Twitter Verified Accounts Are Here

Twitter seems to have launched its Verified Accounts program yesterday with little fanfare. This means that celebrities and public agencies can now show a “verified” icon on their Twitter page.

It looks like Ashton Kutcher and Oprah now have the badges. If you would like to get one, go to the verified accounts help page, which explains:

With this feature, you can easily see which accounts we know are ‘real’ and authentic. That means we’ve been in contact with the person or entity the account is representing and verified that it is approved. (This does not mean we have verified who, exactly, is writing the tweets.)

This also does not mean that accounts without the ‘Verified Account’ badge are fake. The vast majority of accounts on the system are not impersonators, and we don’t have the ability to check 100% of them. For now, we’ve only verified a handful of accounts to help with cases of mistaken identity or impersonation.

This should certainly help to avoid those fake celebrities who like to stir up trouble. Corporate entities will have to wait, however, as verified business accounts have not yet been rolled out.