Facebook Intros Verified Pages And Profiles, Takes A Page From Twitter

In an effort to help users identify legitimate pages and profiles of popular celebrities and businesses. Facebook has rolled out their own verification system that's a lot like Twitter's own offering. Verified Facebook page and profiles will have a small blue checkmark next to their name, indicating that it's the official page or profile of said person or business.

Facebook says that verified accounts "belong to a small group of prominent public figures (celebrities, journalists, government officials, popular brands and businesses) with large audiences," so if you're wanting to get that blue checkmark stamp of approval, you'll want to make sure that you're one of the popular kids in school.

This is an effort to cut down on the number of fake Facebook pages out there in the wild. Many celebrities either have fan pages that are run by avid followers of a particular celebrity, or a celebrity is simply being impersonated by someone else. The verified checkmarks will cut down on this kind of nonsense.

For now, it appears you can't request to be verified, and Facebook's own way of verifying users hasn't been disclosed yet, but we're guessing the social network will slowly make its way around to popular page to give them the verification stamp over the next few months. In the meantime, you can still report fake profiles or pages that are impersonating you.

Both Google and Pinterest also have similar systems, allowing celebrities and other popular folks to be verified in order to not confuse other users, and all of the social networks have the similar checkmark badge that shows up next to someone's name.