Surfing some daily links I came across an interesting story on how ExxonMobile‘s brand name was hijacked by a hoax tweeter. The story is a great example of the problems of identity on the internet – how to verify, believe who people say they are, etc…

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research touches upon ID issues:

Lack of identity confirmation continues to plague the web
Identity is a serious issue on the web, we’ve no great way of confirming true profiles, therefore, going forward, before we can conclude a blog or twitter or Facebook account is official, we need to see trackbacks coming from the corporate site, or contact info and get confirmation.

So on top of the expanding research into web 2.0 technologies, cloud computing and all the other snazzy and very interesting topics, how far has research into identity management come? Also, as Owyang has suggested, companies not flocking to use twitter to get their name brand across may be in for a surprise when others decide to do so on their behalf – but still, why hasn’t the company’s PR/Marketing team thought of this outlet as a way to market themselves? Many are but many are still not embracing it. Also, for example, could anyone just sign-up for blocks of twitter accounts, say for famous cars or in this case companies and demand a payment in exchange of handing over the keys? Not sure what the legal world has to say of this.