Fake Cord Jefferson (Screencap: Twitter)

Spam accounts are nothing new on Twitter, as anyone who has ever tweeted the words "iPad" or "sex" can attest. But another spam ring has recently cropped up on the platform, and it uses the name cache of prominent journalists, techies and celebrities in an attempt to attract followers.

On Friday, Gawker writer Cord Jefferson discovered a copycat account that lifted his name, photo and bio in order to appear as if the account was that of the real Cord Jefferson. "Ha ha. What is this? Why is this? How do I kill this thing?" he tweeted. Twenty minutes later, BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski noticed the same thing. "Fuck is this account?" he tweeted.

As it turns out, Misters Jefferson and Kaczynski aren't the only media people affected by this trend. It appears that these spam accounts are also following hundreds of other spam accounts that pull the same trick, taking a real user's avatar, background photo and bio in order to make the fake profile appear legitimate.

There's one for actress Chloe Sevigny, Politico tech reporter Eliza Krigman, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen and Dropbox product manager Matt Holden.

Celebrity impostors have always been an issue for social networks, which is why verified accounts exist. But the phenomenon doesn't seem to be related to a user's number of followers. Mr. Kaczynski has over 70,000, Mr. Jefferson over 8,000, and Learnvest's Allison Kade, who also has a copycat account, just over 500. The accounts all appear to be part of the same spam enterprise, since they all follow each other.

Weirder still is the fact that none of the accounts have tweeted anything yet. If the point of creating a ring of fake accounts that appear legitimate is to disseminate your spammy message, the spammers are either still building their core base of users or they haven't decided just what exactly their message is.

Users can report the accounts for spam, but that doesn't get them removed automatically. We've reached out to Twitter for comment and will update when we hear back.

(h/t Peter Sterne)

Financial planning with the ease of the Google doc.

Alexa von Tobel is fond of analogies. Blame her time at Harvard, as both an undergrad and in the university's MBA program--before she won a business plan competition and took a leave of absence to launch LearnVest, a personalized financial tool for those who can't spare the $2,000 to $3,000 to sit down with a financial planner. ("61 percent of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck," she noted from the company's sunny new Soho office. For the former Morgan Stanley trader--and head of biz dev for Drop.io--statistics tend to roll off the tongue.)

In the past, Ms. von Tobel--the first in a growing line of local HBS female founders--has called LearnVest, "Weight Watchers meets personal finance." In a recent TEDxTalk, she longs for a "Biggest Loser" for household budgets. But in demoing LearnVest's revamped new platform and iPhone app last week--financed by a $19 million Series B led by Accel Partners last July--she opted for something more ambitious, describing it as "LegalZoom meets personal finance," for its ability to take hard-to-parse documents and make them accessible to the masses.

All that relational thinking paid off when Ms. von Tobel showed us LearnVest's souped-up new "Money Center," a free personal financial tool that lets you synch up credit cards, savings accounts, 401ks, etc. Borrowing elements familiar to any Google user, the center uses its own internal categorization system to shuffle purchases into folders like food or utilities (à la Gmail) and, most importantly, lets you co-view your finances online while on the phone with a certified financial planner (like you're sharing a Google Doc.)

As part of its new-and-greatly-improved service, the company also announced that has an official Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) status with the SEC, which means those CFPs can now offer investment advice. Ms. von Tobel mentioned that one recent LearnVest customer signed up with $12 million in assets, although some clients also come to the site hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

With the possibility of a expert lifeline, our heart palpitations over failing to meet LearnVest's 50:20:30 ratio (to allocate towards essentials:savings: fun) abided. Momentarily.

LearnVest started offering phone and email consultation with human CFPs (heavily-vetted for their financial--and empathetic--prowess) earlier this year and is now up to a staff of 50, available around the clock. If you sign up for a premium plan, you'll be assigned the same CFP so the expert is familiar with your finances. Users can choose from three plan options, ranging from a one-time $89 fee for one phone consultation and unlimited email support for three months, up to a $599 package for them to construct a five-year plan including investment advice, quarterly phone calls, and unlimited email with your CFP for a year.

"I wouldn't even call Mint a true competitor," she told Betabeat, after taking us through the revamped service and impending iPhone app. That's not exactly true. A recent visit to Mint.com, which was acquired by Intuit in 2009 for $170 million, shows the company also offers an iPhone app, (less colorful) budgets, goal-setting graphs, and even email and SMS alerts about fees. But it also revealed that the last time Betabeat perused our Mint.com account was more than two years ago. It's a good argument for the accountability of a human advisor.

