It looks like Twitter has just rolled out its verified accounts. As you can seeing on Michael’s personal account, there’s a “Verified Account” logo right above his name. Twitter has previously announced that it was going to do this, but did so tonight without warning.
What’s odd is that Michael never actually verified his account with anyone at Twitter. Granted, it’s obvious that it is his actual account, but it’s still a bit odd that they would verify it without, you know, verifying it. Expect to see this rolling out over more accounts over the next several days.
What else is a bit odd — okay, odd in a self-serving way — is that a guy with more followers than Michael (yours truly) would not have a verified account while his boss does. Sigh. Even TechCrunch’s regular account with over 700,000 followers isn’t verified. I guess it’s only those select “celebrities” or high profile people that are getting verified, following the Facebook model for vanity URLs.
Update: Here’s Twitter’s explanation for who gets the verified accounts right now:
We’re starting with well-known accounts that have had problems with impersonation or identity confusion. (For example, well-known artists, athletes, actors, public officials, and public agencies). 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.
Dog lover.. lol
Did Twitter verify that, too?
soon a master identity online standard website will rule identity confirmation. kinda like a google-fico profile than the whole world can see.
didn’t the Nazi’s already try that? >:)
So were there other people impersonating Arrington in the past? Maybe you need to get your own stalkerazzi then you can get your verified account. What if you have a common name but don’t want people impersonating you?
Arrington looks to be a suspected person; how can Twitter verify your account. lol.
Regards
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
How about email verification for accounts, and/or CAPTCHAs for account registration?
I mean really, how many bots, spammers, screen scrapers and BS multi-account holders are there on Twitter?
My estimate is 75% of all registered users are bogus.
It also seems to be ‘adjusting’ the amount of followers as well – the image above has 5984 Followers, the site at the moment has 5983 followers.
Did you just unfollow him?
Nope – I didnt, but i was tempted to – to make it a difference of 2 users
but decided against it – as I would just have to follow him again later on
Was gonna add me as another follower of the “Arrington” but then decided to just keep with the feeds here at tech crunch central…
I want to be verified too!
It should definitely increase the count then…i just followed michael.
Twitter.. its waste of doing things without any announcements!
You launched it but did not verify accounts those which deserved too, and also there is no option for people to get verified.
I think that’s easy to apply, even retroactively without too much hassle.
Firstly, the email address that you used to register with, since every site needs an email address as part of the registration process.
Secondly, verification isn’t automatic on registration, it’s just been brought in recently and can only be awarded after account activity has been analysed (my guess, I don’t know for sure)
Thirdly, The high profile users – connected to the tech indutry, blogerati or entertainment – can be qualified by an admin/editorial system at twitter HQ?
This is just how I see it, please can ANYONE confirm if I’m correct on points 2 and 3….
So what exactly will the verification do? Is it just for looks or will it reduce the “hfe33vdaa” followers? lol
Not that I don’t enjoy those folks’.. err… contributions to the Tweetosphere
Fair point, but as you state above, this is obviously Mike’s account.
Think about how a bank would verify you – by asking questions others would unlikely be able to answer. Similarly, Mike tweets about things an impostor would unlikely have access to. It’s a bit indirect, but arguably is “verified.”
Twitter can verify accounts if they are linked too from an official website, somewhere around here Mike has probably linked to his Twitter account and they’re going to take his word for it that it’s really his. In Twitter’s words about being verified:
“provide a link to your official website containing the Twitter badge or logo linking back to your profile.”
Well this blows any credibility out of the window. Is there anyone at Twitter that understands that people will think this is like Verified by Visa so will be assuming that ‘Verified’ means verified.
That’s lame. Why don’t they just rename it to “Celebrity Account”?
siegler you are sooooooooooooo boooooring…..
I like it. So how do we get verified?
This is good for those who are heavy twitter users. Those who are not can always change names like techecrunchi
MG,
It says on the Twitter Verified page they are only doing it for accounts with known problems, or those likely to encounter imposters, so Michael getting one makes sense to me seeing as how he seems to attract the weirdies.
Yeah, make sense. Updated with Twitter’s wording. Thanks.
MG, you think you feel bad about not being verified? @ev and @biz aren’t verified, either. I guess we can’t trust anything they say now.
Don’t worry, I’m on the case for you!
There is a form to request Twitter account validation @ http://twitter..../verify_request
That page redirects to the twitter verified help page, but does not open the verification request page.
Weird.
The calling them ‘celebrity accounts’ idea is spot on. They will not verify a business at this time, just artists celebrities and bands. It is the MySpace mentality. They will eventually figure it out. Maybe.
I follow nearly all of those who follow me. (Invitation) Only actors/celebrities in my followed group are verified.
nice fun article MG. i liked it.
