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William Shatner is an actor, pitchman, raconteur, Star Trek legend and sometime-curmudgeon on Twitter. Those who follow the 84-year-old actor know this. His Twitter persona will poke and prod you all in the name of a good social media conversation.
He's not, however, always kidding.
On Saturday, Shatner, who has almost 2 million followers on Twitter, noticed something that bothered him. Mild-mannered Engadget Social Media Manager John Colucci was bubbling with excitement about his blog's Twitter account reaching 1 million followers - then set a goal of beating Shatner's follower count.
@lesmith5 @WilliamShatner @MandalayBay Next goal: beat Shatner in follower count :)
- John Colucci (@johncolucci) June 21, 2014
That's when Shatner attacked.
@johncolucci Why are you even @verified? If this guy can get verified I'll nominate my Social Media guy.
- William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) June 21, 2014
Colucci struck back, and we were off to the races.
2 highlights of this day, we hit 1M follows from @engadget - and @WilliamShatner throws me a lil shade, I think? https://t.co/kO4lqSsrTz
- John Colucci (@johncolucci) June 21, 2014
Soon, the two (and a host of others) were engaged in a spirited online discussion, which culminated in Shatner tweeting this on Sunday:
@DashaPohoral @Numeson @verified @twitter and nobodies should not be verified because it shows a huge flaw in the Twitter system.
- William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) June 22, 2014
By Monday, news outlets were reporting that William Shatner is upset that 'nobodies' are getting verified on Twitter.
Before I interviewed Shatner, I corresponded with him on Twitter about the nature of verified accounts. He has long had strong opinions about the process - and, to be fair, the accounts that get verified do not always seem to match the qualifications outlined on Twitter's own Verified Help page. (When I got verified, it was both a surprise and a mystery.)
By the time I spoke to Shatner late Monday, he was upset that media outlets were misrepresenting his words. I offered to interview him to set the record straight. He agreed to answer questions sent via a Google Doc. What follows is unexpurgated Shatner on the controversy, Twitter, verification, TVTag, and how he uses social media.
Mashable: You're one of the more digitally savvy celebrities/actors of your generation. What draws you to a medium like Twitter?
I'm from the old studio system where there were departments of people that spoke on your behalf, giving the studio's version of what I liked, what I do, what I like to eat, etc. So Twitter and social media is liberating for someone like me. I can speak my mind, my thoughts, my ideas and usually they don't get filtered.
That may be a good thing or a bad thing! ;-)
What about Facebook? [Star Trek actor and activist] George Takei is huge there. Do you stay away because he's there or do you simply prefer Twitter?
Oh please! George is George. He is big on Facebook and I've heard he has quite a following there. I'm on Facebook as well. I have the Official William Shatner page on Facebook as well as my Official Group. Numbers wise (if that's how you are comparing things) I'm small potatoes; 760K on [my] Facebook page and 6K for my group. We don't interact which I think is good because George [Takei] takes things a bit too far sometimes. I have seen many of his funny graphics - they get tweeted to me hundreds of times over and over. I've heard George has a staff of folks helping him with Facebook who seemingly spend their days doing graphics to make fun of me! I have just me and sometimes my social media guy who does graphics for me.
My question would be - how 'social' is George on Facebook? That's what is important to me. I try to be somewhat interactive - more on the group than the page, just because I feel that there's meaningful discussions there. People discuss their lives, their ups and downs - it's more familial than fan followers. They discuss everything there.
Ever tried Google+?
Of course! Did you know that my Google Plus account was banned as an imposter account during the beta of G+? My social media guy got an invite to join the beta and he then invited me. I posted my G+ url on Twitter and then made this monumental post which basically said' 'Hello!' and that weekend they blocked me. My social media guy suggested that I go to social media to tell the world. So I went to Twitter and posted something to the effect that 'Google+ blocked my account as an impersonator account and all I did was say hello. Maybe I should say goodbye?' The next morning my issue was on the front page of CNET and mysteriously my G+ account was turned back on. I have nearly 1.5 million 'Plussers' (my term of affection for those who have circled me on G+) and I'm thrilled by that!
What is your favorite thing about Twitter?
Easy: The people. I have expanded my own personal circle of friends via Twitter and that's the only social media platform that it has happened on. One of my newest and dearest friends are [TV Host] Tom Bergeron and his wife.
What's your least favorite thing?
The crazy policies of Twitter.
One of the pastimes I have been active in the past few months on Twitter is Live Tweeting. For those that don't know what Live Tweeting is, you use a hashtag and you tweet about a TV show you are watching at that moment. You follow the tag and it's like a chat room on Twitter with all folks watching and tagging their tweets at one.
