MUMBAI: Facebook began authenticating the pages of famous individuals and big brands at the social network on Wednesday, in a move that follows in Twitter?s footsteps.

"Today we?re launching Verified Pages to help people find the authentic accounts of celebrities and other high-profile people and businesses on Facebook," the California-based internet giant said in a blog post.

"You?ll see a blue badge next to their names." Verified Pages display small blue circles with a white check mark in the middle to indicate that identities have been confirmed.

"Verified Pages belong to a small group of prominent public figures (celebrities, journalists, government officials, popular brands and businesses) with large audiences," Facebook said.

"This update is rolling out to profiles as well."

Twitter has long featured similar verification badges that have become status symbols of sorts at the globally popular messaging service.

MUMBAI: That the 12th annual indiantelevision.com?s Indian Telly Awards is one of the most popular events in the Indian television and broadcasting industry is known to all. And further proving its popularity is the fact that it went on to be among the top three trending hash-tags on Twitter in India on Saturday 25 May. (#IndianTellyAwards).

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Colors telecast the much-awaited Indian Telly Awards on Saturday 25 May at 9.00 pm preceding which the twitterati went berserk tweeting about #IndianTellyAwards expressing their anticipation and excitement.

Television fans could not bear the anticipation until 9.00 pm and hence began rooting for their favourite stars via tweets. And TV stars, directors, producers all added to the frenzy. TV star fan clubs went berserk as they tweeted everytime their favourite stars came on screen. Some waxed eloquent; some crooned even as a few hurled brickbats. All in all it made for a lot social media buzz.

Says Indiantelevision.com and The Indian Telly Awards founder & CEO Anil Wanvari: "We are delighted that brand Indiantelevision.com?s The Indian Telly Awards trended in India on twitter. From our side, we worked on creating a lot of curiosity around the awards through our bouquet of sites -Tellychakkar.com, Indiantelevision.com and Radioandmusic.com. We appointed a special team to create content for our social media connect. We posted pictures, videos, and stories on the Facebook pages of the respective sites and even the official Indian Telly Awards Facebook page leading to a spurt in the likes it has. And of course the on-air promos on Colors helped a great deal."

Colors, on its part, increased the frequency of the on-air promos in the days preceding the Dabur Glucose presents indiantelevision.com The Indian Telly Awards telecast. It launched a special Indian Telly Awards contest on twitter to facilitate the buzz, apart from releasing a sneak peak video on YouTube and pushing the awards on its Facebook page. The Indian Telly Awards video uploaded by Colors? YouTube channel was amongst the most popular videos on YouTube the following day which was Sunday.

Its efforts to generate and sustain curiosity for the awards along with indiantelevision.com proved successful with this feat on twitter.

"We are very happy with the engagement brand Colors is able to drive on social media platforms. Our objective has been to be the most vibrant and engaging brand on social media," says Colors digital head Vivek Shrivastav. "indiantelevision.com?s The Indian Telly Awards is one of the biggest events for the TV industry; it creates a lot of buzz and curiosity amongst both industry members and audiences. Our effort has always been to channelise these conversations positively, leading up to the live telecast of the show on Colors. This happens through various ways: exclusive images, interaction with stars, news releases, off-air marketing push, release of spoilers from the show, contest and polls on social media platforms etc. The aim is to start and fuel conversations; in the process if we get trending it?s only good."

Editor adds: "That?s being fairly modest, Mr Shrivastav!" ;)

NEW DELHI: Delhi high court has asked Facebook and Google to submit suggestions on safety measures for online usage of such sites by minors in India within a period of four weeks.

"Worried" that children can be exploited through social networking sites, justice B D Ahmed and justice Vibhu Bakhru voiced their concern about Indian children entering into Facebook and other social networking sites and then being lured knowingly and unknowing into websites featuring adult content.

"What we are worried about is, children who have been part of the social network and some adults misleading them and taking advantage. We are also concerned about the use of their data by the adults for their advantage," it said.

The court?s direction came after Facebook submitted that the site operated under the US law Children?s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) according to which a child below 13 years of age is not allowed to open an account.

But the bench noted the absence of any law of this kind in India, even as it fixed 16 July as the next date of hearing.

The bench?s direction came while hearing the plea of former BJP ideologue K N Govindacharya seeking recovery of taxes from the websites on their income from operations in India.

The court also expressed unhappiness over the centre?s argument that one has to enter into an agreement with the site while opening an account which is not a contract but agreement to the terms and conditions.