Google recently publicly admitted that they did in-fact use Mocality‘s data illegally to get business. After investigations they conducted internally and an inquiry into the matter, they discovered that they indeed did have a case to answer.

The statement is attributable to Nelson Mattos, Google’s Vice-President for Product and Engineering, Europe and Emerging Markets, and can also be accessed on his Google+ profile.

See statement below:

“We’ve concluded our investigation into the serious allegations about our use of data from Mocality’s website in Kenya. We’re very sorry this happened. We’ve taken appropriate action with the people involved and made changes in our operations to ensure this doesn’t occur again.”

Please see the most recent statement shared by Google’s Nelson Mattos, Vice-President for Product and Engineering, Europe and Emerging Markets in response to the issues raised by Mocality in its blog post.

“We were mortified to learn that a team of people working on a Google project improperly used Mocality’s data and misrepresented our relationship with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites. We’ve already unreservedly apologised to Mocality. We’re still investigating exactly how this happened, and as soon as we have all the facts, we’ll be taking the appropriate action with the people involved. “

Twitter is a social network. Twitter has a verification method that places a tiny blue checker on a user’s profile to signify that the user’s profile is certified as true. Authentic. Extraordinary. And so forth.

So yesterday, there was a huge buzz on Twitter after a link appeared and offered users a chance to have their accounts verified. Whether or not it was a spoof site is beside the point. The next hour or so saw many “your verification ID is bla bla bla bla bla bla” tweets that could only have meant one thing. Very many people gave access to this “Verification App” to have themselves verified.

Then cometh the Big Q: Why would you want to do that?

I really understand why everyone wants to be verified. A verification badge shows you have been accepted. Chances that you will be followed (and/or retweeted) because you are verified shoot to 79% as compared to 20% when you are not verified. Shouldn’t Twitter be against this? Seems like a raw model; to myself and some who I spoke to.

Okay, now the facts: Read more »