There is this application called TVTag (formerly GetGlue) that some folks use that ties into Twitter. Using the app sends out this plethora of Tweets that are basically spam into the conversation that the rest of us on normal Twitter have to see. [For example:] 'PersonX just unlocked a sticker,' 'There are X number of people chatting in the TVTag room (with a TVTag URL).'
So it's very disruptive. It was getting to be every other tweet I would see in the feed was TVTag. So I complained to Twitter, and the response I got back from Twitter was that Twitter values the 500,000 people using the TVTag app and Twitter showed me that if you use the minus sign (like a Boolean search) you can exclude the TVTag tweets.
How many hundreds of millions of Twitter users are there, and Twitter is embracing an app that has an audience of 500,000 and irks the rest of their users? And the reason why is easy: money. Twitter has a contract with TVTag, and thus the company line is that they 'value' the TVTag users, and if someone is annoyed here's the minus sign with the tag (i.e. -#TVTag) that you can use to filter out those annoying spammy tweets. I'm just waiting for another social media platform to make a deal with Nielsen to offer live chatting during [a TV] show and I'm there!
How, if at all, has the craft of acting helped prepare you for living out loud on social media?
Acting gives you the courage to go (for the lack of better words) where you haven't gone before. It helps because through acting I am recognizable, so I get opportunities that others do not get (such as a large number of followers and lots of adoration), but I don't know, besides that, if it makes things easier for someone. I can only speak from my perspective and I was an actor long before Twitter and social media.
You've seemingly quit Twitter before. Is that perception accurate or do you simply occasionally take breaks?
Everyone eventually gets a bit fed up and I'm no exception. I stupidly quit Twitter one day and left vowing never to return. That lasted an hour or so and then friends such as Tom Bergeron called my office to give me tough love and ask me to come back. I still get aggravated from time to time and I have learned to close the laptop, put the iPad away and shove the smartphone into my back pocket.
For as comfortable as you appear on Twitter and the engagement opportunities it offers you, you also seem deeply distrustful of the platform, those running it and the spoken and unspoken policies. Why do you think that is?
It's not that I distrust it, but Twitter also pulled some stunts on me in the early days. The account was given to my social media guy because some unknown person had registered the name and folks were thinking it was me. So he contacted Twitter and they removed the fake account and then asked if we wanted the account for ourselves.
He held the account for about six months before [actress] Fran Drescher suggested that I'd be a good person on Twitter. So I activated the account. I was happily tweeting along and then bam! Twitter shut my account down. When calls were placed to Twitter some horrible woman demanded an 'unredacted' copy of my driver's license. She told my social media guy that she was the only gatekeeper to getting my account back. My license has my home address on it - do I want some unknown persons having access to a copy of it?
My Twitter account link was found on my website, all of my posts were general or promotional for what I was doing, but the policy of Twitter was to demand a copy of my government issued photo ID? Luckily my guy had some contacts at other sites that were able to put us in touch with folks above said gatekeeper, and my account was restored.
I was one of the first verified accounts on Twitter after that, and things were going along swimmingly until the Illuminati verified account tweeted me several months ago. They tweeted me and I decided to play along. I assumed the account was for an upcoming movie or TV show, but then a PR company contacted me and when I did a search engine run on the company I discovered that the head of the company had been implicated in a pay for verification scheme on Twitter and that there was this big hullabaloo about it.
So I quickly put two and two together and realized that the Illuminati account had recently been renamed and they were trying to recruit verified accounts for whatever sinister reasons.
I went back to Twitter and presented my arguments: how could they not police verified accounts and why didn't they clean up after discovering this pay for verification scheme that this other guy was involved in? How could they not trace what accounts he had verified? I had a number of folks who I know, who were as yet unverified but were legitimate well-known people who were celebrities.
I was upset with Twitter, and after I showed them they agreed I had found an account that should not have been verified. To appease me they asked what they could do, and I got two of the folks I knew verified. Does this pattern now seem strangely familiar?
What worries/bothers you about verification?
That the abuse of the verification system still exists. That folks who don't need to be verified are getting verified as a 'badge of honor' when legitimate individuals that I personally know and will vouch for, still months and months later, are not verified.
If someone told you Twitter verifies accounts to help people avoid impostors, would you believe it?
It's a good PR spin, but currently I do not.
Why not?
Given the events of this past weekend - that may be what Twitter tells people, but it seems that folks who can authorize verified accounts use Twitter as a reward for being a good employee, for example.
Let me tell my side of the story of this weekend. There's been a lot of spin online suggesting that I hate 'nobodies' and I don't think they should be verified. That's not necessarily true.
I logged into Twitter Saturday while in Las Vegas doing my one man show, Shatner's World. There is this tweet by someone I've never interacted before and the tweet basically says that his goal is to get more followers than me.
Instead of just using my name, this guy used my Twitter handle of @WilliamShatner. By doing so (as every tweeter knows) it puts it in my feed to read.
