Twitter Verified Accounts Beta

There are lots of celebrities on Twitter – and a lot of other people pretending to be celebrities. There’s been speculation for a while now that Twitter might start to offer officially verified accounts, perhaps as a premium service. It looks like the Tony La Russa lawsuit might have nudged them into announcing the move.

According to the Twitter blog, they are indeed planning on providing a Verified Account service. It’s not there yet, it’ll go into beta this summer. Twitter says:

The experiment will begin with public officials, public agencies, famous artists, athletes, and other well known individuals at risk of impersonation. We hope to verify more accounts in the future but due to the resources required, verification will begin only with a small set.

The language of the announcement suggests that this verification is something that will be initiated by Twitter rather than purchased as part of a hypothetical premium account. In particular business accounts won’t be verified in the first phase. However Twitter “see an opportunity” there, so it’s possible that verified business accounts will be chargeable.

It’ll be interesting to se what effect this move has on unofficial verification services such as Valebrity. Perhaps Twitter could outsource the validation to them.