Are your brand’s tweets too hot for kids? Age-screening tool comes to the rescue

Content too hot for Twittering youngsters? Buddy Media to the rescue.

The social media analytics firm, which was recently acquired by Salesforce, is today releasing a free age-screening tool for brands that was developed in partnership with Twitter.

The gatekeeper feature is meant to keep underage Twitter users from following brand accounts with age-restricted content. Booze brands, porn corps, and so forth, we’re looking at you.

“The Twitter and Buddy Media solution solves a challenge many marketers have faced in confirming their followers are of age to follow their brand,” Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow said in a statement. “Until now, companies have had to develop their own custom, one-off “age-screening” solutions. The result has been a patchwork of solutions with different approaches, processes, and levels of success.”

Here’s how it works: Twitter users who click to follow a brand using the age-screening tool will be sent a direct message with a URL that requires them to enter their age for access to tweets. If users meet the age threshold set by the brand, they’ll automatically start following the brand. If not, they’ll be denied access. A Twitter user only has to supply his or her age once to follow brands employing the account bouncer.

The solution is simple enough and clearly in line with the age-restriction gates that adult brands use on their own websites. Still, we’re pretty sure kids are hip to the practice of lying about their ages when it suits them. That and unless a brand’s account is private, anyone can read the company’s tweets without being a follower. But hey, the tool is, at the very least, a convenient option that helps brands dot their i’s and cross their t’s with legal.

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