In this week's Tweeterati column in Mail Today, I wonder why public figures can't stay out of trouble on Twitter:
To the typical Twitter user, Twitter might feel like an intimate cafe, where they can talk in private, even though they are in a public space, but the analogy doesn't not true for public figures like Tharoor and Weiner. For a public figure, Twitter is as private as the speaker's podium at the public square, even less so, because retweets and hashtags can not only virally distribute an indiscreet tweet, but also organize indignation against it.
Here's the unedited text of last week's Tweeterati column:
Tweeterati: Gaurav Mishra Deconstructs Popular Culture on Twitter
Why Can't Public Figures Stay Out of Trouble on Twitter?
Twitter announced last fortnight that it will soon release a feature to upload a photo and attach it to a tweet right from Twitter.com. However, most conversations about Twitter and photos revolved around New York Rep. Anthony Weiner's photo faux pas on Twitter instead.
Weiner accidentally tweeted a lewd photo of himself to a 21 year old student, then claimed that his Twitter account had been hacked, before admitting a week later that he had indeed intended to DM his photo to another female follower on Twitter.
The Weinergate saga is a textbook study of what a public figure, especially a politician, should not do on Twitter. Weiner followed less than 200 people on Twitter with such an unusually high ratio of young women that Conservative Twitter users who were following his tweets predicted that he might be setting himself up for a sex scandal on Twitter. Weiner also showed his naive understanding of how technology works, as you can't really privately DM someone a photo on Twitter yet. Worse still, Weiner came across as being clueless about how memes spread in the Twitter-fueled news cycle by claiming that his Twitter account was hacked and while he had not sent out the message containing the photo, he could not "say with certitude" that the picture was not of him.
Weiner, however, is not the first public figure who has tweeted his way to trouble. In 2009, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was fined $25,000 by the NBA in 2009 when he complained about the referees on Twitter. During the Eygpt uprising, Kenneth Cole courted criticism by tweeting: "Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo." During the Japan earthquake and tsunami, comedian Gilbert Gottfried's lost his gig as the voice of Aflac's signature duck mascot, when he tweeted a series of tasteless jokes about the tragedy. Journalist Octavia Nasr was fired by CNN for praising a Hezbollah spiritual leader upon his death. In India, former external affairs minister Shashi Tharoor first created a stir by comparing the economy class in airlines to cattle class, and got fired after a public war of words with controversial IPL head Lalit Modi (who, incidentally, also got fired).
Why can't public figures stay out of trouble on Twitter? While Weiner was tripped because he didn't really understand how Twitter worked, and Nasr made a judgment error in trying to make a nuanced argument in 140 characters, most others seem to have misjudged the hyper public-ness of Twitter. To the typical Twitter user, Twitter might feel like an intimate cafe, where they can talk in private, even though they are in a public space, but the analogy doesn't not true for public figures like Tharoor and Weiner. For a public figure, Twitter is as private as the speaker's podium at the public square, even less so, because retweets and hashtags can not only virally distribute an indiscreet tweet, but also organize indignation against it. Perhaps, like the GMail add on that asks you to do complicated sums so that you don't send a drunken email to your boss late at night, Twitter should add a foot in the mouth filter especially for public figures.
Gaurav Mishra (@gauravonomics) writes about how the social web is changing business and society at www.gauravonomics.com/blog.
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