“but it’s still a bit odd that they would verify it without, you know, verifying it” hehe
I wonder how they’re actually verifying identities? I know Facebook was requesting corporate ID’s, but if Twitter didn’t even announce it, are they going by profile photo? Random drawing? Trivia contest?
Twitter is taking a shortcut because of the heat. They are smart to tee up journalist but I suppose they turn off others.
well he doesn’t need to manually verify it, Twitter just checks whether there is any link from the user’s website to his twitter profile, if he has then its verified..
So if Britney @ her website links to her twitter page, twitter can be sure that its the real Britney thus give it a verified status.
Do they alert you at all that it has been verified? Email? Message?
I suspect you’ll notified by a bunch of jealous followers tweeting “Hey, how did you get verified?” at you.
It makes sense. Who is going to want to impersonate the profile of someone with 5 followers?
An account with 700.000 followers speaks for it self. But an account with 6000 get’s one wondering…
Wonder what Kanye will do now
Does that mean Twitter thinks Michael is an athlete? Or an actor?
Most probably an actor.. May be they saw the fight sequence that happened a few weeks ago
I think he is verified Dog Lover.
See things like that I do hate when twitter does, I mean they select particular accounts always. Not that I am jelous I mean @ev or @biz were not verified too and they are the founders of twitter. But things like Suggested List goes on my nerves where twitter admins select who is going to be on that list rather than people. I mean why is some guy I never heard off on that Suggested List rather than @LeoLaporte for example? You know what I mean? And now with this acc verification , it’s just stupid , its going to be again one of those things where twitter admins verify individuals yet not all celebs or actors or even Dog Lovers.
Michael is my 2nd favorite Dog Whisperer LOL, even tho bitch blocked me from @TechCrunch account hahahaha
Useful alt tag on your picture there “picture-73″ -.-
Loic Le Meur is also verified… The Tech Stars of Silicon Valley are verified first…
They are probably doing this because of what happened with Kanye. I was upset when I found out I was not following the real Kanye. I could not work or eat. All that time I was following the fake Kanye. Now at least I will know. just kidding lol I had to add some humor to this Tech Crunch story.
So you are one of the “chosen” ones! Aren’t you happy about the status! I know you are thats why you wanna share it with this post! Making all other jealous! U r a dog!!!
I wonder what would happen if Michael were to change his bio to “Levar Arrington” (NFL player)? I doubt that he’d automatically lose the “verified account” status.
More so, I wonder what would happen if a “verified” account were to change username (while that’s still possible) and bio? Would that be enough to automatically de-verify?
this article made me laugh out loud. just thought i’d let you know!
But, now that Michael has a verified account, what can he do with it? Is there a Identity System growing here? Could these verified accounts be used to “verify” authorship of things like comments on people’s blogs? Authorship of PDF files, etc.? Sure…
Let’s say that Michael wants to write a “verified” comment on the blog of someone who doesn’t have a “verified user” system. So, what Michael would do is compute an MD5 hash of the text of his comment and then Tweet that hash code so that it gets in his “verified user” feed. He would then get the URL of the Tweet and append it to the comment text before writing it to the blog. Thus, anyone could look at the comment on the blob post, follow the link to the Tweet, verify the MD5 hash (after canonicalization) and since Michael is a verified user, they could trust that the real Michael Arrington made the comment. Could be cool… There are, of course, many other really easy ways to do this sort of “transitive trust” thing and they all apply to any system that establishes methods for “verified users” to modify publicly readable data sets.
Of course, if folk didn’t like all these hash codes making a mess by cluttering up Twitter feeds, then Twitter might offer “hash streams” as a special service to “verified users.” (i.e. You would post normal Tweets as you do today, but you would post “signature” Tweets on a distinct feed.) But, that’s just a UI optimization…
bob wyman
I’m sure that the motivation behind this is Tony LaRussa’s lawsuit against Twitter. He is suing Twitter over a profile that impersonated him and damaged his character.
MG, what’s with the snark on what was a pretty obvious move by Twitter?
AplusK is also verified
“Twitter farts and world goes into a frenzy…”
Well the hype is beginning to seem that insane to me anyway.
I just tweeted:
“Any #twitter #statistics #based on #unverified #accounts are #meaningless (see also my previous tweets
Only #verified #user #stats are OK”
but I’m not verified — so you may want to take that with a grain of salt!
;D nmw
I will definately go for verifying my twitter account
one way of verifying is checking teh account against the official website of celebs, if the same account is mentioned then it is a verified account by all means
Does, twitter has considered the possibility of persons having same name as some public personalities. If the person, doesnot put his picture in profile, a lot of peoples may mistakely follow him.
I’m a fan of Twitter authorised accounts and started an A to Z list, so far found around 130