Twitter is on a rampage to improve user experience not only in terms of simpler user interface and ease of using, but also by emphasising on the User Identification methods. A large portion of Twitter users are followers of their favourite celebrity tweeters [like Jonathon Ross, Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry, Demi Moore - the list is endless]. Now with fame and power comes the curse of image vulnerability. For e.g. the existing Twitter account for some celebrities like famous Bollywood actor Aamir Khan and James Corden are not real. Those are fake ones, and Twitter is pushing it hard to do a check on these, so as to prevent such acts of creation of fake accounts.
In the latest blog post on Twitter, they have discussed how a certain manager, Tony La Russa has filed a lawsuit for impersonation of his name to create an account. Twitter, however has not agreed to pay any settlement for the lawsuit. To prevent occurence of any such future activities, Twitter will be rolling out identity checks termed as Verified Accounts. This check will show a tick mark next to the Profile name of a user, and will be performed on select users [comprising of public figures, officials, organisations etc.]
An important tip to check the identity of a Twitter user is to visit the URL linked in the user profile. Fake users often tend to use the Official URL of that particular user [searchable on Google]. If this particular URL links back to the twitter ID, it is certain, that the user is real and not a fake one.
Issues with this form of verification though, is that there are loads of users out there, who have shortened URLs on their profile, and these URLs lead to some dodgey website [often having an appended username at the tail] talking about affiliate marketing or money making on the internet in the next 2 hours.
