Twitter has come under fire for posting fake tweets from real users ito promote its new ad platform. Hey @Neil_Gottlieb, @WilliamMazeo, @subhash_tewari – so sorry about the confusion earlier today. We're fixing the problem now. — Twitter Advertising (@TwitterAds) July 23, 2013 The social network has been forced to apologise after promoting a new ad […]
Twitter has come under fire for posting fake tweets from real users ito promote its new ad platform.
Hey @Neil_Gottlieb, @WilliamMazeo, @subhash_tewari – so sorry about the confusion earlier today. We're fixing the problem now.
— Twitter Advertising (@TwitterAds) July 23, 2013
The social network has been forced to apologise after promoting a new ad service on its blog earlier this week, along with fake tweets attributed to three social networkers.
The blog promoted a new ad platform that let brands run TV commercials on Twitter. It featured three posts from real users apparently discussing commercials they had seen.
One stated;
“What is the song in the new @barristabar commercial? I love it!!”
and another read:
“The @barristabar ad is giving me the coffee shakes. Looks so good!”
But the tweets were all fictional and the social networkers were unaware their profiles had been used.
The micro-blogging site has now said sorry for the “mistake” and updated its site to attribute the endorsements to its own staff.
A note on its marketing webpage now reads: “An earlier version of this blog post included an image with mock tweets from real users of our platform.
“This was not OK. Once we became aware of this mistake, we took it down immediately. We deeply apologise to the three users included in the earlier images.”
The company later tweeted the trio saying: “Hey @Neil_Gottlieb, @WilliamMazeo, @subhash_tewari – so sorry about the confusion earlier today. We’re fixing the problem now.”
Mazeo, whose Twitter profile states he is from Brazil, replied: “Don’t do this again.”
Gottlieb, from Philadelphia, added: “Still curious how it happened.”
