Fritter ye not

Twitter is certainly managing to stay in the media spotlight and its usage and awareness is growing all the time.

And, of course, as use grows, so does abuse.  So following on from Astroturfing, which is the creation of fake grass roots support, we now have the practice of "frittering" - creating a fraudulent Twitter account.

Writing in this week's PR Week, Richard Stokoe, head of news at the Local Government Association explained how a Twitter account had been created in the name of that organisation's CEO. The account carried the CEO's picture, was being regularly updated with snippets of news, and had attracted some 500 followers.  Except it is not being written by the CEO, any of his staff, or indeed any of the comms team of the organisation. Which creates something of a problem.

At the time of writing, Twitter had not responded by taking down the site and the anonymous poster was still busy creating followers and building a false profile of the organisation.

Reputationally, this has serious implications.  Twitter always presented the opportunity for this sort of thing, and probably needs to work on its verification system, but this development should be raising red flags within the organisation and requires urgent action.

In its early days Twitter attracted a number of people pretending to be celebrities - sometimes openly and usually with the objective of merely having some fun.

Jonathan Ross, a well-known and genuine user of Twitter, set himself up as the No 1 Twitter detective. He checked out celebrity listings and revealed to his followers whether they were fake or genuine. 

But while most of these false celebrity postings could be classified under "harmless fun", passing yourself off as representing the thoughts of a company - maybe even a listed company - certainly takes us into new territory.  Possibly even actionable territory.

Twitter has already reached "bandwagon" status, and looks set to continue growing exponentially.  But if the owners want to look after their own reputation, and protect whatever the planned revenue model is, then they need to act swiftly to prevent the wheels from coming off.

I can’t let the week pass without saying thank you to the Committee members of the new CIPR Regional Group on the Channel Islands.  Past President Lis Lewis-Jones and I visited Guernsey and Jersey last week and were met with a very warm and hospitable welcome on both islands.  With an excellent briefing from the region’s press officer, Steve Falla, I did a series of media briefings and was able to sound halfway intelligent about the Channels Islands as a well-regulated offshore financial centre and also to address criticism of spending on PR by the States Government.  Jason Mackenzie, the chairman, and the rest of the team put on two excellent events – one on each island - for both members and non-members where Lis spoke on the value of membership and I spoke on the value of PR and our plans for the year.  We think we came away with at least half-a-dozen new members, maybe more.   Thanks from both of us for the time and trouble you put into the events to make them both worthwhile and enjoyable.

Comments

[Kevin O'Hare]

Surely Twitter's reputation is far more damaged by this behaviour than the Local Government Association. If Twitter is letting itself become a magnet for false postings about celebrities then, for me, this is as bad as the worst excesses of the tabloid newspapers in the old days before the PCC code, no matter what Jonathan Ross says or does. I can't see how, under the present model, Twitter can stop such false postings and if it makes fundamental changes to the way it currently works then it risks losing its appeal and massive success.

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