Re: Should Twitter Verify Celebrity Accounts?

Lina DeMartinez — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:20:35 -0000

Jeremiah Owyang wrote an excellent article regarding this problem. Be it celebrities, brands, companies, all can use this advice:

Donâ€™t get BrandJacked: Confirming Your Corporate Twitter Account
http://www.web-strategist.c...