Around the Net
Twitter's "Verification" Problem
- GigaOm, Wednesday, January 4, 2012 11:57 AM
Despite being “verified” -- with Twitter’s blue check mark -- it was just revealed that an account ostensibly belonging to Rupert Murdoch’s wife Wendi Deng was a fake. Should anyone care? Perhaps, writes GigaOm, because it “reinforces how little we know about Twitter’s verification process, something that is becoming more and more important as the service grows.”
A self-described practical joker, the account’s creator told members of the press that he was as surprised as anyone when the account showed up with a blue check-mark, and that he hadn’t been contacted by anyone at Twitter about who he was or whether the account was real. Twitter, meanwhile, has refused to speak publically about what happened with the Deng account, or to explain why it was verified and then suddenly un-verified.
“The company has also repeatedly refused to talk on the record about how the verification process as a whole works, and why some accounts are chosen for verification and others aren’t,” GigaOm adds. “Twitter’s radio silence on the issue makes it even harder to trust the entire process, and that could have ramifications that go beyond just the Murdoch case.”
