Jun

18

Tony La Russa takes on Twitter

Filed Under Social Media 

St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa took on Twitter, filing a lawsuit claiming that the social networking site did not remove the fake account of someone impersonating him.

One of the downsides to Twitter, coming from a PR perspective, is that users are free to sign up for usernames without showing proof of who they actually are. This feature can become problematic when fans impersonate celebrities, allowing them to affect the individual’s image.

Athletes and other celebrities have handled fake accounts in different ways. Kathleen Hessert of Sports Media Challenge encouraged Shaquille O’Neal to simply create his own account after learning of the imposter account and Shaq now has over 1.2 million followers.

In La Russa’s case, he opted to take legal action and I think a lot of people will follow this closely to see how it plays out. There have been claims that a settlement had been reached, but Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone says that it’s not true (as of June 8th). Publications including PC World and Sports Illustrated (via the AP) believe that the law is not on La Russa’s side.

The Eye on Sports Media blog points out that athletes need to proactively go out and create their own accounts on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to prevent something like this from even happening. It’s not that athletes need to use and update these pages, but they need to “own” them so no one else can distort and harm their image.

How have these networking sites responded after the lawsuit? Twitter announced a new feature in a beta version called “Verified Account” that will place a badge on profiles of celebrities (and the like) who have been confirmed as the real person. Twitter isn’t the only site dealing with issues over identity — the New York Times looks at how Facebook is handling imposters.

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