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Strife is tweet - a top ten of Twitter scandals

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1. Social sausage
Anthony Weiner (oh the irony!) denied everything and blamed hackers (they always do), when a photo of his genitals was tweeted from his account and sent to a woman in Seattle. The problem was that Weiner, at the time, was one of the nation's most powerful congressmen and the favourite to become Mayor of New York in 2013. The global media wouldn't let it drop probably because there were so many gags to be cracked about his name.

Eventually he caved and admitted the weiner in the photo was Weiner's weiner. It cost him his 12 year position in the House of Representatives and, of course, the mayoral election race.

2. Motown junk
When a marketing executive from Chrysler's new media agency tweeted 'I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the motor city and yet no one here knows how to f**king drive' you'd think the problem couldn't be compounded. However, it just so happened that Chrysler had just broken a new advertising campaign, with astonishingly expensive space booked in the Super Bowl commercial breaks. The strapline? 'Imported from Detroit'.

Naturally, the exec lost his job and the agency lost the business.

3. Fiddiot
As the world reeled in horror at the dreadful events of the Japanese tsunami, rap's premier dunderhead 50 Cent thought it appropriate to add his observations. 'I had to evacuate all my hoes from LA and Hawaii and Japan LOL' he tweeted compassionately. Clumsy, poorly spelt apologies followed.

4. Vlad The Impalin
'Hockey Mum' and not-so-smart American Republican politician Sarah Palin is rather fond of tweeting in support of her ill-informed policy ideas. But she went just a touch too far when she tagged a picture as one of her 'favourites'. The image showed a church sporting a sign accusing President Obama of being a Taliban terrorist. 'It was an accident' her spokesperson explained, unconvincingly. Palin is no longer a presidential candidate.

5. No fly zone
Qantas, The Australian airline with an aversion to the vowel 'u', launched their new competition on Twitter, with impeccable timing.  Asking its followers to tweet their 'dream luxury in-flight experience', they offered the best suggestions a fancy pyjamas and toiletries kit.

Unfortunately, the airline had walked out of contract negotiations the previous day and passengers were all too aware that management had grounded their fleet in October in a round of brinkmanship with the unions. Tweeters took control of the competion's hashtag, #QantasLuxury, posting thousands of negative comments and complaints.

6. Dumbo
GoDaddy is one of the world's largest website domain registries and enjoys a good reputation and not a little goodwill. Or at least it did. Things began to change when the company's CEO, Bob Parsons posted a Twitter link to a video of himself on holiday in Zimbabwe.

This wouldn't really have been an issue had the video not included footage of him shooting an elephant dead for fun.  As you may imagine, this sparked some direct action. A boycott of GoDaddy was accompanied by competitor businesses offering discounts on transfers away from GoDaddy and making donations to elephant charities.

GoDaddy is still one of the world's largest website domain registries.

7. Sickster
In September, online movie provider Netflix, decided to rebrand its DVD service as Qwikster. But, in an incredible oversight, the company didn't bother to register the Twitter name @Qwikster. Instead, it was secured by a sweary, druggy user who entertained himself by posting a stream of vulgar and juvenile tweets, using the name. Qwikster was abandoned after three weeks and 800,000 subscribers left the service.

8. Saucy
Marketers of overly sweet, pasta sauce brand Ragu figured they'd hit on a rather clever campaign when they sent a link to a video of women bemoaning their partners' culinary failures. The tweets landed in the accounts of prominent fathers with Twitter accounts. These gentlemen then wrote about the video as the Ragu people had planned. Unfortunately most Tweeters went ballistic, accusing the campaign of belittling men and promoting prejudice.

In just a few short days, Ragu and their parent company Unilever had earned itself a reputation for Dad hating. Sales dropped off accordingly.

9. The Browning Version
Chris Brown: world famous for his lukewarm R&B output and beating his former girlfriend Rihanna. Clearly, with his public image so tainted, he'd keep his nose clean and get on with making rubbish records. But no. In a Twitter spat with someone called Raz B (no, me either), he launched into a homophobic rant suggesting Raz enjoyed certain man-on-man activities. If this wasn't bad enough, it seems Raz B had spoken publicly about sexual abuse he suffered as a child. A furore ensued and eventually Brown was forced to tweet an apology and state that he loves all his fans, gay and straight. By now, you'd have to wonder how many gay people remain fans of this rather unpleasant doofus. You have to feel sorry for his PR and management.

10. You again?
And finally, back in August, our friend and full-time misogynist 50 Cent was actually banned from using Twitter and TwitterPic for posting an almost never ending stream of pornographic pics he'd found on the web. Alongside these photos he'd posted charming comments such as:

"Now see why I be mad. Bitches be faking. Ima find girl in this clip and ima marry this bitch and by happy like swiss."

Once you've actually worked out what on earth Fiddy is banging on about, you begin to feel rather pleased he was blocked. Unfortunately he is now unblocked and tweeting away. Leaving right thinking people unhappy 'like swiss'.


www.magnusshaw.co.uk
www.creativepool.co.uk/magnusshaw

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