14 DAY TRIAL // After the reports of the St. Louis Cardinals' manager Tony La Russa's lawsuit against Twitter, and consequent settlement, the micro-blogging service's co-founder Biz Stone has decided to make an official statement on the Twitter blog to clarify their stance on the issue. The statement was surprising to say the least, as it turns out Twitter has made no such settlement and has no intention of doing so either. However, in response to this and other incidents, he also announced that the website would introduce “verified accounts” for celebrities and public figures.
“Reports this week that Twitter has settled a law suit and officially agreed to pay legal fees for an impersonation complaint that was taken care of by our support staff in accordance with our Terms are erroneous. Twitter has not settled, nor do we plan to settle or pay,” Stone said on the official Twitter blog. What's more, he noted that the fake account in question had been taken down in accordance with Twitter's Terms of Service and that the lawsuit itself was “an unnecessary waste of judicial resources bordering on frivolous,” confident that any court would see it the same way.
But in fact Twitter is taking the whole impersonator account issue seriously and has decided to do something about it by giving us a 'sneak peak' at an upcoming feature called “verified accounts.” The feature will be aimed at famous artists, athletes and other celebrities but also public officials and agencies, all of whom run the risk of having fake accounts set up in their names.
Verified accounts will have an official 'seal' showing up in the top right corner confirming that the account is real. The feature is still experimental and limited to a few accounts for now due to the resources necessary for verification but Twitter hopes to introduce it for more accounts in the future. For now the feature will not be available for businesses but Twitter says it is a definite possibility that it will be introduced in the future.