Twitter Starts Account Verification To Help Stop Impersonators

[engine]

Twitter Starts Account Verification To Help Stop Impersonators [news.cnet.com]

They're here--sort of. Twitter has launched the early beta phase of its "verified accounts" program, a background-check for celebrities and other prominent users of the service to weed out impersonators and fake accounts. If they pass the test, they get a graphic "badge" much like a PayPal verified account's.

"We're starting with well-known accounts that have had problems with impersonation or identity confusion," an explanation from Twitter read. "We may verify more accounts in the future, but because of the cost and time required, we're only testing this feature with a small set of folks for the time being. As the test progresses we may be able to expand this test to more accounts over the next several months."

[Slinger]

I guess Twitter didnt beleive that I was a guy named Barack Obama and was president of "something".

[petra]

Good call Twitter!

[weeks]

Has Twitter made a dime of income yet?

[fargo1999]

Today I put a link from my site to Twitter. It was kind of funny when I put:

<a href="http://twitter.com/My_URL" rel="NoFollow">Follow MySite on Twitter!</a>

:)

[Essex_boy]

Barack Obama and was president of "something" - sounds about right to me....

[CosmicLee]

Yes, too many stories recently of posers. Pretty funny though :)

[CosmicLee]

BTW -- fargo1999 -- that is funny. We just added a twitter link on our blog with a no follow. The irony is funny :)

[sribasu]

Thank you for the news.
Anyway,
How can I change the page background of my twitter profile? I'm newon twitter.

[bhonda]

Ok, so I don't twitter, and I don't follow anyone on it, but I was just wondering, do we know how such a verification will take place?

Reading the twitter page on it, they just say they get in contact with the twitterer (is that the proper term of one who is on twitter?) - I guess it'll be a little more complex than an email that says -'Are you the real guy? Click here to verify your account'...

Hmmm...maybe I need to get famous, start twittering, get someone to impersonate me, so I can see what happens!