Twitter has finally launched a new “verified accounts” feature. This is for users to be sure that the person they are following is in fact who they say they are.

I’ve run into this issue many many times on twitter. The barrier to entry of creating an account and gaining followers is practically 0.

For example, someone thought it would be funny to take my account name, misspell it by one letter, mock my background, take my image and start spamming, following and saying mean things to those I often interact with online. Now, at a first glance of someone who is checking their @replies and mentions would immediately think that this was me — this is a problem. Especially seconds later when I get a call from a brand I’ve worked with asking why I said “that terrible thing” to them — HI. THAT WASN’T ME!!

…and what do you do if someone is doing this to you? Who do you call? There isn’t such thing as Twitbusters yet but I believe they are in talk with the Swinebusters.. so maybe soon.

Will verified accounts solve this issue? One thing that twitter isn’t very good at is communication with its users — which is surprising since it’s a communication platform. Unless you’re following people who work there or the actual twitter account, or know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone.. you might be left in the dark.

So, are verified accounts going to cause some confusion down the road when people who don’t get that verified label.. but are actually who they say they are? Are people only going to begin to trust verified accounts? How exactly do you get verified? Is anyone going to even notice that there is such a thing as verified accounts? What criteria goes into making sure you are the rightful owner of the account? This isn’t something that can really be automated so how many people will twitter need to employ to keep this up and make sure that everyone is happy?

Even though they have a blog, how many normal users go and check it for the latest updates on what’s happening on twitter? Probably not very many. At times I think twitter forgets about the common user and takes for granted its start as a site populated by the tech elite. Twitter has found their way into the mainstream world and not everyone is as quick to catch on to things as we (tech people) are.

Hash tags? @ replies? Followers?! How do you work this thing?!?? — this is usually what I hear from those who have just joined the service and have NO idea what’s going on :)

Above is a little video of the song I was referring to in the “how do you work this thing” quote — thanks to Ze Frank for that wonderful piece of classic internet goodness. He will forever be the God of video blogging.

Even MySpace utilizes Tom to send out little announcements to let people know about changes, issues and anything that is going on. I’m sure they don’t tell everything, but at least you’re in the know the second you log in!


NEED MORE OF THIS!!

One of my favorite things that was implemented into twitter awhile back were the little update boxes that allows more discovery of twitter apps and other twitter related sites that many people might not have heard of until now.

This space could also be utilized when there are some new updates on twitter or new features are added like verified accounts, recently account phishing scams and more. It’s not updated very often and it usually cycles through the same things all the time — twitter, put this to use already!

..and those were just a few of my thoughts — feel free to share yours on all things twitter.