{"id":872,"date":"2013-08-23T17:01:09","date_gmt":"2013-08-23T11:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/?p=872"},"modified":"2023-10-25T16:26:11","modified_gmt":"2023-10-25T10:56:11","slug":"the-severe-identity-crisis-on-twitter-for-digital-marketers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/23\/the-severe-identity-crisis-on-twitter-for-digital-marketers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Severe Identity Crisis On Twitter For Digital Marketers"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Finextra article<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>highlights a major challenge facing digital marketers using Twitter for business development:<\/p>\n

How do you determine the veracity of a Twitter account? Put in another way, how do you verify if a certain Twitter handle really belongs to the person to whom you think it does?<\/p>\n

This is a big problem because you can end up wasting time – or, worse, be subject to disinformation – by following the wrong guy.<\/p>\n

For example, if you wish to keep abreast of news and views from NatWest Bank, you might simply follow @NatWest. Unfortunately, that’d be a waste of time: This Twitter handle belongs to one Ms. Natalie Westerman. According to this story on The Telegraph<\/strong><\/a>, when NatWest Bank’s Internet Banking portal crashed recently, millions of its customers tweeted to @NatWest to vent their anger, wrecking havoc on Ms. Westerman’s timeline in the process!<\/p>\n

A thorough marketer – and customer – could’ve visited NatWest Bank’s website and picked up its correct Twitter handle (@NatWest_Help).<\/p>\n

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However, not everybody is thorough.<\/p>\n

Besides, this approach won’t work with individuals, who don’t have websites (barring very few exceptions).<\/p>\n

Twitter Search is not very helpful since many famous – and infamous – individuals attract droves of squatters with similar-sounding handles. For example, there are reportedly more than 100 Twitter handles impersonating \u00a0Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the governor of Central Bank of Nigeria.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Even in the case of companies, most of whom do have websites, this approach has its limitations because many of them don’t display their social media buttons on their websites. This is presumably because they’re wary of linking their websites to \u00a0third-party sites that lie outside their control. For example, you won’t find the Twitter Handle @IDontLuvUMovie anywhere on the movie’s website (I found it on its print ad, BTW).<\/p>\n

At this point, Twitter doesn’t seem to enforce anti-squatting rules. You can claim to be God and, as long as the @god handle is available, Twitter will allocate it to you without verifying that you’re indeed God. Okay, just joking. But you can virtually claim to be @anyone on Twitter and get away with it. Twitter allocates handles on first-come-first-serve basis.<\/p>\n

An extreme example of this policy at work can be found in @jackdorsey. No, it doesn’t belong to Twitter’s Founder, Jack Dorsey, but to one Mr. John Pitts. While Mr. Pitts is a “Father\/Husband, Manhattanite, Peace Corps alum, book publishing veteran, dabbler, tinkerer, thinkerer”, he’s certainly not the illustrious founder of Twitter (who goes by @jack presumably because he got pipped to the post by Mr. Pitts).<\/p>\n

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As if marketers don’t have enough headache filtering out imposters, they face a much tougher task when they try to find and follow influential bloggers and company CXOs\u00a0on Twitter. \u00a0A lot of them use handles that are completely unrelated to their names viz.:<\/p>\n