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Meg Whitman Campaign Shows How Not To Use Twitter

Posted by samzenpus on from the type-slower dept.

tsamsoniw writes "California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's campaign team attempted to share with her Twitter followers an endorsement from a police association. Unfortunately, the campaign press secretary entered an incorrect or incomplete Bit.ly URL in the Tweet, which took clickers to a YouTube video featuring a bespectacled, long-haired Japanese man in a tutu and leggings rocking out on a bass guitar. And for whatever reason, the Tweet, which went out on the 18th, has remained active through today."

6 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Computer illiterate? by MrEricSir · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Could it be that former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is computer illiterate?

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
  2. Seems like the best thing that could have happened by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seems like the best thing that could have happened, if the police support them you know they are scumbags.

  3. Re:Missing Character by snookums · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Most likely the final character was chopped by the 140 character limit. The published message appears to have only 137 characters, but perhaps there were some double spaces or something in the original that were lost. I know of another instance of exactly this happening recently (to a high-profile online media company).

    The collision rate on bit.ly links appears to be quite high. In addition to the truncated URL being valid, running through all 52 possibilities appending a single letter to bNCAV, about two thirds of them are valid too.

    --
    Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
  4. Re:It's not "for whatever reason" by oursland · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not really. Since this error has gone through the net I've seen it go from about 85k to your 950k views. No one is paying attention to her, people are paying attention to these news articles.

  5. At least this is really just a typo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I'm waiting for the day that bit.ly or one of those other services like them, fucks up. Imagine someone uses the bit.ly API to automatically send all their links through redirect hell, then for some reason bit.ly malfunctions (or decides they don't like that user), and all the links go elsewhere (nambla, cult of scientology, neo-nazi party, porn, whatever -- use your imagination). Pure chaos and hilarity.

  6. Re:well, it looks like we just got... by KevinIsOwn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The Wikipedia deletionists are already trying to delete it. Go support this term! KEEP.