How Do I Know You’re the Real Oprah?

Mrinal Desai, co-founder of CrossLoop, an online computer support provider, discusses how fake accounts are overrunning Twitter. For instance,

• “you have Tina Fey, who has publicly acknowledged it’s not her on Twitter yet her fake account currently has over 216,000 followers.”
• “there are many questionable accounts like Oprah’s, which has 9,390 followers without a single tweet”

A second issue is that real celebrities, including such stars as business guru Guy Kawasaki, have been found to be using ghost writers for their posts.

Many learning professionals are fighting to gain access to social media sites and networks within their organizations. IT departments, on the other hand, see potential security threats. Stories of fake identities feed the resistance to opening up access to these networks. What a shame.

Lastly, a word of advice: Before you make a life-changing decision based on an inspirational tweet, you might just want to remember that the real author might be Jimmy, bored manning the cash of a 7/11  in some small town somewhere. (RN)

Is Twitter Turning Into MySpace? | TechCrunch | Mrinal Desai | 1 April 2009