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Recently we talked about social media impersonators who often damage the reputation of the individual or brand they are masquerading as through slander or false statements on popular social networking sites. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, in response to a recent lawsuit filed against the micro-blogging platform by Tony La Russa, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, has gone public and announced the implementation of Verified Accounts. La Russa’s lawsuit asserts that Twitter is at fault for the actions of an impostor account claiming to be the major league baseball manager, under which “derogatory” statements were made that caused La Russa ”significant emotional distress.”
 
Twitter is writing the lawsuit off as frivolous, but they have recognized the need to improve their user experience by cutting down on the number of social impersonators on their platform. As a trial run Twitter is only verifying accounts of the rich and famous, popular targets for impersonators, but may expand the service in the future to businesses and others. While the exact process of verifying accounts has not been released, one method will be to check the official websites of public figures, public agencies, artists, actors, athletes, etc… to see what Twitter accounts they are linking to.
 
Source: Twitter Blog

Social Identity Theft, Brand Impersonation, and Character Assassination

Those of us who watch the television series NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) on a regular basis are undoubtedly familiar with Pauley Perrette’s bubbly goth girl forensic specialist character Abby Sciuto. Today while searching the depths of YouTube for intriguing social media footage I came across a video monologue shot by Perrette disparaging social networks and the proliferation of celebrity impostors.
 
The intriguing part is not Perrette’s overwhelming frustration with individuals who impersonate her on popular social networking sites such as MySpace and Twitter, but rather where she goes on to say (frame 2:28) that social networking sites are “contributing to identify theft because [they] do not ask to verify someone’s identity before they create a profile.” While most social networks have strict policies on impersonations of any kind and will go through the steps to verify identities and terminate account based on such reports, to say that this should be done prior to creating a profile or account would quickly slit the wrists of any viable social media business model.
 
Rather than stating my opinions on identity verification in a Web 2.0 world, here is the video for you to check out. Comments have been closed on YouTube but please let us know what you think in our comment section below.