You’d think that one of the big cheeses over at Twitter would be pretty smart when tweeting about, say, a massive acquisition for the firm. However, even though we’re all plugged into social media all the time, we’re still very much human, and capable of making very human mistakes. Take, for instance, Anthony Noto, Twitter’s chief financial officer, who thought he was sending a direct message when he broadcast: ‘I think we should buy them. He is on your schedule for Dec 15 or 16 – we will need to sell him. i have a plan’ to his 9,000 followers.
There’s no way of telling who he actually meant to send the (now-deleted) message to, or which company it’s meant to be referring to, even though some have speculated that Justin Bieber-backed Shots, a selfie app (obviously) was the subject of Noto’s tweet.
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But what’s important here isn’t some tech buyout – that doesn’t really thrill us, sorry – so much as the fact that a Twitter boss managed to get Twitter wrong.
Though there’s nothing to say Noto will be sacked for his mis-tweet, it comes in an age rife with Twitter gaffes. Last week, Labour leader Ed Miliband sacked Emily Thornberry, MP, from her post as shadow attorney general. Why? Because she’d tweeted something that upset people. We’re not going to get into the ins and outs of whether an MP with a £3 million house in Islington strolling around Rochester taking photos of how working class it looks compared to her locale is offensive or not.
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What we will say, is that if you’re in any position of responsibility, it’s probably safe to think everything through about three times over before you tweet it. Gone are the days of just being an idiot, or even just a little careless online for the sake of it, because people are always watching. Unless you’re on Facebook, of course.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.