Tweeting can get you fired too..

Paul in Cannon Beach

An article about some folks that got fired for "tweets".

[URL]http://blog.workopolis.com/en/2010/07/twitter-twits-tweets-that-got-people-fired.html[/URL]

sonny

You just can't fix stupid

NaeNae55

The problem is that we all have stupid moments. It's the people who live and die by stupid that get to you. A couple of these were just not thinking things through, but some of them you have to wonder about.

Paul in Cannon Beach

Nae, do you think "Live stupid, die stupid." might be a successful line of t-shirts and motivational rubber bracelets.

NaeNae55

Actually, YES! You design the shirt and I'll start working on getting us some capital.

Celeste Blackburn SPHR

I clicked on the "13 tweets that got people fired" link at the end of the article. The one I found most interesting was a guy who was the company's official "tweeter." ([URL]http://huff.to/ddKYKS[/URL]) He worked for a phone company in Europe and posted a tweet basically making fun of a rival phone company when they were having problems with service.

With the way phone companies here take jabs at each other in their commercials (AT&T and Verizon, I'm looking at you with your maps and Luke Wilson), I find it a little surprising that he was fired for this.

Do you have anyone at your company who is the official "tweeter"? Have you talked to this person about what is and isn't acceptable? Do you have a written policy?

PS I'll take one of those shirts. . .

ACU Frank

I'm the unofficial Tweeter. It's still unofficial because I haven't written the policy yet, so the CEO won't sanction it. Until that happens, we can't mention it in our marketing or HR materials. (I still have managed to pile up nearly 800 followers, hehe - mostly industry peers.)

Oh - BTW... If Vodaphone is going to fire their official Tweeter for ribbing a rival, they need to stay off Twitter. They obviously don't get it.)

Tony Kessler

Frank, if you don't mind, please share your Twitter "handle" (or account name) with everyone. On Twitter, one is rewarded for being honest and straightforward (it's difficult to be deceptive with only 140 characters to play with), so I can understand why your tweets/musings are so popular.

I am our tweeter. You can find us at @HRHero. Wendi Watts has promised to bring in her famous homemade chocolate chip cookies whenever we hit 1,000 followers. We're at 999 this morning. i forgot to bring my lunch in with me today so please help a hungry guy out and start following @HRHero, let's say, before about 11:00 a.m. tk

Paul in Cannon Beach

I have had two twitter accounts. I quit the first one and the second one is on "ghost ship" mode. (all my tweets come from my Facebook page).

I used to check Twitter and read other people's feeds (including Franks). I dont anymore (not Frank's fault). I just found it was way to easy to live without Twitter.

Celeste Blackburn SPHR

Just finished reading [URL="http://bit.ly/lMnN6D"]a blog post from Molly DiBianca about another employee fired for a tweet[/URL].

A social-media "specialist" with an agency that receives public funding tweeted:
[INDENT] We start summer hours today. That means most of the staff leave at noon, many to hit the links. Do you observe summer hours? What do you do?


[/INDENT]How many of you out there are still tweeting? Have you ever sent out a tweet only to regret it later?

ACU Frank

I replied to Molly's post, but I forgot to sign in first so it went live as "Anonymous".

I think this situation was similar to many in which the 'tweeter' is disciplined - it was actually organizational behavior, not the tweeter's, that was embarrassing. The tweeter was naive enough to think it must be okay to be public with the info, since no one tried to hide the embarrassing activities.