**by Ciar�n Norris**
Until Andy Murray recently gave hope for a British man winning
Wimbledon for the first time since his clothing's namesake Fred Perry,
the news here in the UK had been almost entirely full of stories about
politicians, their inventive expenses
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/>
and the political careers that had come to a premature end (or
overdue end, depending on your point of view) as a result of the
claims.
And yet the news that one of the most senior members of Gordon
Brown's government was resigning doesn't seem to have caused much stir
at all. Just last week, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary
(equivalent to the Secretary of State in the US), used his Twitter
profile <http://twitter.com/David_Miliband>
to anounce his resignation:
You would imagine that news such as this would be on the front pages
of every major news story, especially as so
<http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/06/26/he-had-no-pulse-we-never-got-him-back-115875-21472441/%20>
many
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6580063.ece>
of
<http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23712415-details/Tributes+start+pouring+in+for+Michael+Jackson,+the+King+of+Pop/article.do>
them
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/michael-jackson/5646652/Michael-Jackson-is-dead-David-Miliband-reacts-on-Twitter.html>
had reported
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jun/26/twitter-michael-jackson-dead>
his tweet on Michael Jackson's death
<http://twitter.com/David_Miliband/status/2334058940>
( Never has one soared so high and yet dived so low. RIP Michael ).
But the reason that so few did report it was because of course it
wasn't actually David Miliband posting tweets: it was a couple of
graduates
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/jun/29/twitter-newspapers>
who wanted to parody politicians, but ended up showing how gullible,
or lazy, many journalists are.
But before all us bloggers start proclaiming how this shows that old
media' simply can't keep up these days, it's not just journalists that
fall for this sort of thing. Last year, the blogosphere was united in
its praise of Exxon Mobil and its use of Twitter to connect with
consumers. Except, of course, for the fact that once again, it was a
fake account
<http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/08/01/how-janet-fooled-the-twittersphere-shes-the-voice-of-exxon-mobil/>
.
This has now become such a common occurrence that any number of
celebrities now call their profiles the real' one. But despite this,
it's often difficult to tell reality from parody, and if you're a
multi-million dollar brand, that could be a problem.
In his (typically biting) post on the Exxon example, Drama 2.0 (a now
retired web 2.0 satirist) argued that companies shouldn't worry unduly
about this sort of thing
<http://econsultancy.com/blog/2672-did-exxon-mobil-get-brand-jacked-or-did-twitter-users-get-punk-d>
. When a profile only has 500 foloowers (as the Exxon one did) on a
very niche site (as Twitter still was at the time), then it's unlikely
to cause much damage. But now that tweets make the front pages of
national newspapers, and the news broadcasts on major TV stations,
things have changed.
The two pranksters responsible for the Miliband account said that it
demonstrated the need for verification on the web. And minutes after
reading about their hoax I noticed that the official 10 Downing Street
profile now has a verified badge, to promote the fact that Twitter has
certified the fact that it's actually being run by those Gordon
Brown's communications team.
Unfortunately for brands though, Twitter has said that it's not
currently running the verification programme for businesses
<http://twitter.com/help/verified>
, though it is inviting companies to express an interest in the
service. One would think that installing something similar to the
system Google uses to verify business listings would do very nicely.
And in the meantime, brands will just have to keep listening for
people talking about them in the hope that they can spot these hoaxes
before they gain too much traction. And all of us who write about the
web, whether blogger or journalist, will have to start doing some of
that pesky fact-checking before we pronounce on the latest celeb or
brand to say something scandalous on Twitter.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the author, and not
necessarily Search Engine Land.
Ciar�n Norris <http://searchengineland.com/author/ciaran-norris/>
heads up Mindshare SocialMedia8, the new joint venture between
global media agency Mindshare <http://www.mindshareworld.com>
& social media specialists SocialMedia8. At Mindshare, he works with
Nike and other global brands, helping them to make the most of social
media & to put it at the heart of their marketing mix.
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