Twitter bellies up to booze boosters with Buddy Media

Want to get the latest news from Miller Light on Twitter? Hold up, youngsters.

Twitter and Buddy Media announced a partnership Thursday that will allow Twitter to screen underage users attempting to follow alcohol and other adult brands through the social media service. The news comes as Twitter works to beef up digital advertising and make the service more useful for brand marketing.

Twitter itself does not collect information on the ages of users, so it paired with Buddy Media, which developed a tool for screening for a user’s age.

Buddy Media explained in a blog post on its site:

Over the past month, we have been beta-testing this solution with a small and select group of alcohol brands from several of the alcohol industry’s major holding companies, including Brown Forman’s Jack Daniels (@JackHoney), Jim Beam’s Skinny Girl (@SkinnygirlCKTLS), and MillerCoors’ Coors Light and Miller Lite (@CoorsLite and @MillerLite). Now, we are formally launching this solution and making it available to any marketer.

Users attempting to follow brands with age rquirements will recieve an automatic direct message asking them to confirm their age at age.twitter.com. Users who do not meet the age requirement will be prevented from following the account, although on the internet, it’s not too hard to pretend that you’re 21.

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