Twitter is renown for allowing just about anyone to create an account using any username. Now, it seems, at least one person with a substantial investment in his name – St. Louis Cardinals Major League Baseball Manager, Tony La Russa – is suing Twitter for allowing someone to pretend to be him on the site.

Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone said last week that Twitter would not settle with La Russa and that the case bordered on being frivolous. Meanwhile, Twitter has suspended the offending account and is experimenting with a new feature called ‘verified accounts’ aimed at preventing Twitter users from impersonating celebrities.

According to TechCrunch, Twitter will be introducing a beta version of the feature over the next few months for a confined set of celebrities.

Basically, account holders will have a ‘verified account’ official seal in their profile box. Twitter will presumably extend the feature to others later on.

Source: Leena Rao, “Facing A Lawsuit And Complaints From Celebs, Twitter Launches Verified Accounts,” TechCrunch, June 6, 2009

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