Following some bad press, a fight with Kanye West, and a recent lawsuit from Tony La Russa, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, whose identity was abused on the site, Twitter is now testing “Verified Accounts” — its appropriately named method of determining that some user accounts are authentic. However, while it’s early days yet for Verified Accounts, the initial effort seems sloppy at best.

According to the Twitter help page for Verified Accounts:

We’re starting with well-known accounts that have had problems with impersonation or identity confusion. (For example, well-known artists, athletes, actors, public officials, and public agencies). We may verify more accounts in the future, but because of the cost and time required, we’re only testing this feature with a small set of folks for the time being. As the test progresses we may be able to expand this test to more accounts over the next several months.

Twitter claims it’s been verifying user accounts for this “small set of folks” by getting “in contact with the person or entity the account is representing and verifying that it is approved.” However, according to a blog on TechCrunch, Twitter verified its founder Michael Arrington’s account without actually making the call.

“Granted, it’s obvious that it is his actual account, but it’s still a bit odd that they would verify it without, you know, verifying it,” writes TechCrunch’s MG Siegler in a blog.

Indeed, it’s odd, and probably a bad idea to verify accounts on assumption alone. Hasn’t the big problem on Twitter stemmed from people’s abilities to impersonate others very, very well, and gather a huge following? Does “embarrassing Dalai Lama incident” ring any dharmic bells?

When I heard the news today (oh boy…) that Twitter started verifying accounts, and wasn’t charging for them, I pounded the desk a few times in a fit of rage. However, as per the Help page, Twitter is not yet testing this feature with businesses. The assumption is, then, based on what Twitter execs have previously said, and based on all things reasonable, that once Twitter gets its system worked out it will offer the Verified Accounts feature — for a fee — to business users.

While all signs point to that making sense, Twitter is, in the meantime, wasting resources on verifying celebrity accounts when it should be charging for them.

Written by Nicole Ferraro