Twitter in 2011 - so how much is genuine?

Leaving aside those Twitter accounts obviously set up to satirize pollies of all hues, the rich and infamous or big business; it seems that a more sinister type of fakery is rearing its ugly noggin………

“The office of a former Nebraska Senator working for the American Petroleum Institute appears to have set up more than a dozen fake Twitter accounts to promote the KeystoneXL tar sands pipeline.”

While over at FederalBizOpps the U.S. Government is advertising for someone to develop suitable software, then teach it how to detect upcoming issues on Twitter or other social media and show it how to employ semi or fully automated "counter messaging" techniques.