Facebook unveils Verified Pages for celebrities, public figures

Taking another page out of Twitter’s playbook, Facebook on Wednesday announced Verified Pages, a feature that will make it easier for users to find the official account of celebrities and prominent people they want to follow.

Now, when users check out the page of a famous figure, such as Selena Gomez, George Takei or Facebook’s own Mark Zuckerberg, they will see a blue circle icon to the right of the person’s name with a white checkmark in the middle.

The icon for a verified account is designed to make it easier for users to distinguish between official pages and impersonators. The checkmark icon will be visible on famous users’ timelines, in search results and on other locations throughout Facebook’s social network.

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“Verified Pages belong to a small group of prominent public figures (celebrities, journalists, government officials, popular brands and businesses) with large audiences,” Facebook said in a statement Wednesday.

The feature is another example of Facebook imitating Twitter in how it handles its public pages and profiles. Twitter initially introduced the concept of verified accounts back in 2009, and now Facebook is essentially imitating Twitter’s system, which also uses blue icons with white checkmarks.

Recently, Facebook also changed the terminology it uses to refer to users who receive updates from public pages. Facebook previously referred to those users as subscribers but now calls them followers, just as Twitter has done for years.

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