Following the footsteps of social networking site Twitter, Facebook will now start placing blue check marks right next to the names of pages of celebrities and other social figures which are proven legitimate. 

This new feature - Verified Pages, is applicable to a limited group of famous people and groups like politicians, journalist, celebrities, business, and popular brands, especially those with a huge number of supporters.  This was announced on Facebook's NewsRoom.

 Facebook will start verifying the authenticity of the Pages and profiles to avoid misleading the users. Aside from Pages, the same will apply for Profiles, as they too will get updates. The blue check marks will be located right next to the name of the account, and even on the search results page.

Some pages are already verified, and now show the bad. The profile page of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's, which has 18 million followers, is one example. American celebrity Selena Gomez, whose page has 46 million likes is also verified. On the other hand, Dick Costolo, CEO for Twitter is not yet verified.

Facebook explains that not all authentic profiles and Pages can be verified. Users don't have the capability to have their accounts verified; however, a person may report a certain page or profile as fake, or when they believe that they are being impersonated.

Facebook is in the early stages of developing another feature called Graph Search, a protocol for social networking search engines. This tool is intended to make searching for items in Facebook easier, basing it on the connections between users. The feature covers searches based on photos, places, people, and interests.

Since 2009, Twitter was the first social networking site to use this feature. Authenticities of accounts are established so that users can immediately know which are genuine, and which are not.