What many people don't know (and I just learned this myself that not all accounts have this) is that there are more ways to view your Notifications feed if you are a verified account. You can view tweets from other verified accounts, which is one of the ways I view tweets to me to keep up with my friends.
So I look at this guy's profile and he's listed himself as a Social Media Manager. Why is a social media manager verified? So being perplexed by his tweet - we've had no previous interactions, I don't follow him - I asked why was he a verified account? And if Twitter is now verifying Social Media Manager accounts, I would like to get my guy verified.
That started the storm of his fellow geeks (and I mean that respectfully) sending me messages about me bullying him. I failed (and I still do) to see a justification for verifying someone who is a Social Media Manager. Just for the record, I did not know about the 1 million followers of Engadget, but some online tabloids seem to focus on that as if it was the reason. That's fantastic that they've made 1 million followers.
If this guy was responsible, then kudos to him, but again I still don't see a reason for verification. I blocked the guy soon after as all he was doing was thanking his friends for attacking me.
So then his boss Michael Gorman - the Editor of Engadget - pipes up to defend him and his answer to me played exactly into my arguments about Twitter. Yet most of the tabloids just happened to miss this important interaction:
@WilliamShatner @johncolucci @verified He's verified because he's excellent at his job. I'd advise your social guy do the same.
- Michael Gorman (@Numeson) June 22, 2014
So here we have an editor at a tech magazine who just acknowledged my worst Twitter fears - people who have the power to verify are verifying as a reward not as a necessity. Plus, this guy's job is to hassle me?
In looking at some of the folks Mr. Gorman follows I came across several other folks at Engadget whose job title doesn't seem to fall into needing to prevent impostor accounts.
Bottom line is that I feel that Mr. Gorman's reply to me, stating that Mr. Colucci's account was verified for being a good employee, is not a valid reason to have that account verified but a clear example of how the Verified system is abused. There are several other accounts that Mr. Gorman follows that also appear to be employees who don't fall into the Twitter definition of needing to have a verified account in my opinion.
If a person is someone that the public listens to (news anchor, reporter, major blogger, author, etc.) then they should have a verified account to prevent an impostor. Someone who works behind the scenes, assists folks in the public eye, etc... I don't think Twitter had them in mind for verification.
Though the verification is completely opaque to most people, how would you change it?
It should be opaque. But if a verified account that really has no reason to be verified is questioned because they decide to contact another verified person to hassle them, then shouldn't there be a system to question it and for Twitter to re-evaluate it?
There's too many accounts at Engadget that I feel are not within the scope of what Twitter says is the main reason for verifying an account and Twitter needs to look at them.
You're also active on YouTube and that platform has seen its share of changes. How do you feel about those?
The YouTube model used to work, now it doesn't. I have an account there to post my short videos, but I'm hardly ever there. Maybe if they change back or even just change for the better I'll go back.
Who do you emulate on social media?
My social media guy who taught me to get on the various social media sites gave me this advice: 'It's called social media because you are supposed to be social.'
He's given social media lessons to a lot of folks and I find that it's the simplest, but best advice I can give. So I guess I emulate him.
Are there people whom you think are doing it particularly well?
Alyssa Milano is the first person I thought of. She is an amazing wealth of knowledge and one of the busiest people around plus she's pregnant! [Singer] Josh Groban is just wonderful and a sheer pleasure to follow and interact with. I love his youthful exuberance.
Back when you were doing Star Trek, it rarely, if ever, dealt with computers as tools for community-building. Was this a blind spot for the show? Is it something you thought of before Twitter and platforms like it arrived?
I wasn't the guy who thought about what the world of Star Trek looked like, but I think that in my series computers were appliances that were taken for granted. Computers controlled the way things worked, but it still required people to get things going. I think that by the time The Next Generation came around there certainly were aspects of socializing with the aid of computers such as the holodeck, etc...
Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?
I've been reading tonight online all of the stories about what I did on Saturday. And it's a very one-sided view.
Verified accounts from reporters and public personalities have been contacting me trying to suggest that I must hate them because they are verified. They are falling behind a person who decided to use his account to hassle me.
So if you are verified and you feel that I somehow slighted you even though we have never communicated, maybe you need to read all of my tweets from Saturday instead of reading the tabloid stories. Read and see what the original intent was: my questioning why a verified account was hassling me. That account appears to not fall within the parameters of what Twitter says should be verified yet it was actually verified by Twitter.
Also look how his boss, a noted editor for his company, defended the employee by stating that the account was verified because the person is good at his job and not for any need of worrying about impersonation that Twitter suggests.
So should we all be looking for jobs that offer as compensation a verified [Twitter] account? Maybe that's what new tech jobs are offering. I just want to understand why Twitter is allowing what I feel is complete abuse of their system.
One more thing: follow me on Twitter @WilliamShatner ;-)
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