The High Court in the UK took the unusual step last week of allowing service of a court order on Twitter and, perhaps even more unusually, it worked! The order required that an anonymous defendant cease posing on Twitter as Donal Blaney, the blogger behind Blaney’s Blarney, and abandon the imposter account. The imposter account, using the monicker “Blaneysblarney”, looked identical to the Twitter account under which Donal Blaney actually posts, at “Donal_Blaney”.

One of the very interesting things about Twitter is that there are real celebrities on there, who really interact with their fans. However, there are also celebrity impersonators – unauthorized imposters – and they have the potential to wreak real havoc.