Birchbox cofounder Hayley Barna (firstround.com)

The rain was really starting to come down hard, but the female CEOs at Internet Week appeared undaunted by the passing storm. Birchbox's Hayley Barna, Learnvest's Alexa von Tobel, Nest.io's Caren Maio, Mashable's Sharon Feder and Artspace's Catherine Levene joined CNNMoney reporter Laurie Segall for a discussion about gender in tech.

The panel was entitled "Why Being a Good CEO Has Nothing to Do with Being a Woman," but it was clear from the first question that the women on this panel were more concerned with talking about their businesses than how being a woman has hindered their growth in the tech sector. And who can blame them? After all, the panel was specifically about how gender had nothing to do with their success--though almost all of the questions revolved around their experience as women in a male-dominated world.

"A good executive has everything to do with being a woman," said Ms. Levene. "I think they make amazing leaders, great managers. They have a different way of communicating with people, so I think it’s a fantastic opportunity. As it relates to women in technology, you just have to face the fact that there are not that many."

"I wish this was less about being a women and more about the businesses that we’re building," added Ms. Barna.

Once we got the gender politics (mostly) out of the way, the ladies elaborated upon their advice for building a successful business--whether you have two X chromosomes or not.

1. Have a good mentor.

"I think that it’s been really helpful for me to have a series of mentors that I've had throughout my entire career, and that’s been incredibly helpful," said Ms. Levene. "My advice is to find someone that you can really trust, that you respect, that you look up to."

2. Don't be afraid to ask questions.

"Building your business is a lot of asking the right questions, knowing how to collect the data and knowing when you’re wrong and turning it in another direction if necessary," Ms. Barna said. "So it’s really a balance between confidence, vision--but then also being able to ask the right questions."

3. Don't ask permission. Just do it.

"My advice for people who want to start a company is: start it," advised Ms. von Tobel. "Don’t ask for it. Go out and really start it. There’s great capital out there, and I really believe if you work your ass off you can have whatever you want."

"Don’t ask permission," added Ms. Maio. "If it’s something that you’re really passionate about, you really feel that fire in your belly and you’re ready to do it, then do it."

LearnVest's Alexa von Tobel.

"Wtf will they do with $19 million,"  a source asked Betabeat back in June when LearnVest announced its $12 million raise out of a $19 million round led by Accel Partners. "For a newsletter that says ‘don’t take cabs every day! Use a 401k!'"

Well, now we know a little more about what LearnVest, the personal finance and lifestyle site for women, has been spending its millions on: "a comprehensive study, which explored women’s financial attitudes, behaviors and needs." Did you know six in 10 women feel stressed about their finances?

Fortunately, the startup had some bucks left over after commissioning that study to launch a few features. LearnVest used the results (31 percent of women do not know their credit score; 54 percent have credit card debt, averaging $9,000 across 3.1 credit cards) as well as feedback from users to inform its three customized budget plans, which range from $69 to $349 and are designed to substitute for face time with a Certified Financial Planner ($150+ an hour). The plans offer things like email support from financial experts, phone consultations, savings plans and retirement planning.

LearnVest says it raised the full $19 million, even though it filed with the SEC before the full amount was raised, which is why the news leaked.

photo by Lyle Owerko, via DANNIJO

First came the Dens and Naveen's Gap billboard, then David Karp's Uniqlo ad, and now the photogenic founders of New York startups are showing in jewelry campaigns.

A new black-and-white series of portraits from DANNIJO, the social media savvy jewelry line, features both Foursquare's Naveen Selvaduari (well, his hand at least) and LearnVest's Alexa von Tobel, along with celebrities like Questlove.

DANNIJO's Facebook page has a link to its Foursquare's profile and we hear Ms. Von Tobel is longtime friend of DANNIJO co-founders, Danielle and Jodie Snyder. But this doesn't necessarily mean we'll be seeing Mr. Selvaduari in front of the camera more often.

"Did it as a favor to a friend, not connected to anything else...," he emailed Betabeat. "I'm amazed that you recognized my hand." Well, the Facebook tag did help. We're not that good.

We knew something was up

They could just use Mint.com, of course. But LearnVest's product is targeted at women through branding and editorial content like the LearnVest newsletter (and iStock photos, of course). "We've talked to about 5,000 women through our LearnVest Labs program and we really understand what our users want when it comes to their money," founder Alexa von Tobel told TechCrunch's Leena Rao.

"We can't be everything to everyone," she said, emphasizing that she wants the site to have a voice and the fact that women make most of the household purchasing decisions.

LearnVest is still hiring for mostly 12 positions, mostly non-technical, except for a PHP developer.