Vine Quietly Company Adds Verified Badges for High-Profile Users

Last spring and summer, Kathryn Minshew, co-founder of The Muse and Inc’s “15 Women to Watch in Tech”, was trying to raise money for the female-focused jobboard site that was growing thirdty percent a month and reaching 250,000 dedicated active users every month by June of 2012. She pitched herself, her co-founders — whom she met while working at McKinsey & Company — and the Muse to any and every venture capitalist, angel investor, acquaintance, and friend she could find. The company had solid fundamentals, a strong story, and a passionate community, but the raise wasn’t going well.

Duplicate usernames and easily faked profiles mean it’s difficult to ascertain the legitimacy of high-profile Viners (if that’s what we’re calling them). For now, our best way to tell who’s who on Vine is if verified Twitter accounts plug their six-second videos, or if they pop up when you look for people to follow via connected Twitter accounts.

Now it appears that Vine is playing around with ways to verify accounts. Rus Yusupov, Vine’s cofounder and creative director, has a Twitter-verified badge-style stamp that looks like this on his profile.