I've always wondered how Twitter verified the accounts of famous individuals. Personally, I just assumed that a celebrity or politician who would want to get his or her account verified would simply contact Twitter and prove that the account is legit. I also presumed that someone from Twitter would contact the publicist or assistant of a prominent figure to verify an account. Apparently though, this isn't always how the microblogging site does things.

Earlier today, Twitter admitted that it mistakenly verified the account of a fake @Wendi_Deng. (See image below).

The account, which was listed as "Wendi Deng Murdoch" was posing as media mogul Rupert Murdoch's wife, following the Twitter debut of @rupertmurdoch (the real one) on New Year's Eve. Most of the hoaxer's tweets mentioned Murdoch, tweeting things like, "hello everyone. trying out twitter again now @rupertmurdoch is on it. showing him great way 2 communicate with people."

News Corporation also told members of the press that the account was indeed real, and as of late Monday night, Twitter's "Verified Account" stamp appeared on @Wendi_Deng's profile .

However, at around 9:00AM ET, the poser sent tweets revealing that the account does not belong to Wendi Deng Murdoch saying:

The imposter further mentioned that she (or he?) was also "surprised - and even a little alarmed" when the verified tick appeared on the account.

To answer questions about who was behind the spoof, the imposter simply tweeted:

Well, after this whole Twitter fiasco, this "nobody" probably won't stay that way for too long.

Twitter's Say

It still isn't clear how the account ended up with the little blue checkmark, and Twitter is still keeping mum about how it goes about its verification process. A spokesperson from the microblogging site spoke to the BBC and said, "We don't comment on our verification process but can confirm that the @wendi_deng account was mistakenly verified for a short period of time."

Lessons Learned

There's nothing like starting the New Year with a good 'ol lesson in social media, right folks? The key takeaway in this incident is obviously the fact that we can't rely on anything or anyone on the social web. I suppose that since the imposter behind @Wendi_Deng didn't have any sinister motives, this little occurrence can be considered relatively harmless or even laughable. Still though, it really sheds light on just how easily people can be manipulated in social media. If you need to make one New Year's resolution about the web this year, let it be this one: Don't just bite into anything you see on social networks. (Of course, this should be common sense, but a lot of people surprisingly miss the mark.)

On Twitter's part, I think that they should stop being so enigmatic about their account verification methods. What's wrong with a little transparency? Besides, wouldn't it be easier if Twitter published a set of standards as well as an official process that accounts need to go through to get verified? Not only will it be more convenient for everyone, but it will certainly prevent confusing incidents such as this one from taking place.