New Twitter Feature for Businesses to Combat Impersonation
Everyone has heard about all the craziness happening at Twitter since Elon Musk’s takeover earlier this Fall. If you haven’t, read here for a quick synopsis.
One of the biggest changes Musk made soon after taking over was with Twitter Blue and verifications. Musk made it possible for every user to be “verified” on Twitter if they paid a small fee of $8. There was no other actual verification happening with Twitter Blue besides making sure you had a valid payment option. No submitting photo ID, manual reviews, etc. So of course right out of the gate there were people taking advantage of this.
How did they take advantage of it? There were countless fake accounts created to look very similar to legit verified accounts. These fake “verified” accounts would then send out false or misleading tweets to get people to believe it was the real account of whatever organization they were impersonating.
You can imagine the chaos it created the short time this new verification system was live. One of the more popular cases was this example from a fake Eli Lilly account:
To the quick scroller or unsuspecting, this looks like a legitimate tweet from Eli Lilly. Unless you knew their Twitter handle by memory, you never would’ve known the different because they have the blue check mark, right? Wrong.
This was a imposter account and a 100% fake tweet, but it got a huge amount of attention. Obviously Eli Lilly offering insulin for free would be a big story. Which turns out is not actually the case (who would’ve guessed…).
So you can see just from this one example the chaos that ensued. Similar things were happening to politicians and other big-name celebrities across the platform.
Twitter was pretty quick to halt this new verification system and completely suspended Twitter Blue for a few weeks.
So what was Twitter’s solution?
The “new” Twitter Blue and verification system is still very flawed in our eyes, but at least there is one new feature for businesses that will help them be recognized as the real account.
This week, Twitter rolled out the new Twitter Blue for Business. This service offers a “new way for businesses and their affiliates to verify and distinguish themselves on Twitter.”
The most noticeable feature that comes with Twitter Blue for Business is the square profile images for business accounts that are verified (as pictured below). When we first saw these in our timeline, we were a little confused. Traditionally, all profile images have been circle since Twitter’s invention. So we caught on to the squares pretty quickly, but didn’t know exactly what they meant.
Now we do. Here’s an example of the square profile images:
It was pretty noticeable to us right away, but when we asked others, they hadn’t seen it yet. So will this feature 100% combat the fake/imposter business accounts out there? No. But it is a step in the right direction!
Other new feature for Twitter Blue for Business
In addition to the square profile images, Twitter released another feature to help link business accounts to its affiliates (employees, journalists, sub-accounts, etc.).
What exactly does this mean? From Twitter:
“a company can link any number of their affiliated individuals, businesses and brands to their account. When they do, affiliated accounts will get a small badge of their parent company’s profile picture next to their blue or gold checkmark.”
As pictured, you can see the blue Twitter icon next to Evan Jones’ name (and blue checkmark), which indicates that they are officially affiliated with that brand. Businesses will have to manually set these affiliations up, but this new feature functions similarly to LinkedIn’s feature allowing you to indicate and tag the business you work for. This new feature could be especially important for journalists.
As of right now, these are the main features for the new Twitter Blue for Business. It’s not a lot, but again it’s a step in the right direction to fix the absolute mess that was Twitter and Twitter Blue for a little bit. Not saying Twitter isn’t a mess anymore, but you know what we mean. Progress is progress, right?
Stay tuned for more craziness from Twitter in the coming weeks as Elon Musk continues to make changes!
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