Last week, I was speaking at the ClickZ Live Toronto conference, and Kirstine Stewart, head of Twitter Canada, was one of the keynote speakers. According to Ms. Stewart, no Twitter accounts of employees are Verified accounts. Not even the CEO’s account.
I actually find this kind of odd. It seems to me that if you were someone who is officially representing Twitter, your account should be a Verified Account. I would want to know that the person tweeting at that account is, in fact, acting in an official capacity and not actually some ‘imposter’ so to speak. Well, in fact, no employee Twitter Accounts are verified accounts.
It looks to me like Biz Stone (@biz) does in fact have a Verified Account. Biz is the co-founder of Twitter.
But, I think Biz’s account should definitely be a Verified Account, given his status in the industry and being sort of an “internet celebrity” so to speak.
So, what’s the scoop behind Verified Accounts? Well, officially a Verified Account is “currently used to establish authenticity of identities of key individuals and brands on Twitter”. Basically, if there have been reports of impersonation or there might be a question as to whether or not the account is authentic or not, then the account may possibly be Verified. At this point, Twitter doesn’t accept verification requests from the general public.
Do you think accounts of Twitter employees should be Verified Accounts?