Google+ seems to move pretty fast don’t you think? First, they added the Google+ games feature (which I’ve been tinkering around with here and there) and now they’ve made another move. The beginning of the verification badge roll out has begun!
The program makes it so that celebrities, public figures and people who have been added to a large number of circles, can have their identities verified with a check mark and a small “verified name” badge.
Back during the middle of July, actor William Shatner’s Google+ account was suspended reportedly because Google+ had no way of knowing if he was the real deal or not. He quickly got his account back and now, Mr. William Shatner has his very own verified name badge.
Google+ team member Wen-Ai Yu posted a message about the new program. She said, “We’re starting to roll out verification badges on profiles so you can be sure the person you’re adding to a circle is who they claim to be. Check out the video below (or my profile) to see what these verification badges look like.”
Here’s the video.
Wen-Ai Yu also pointed out they are working on expanding this feature to more people.
Do you think this is one more step towards allowing brands to have a presence on Google+?
I have been trying to keep up with all the changes going on with social media and how Google +1 is affecting the rest of the social media networks. It has been a long time in coming it seems for Google to have made the recent changes going on throughout. I am impressed with the changes being presented by Google in all and think the Google +1 will be a success. There are still some skeptics concerning the success of Google +1, but overall in my opinion; it was and will be a significant gain for all of social media and Google. As far as the badge verification process goes, I think this will be another wait and see issue’s. It may seem a tad discriminatory to single out certain people, but in all actuality it could be considered a way to test the new implementations out first before rolling out the complete changes to all. I will continue to read current news on these changes and hope to apply more of these implementations in the near future.