Twitter has decided to offer verified accounts after experiencing problems with the supposed account of well known baseball manager Tony La Russa in the United States.

Worried about users impersonating people on Twitter the service will start with public officials and famous people who are likely targets for this practice.

Twitter is currently in the middle of a lawsuit from La Russa after somebody impersonated him on the micro blogging site criticising some players.

Search Engine Land said that Twitter should be able to easily verify lots of accounts by providing automated verification in the way of unique meta tags or file names.

Reports vary on whether Twitter has settled the lawsuit but either way it will serve as a good wake up call to improve the Twitter service.

Posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 10:26 am in Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.