import urllib2 import urlparse def validate_social_account(account, url): """Verifies if a social account is valid. Examples: >>> validate_social_account('seocam', 'http://twitter.com') True >>> validate_social_account('seocam-fake-should-fail', 'http://twitter.com') False """ request = urllib2.Request(urlparse.urljoin(url, account)) request.get_method = lambda: 'HEAD' try: response = urllib2.urlopen(request) except urllib2.HTTPError: return False return response.code == 200