A New Form of Satire

Take a look at this http://twitter.com/rioferdy5 and this http://twitter.com/rioferdinand5. See the differences? How about this http://twitter.com/justinbieber and this http://twitter.com/justin_bieber15. Again, see the differences? Yes, if you are on Twitter and follow one of these celebrities, you might notice that one is a real account and the other is a fake account. We can notice whether the account is a real or fake by noticing the "Verified Account" logo on the top of the celebrities' profiles.

Notice the blue ticked "Verified Account" logo on the right side, on top of the celebrities' profile.

This is not a new issue. It has been around for quite some time. And sometimes these fake accounts have more followers than the real accounts. But why? According to Berry (2010), these fake twitter accounts reveal the viral power of satire. The influence of the fake accounts relies on the real-world renown of the company they’re satirizing but the fake accounts receive far more engagement, have a higher network score and generally have more Twitter influence. Another example is when an impersonator of Kanye West started creating profile under the artist name. The artist then posted in his blog that he doesn't have a Twitter account and that who uses his name in Twitter had been irresponsible and deceitful to the faithful users. Twitter responded by removing the fake account the same day the entry of the blog was posted (Issac, 2010).

Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone stated that these impersonators express skepticism whenever someone claiming to be a celebrity joins the service. Since there are many new users that signed up for Twitter everyday, it is impossible to monitor the impostors. Twitter have to rely on the person who is being misrepresented contacting the company. Stone also said that these fake accounts might be parody and it can be used for healthy expression if it is done right and does not cross into impersonation. Stone also encouraged celebrities not only to join the service but also to run their account themselves. The problem for Twitter is that if enough "fakesters" cause havoc, people will lose trust in the system, something that's hard to win back online (Owens, 2009).

References:

- Owens, Simon 2009 'How Celebrity Imposters Hurt Twitter Credibility', MediaShift viewed 12 November 2010 <http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/02/how-celebrity-imposters-hurt-twitters-credibility051.html>

-Issac, Mike 2010 'The Most Notorious Fake Twitter Accounts', Forbes.com viewed 12 November 2010 <http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/02/bp-angelina-jolie-technology-twitter.html>

-Berry, Megan 2010 'When Fake Twitter Accounts Beat Out Their Real Counterparts', Klout viewed 12 November 2010 <http://klout.com/blog/2010/06/when-fake-twitter-accounts-beat-out-their-real-counterparts/>