You expect truth in advertising from any company whose products you use. But we all know that marketing departments bend the truth. How much is too much? Companies pay people to endorse products that wouldn’t be on their typical shopping list. However, what you don’t expect is a company publishing a blatant lie and attributing the endorsement to you. What? Who would do that? That’s going too far! Well, Twitter just stepped over that line.Twitter posted on its blog about their new option of TV ad targeting. The problem with this is that Twitter posted a graphic featuring endorsement tweets about their barrista bar commercial from 3 Twitter users in this blog. These three Twitter users are real. However, their endorsement tweets are not. Understandably, these Twitter users are upset that their accounts and profile pictures were used in a fraudulent manner in a blog that was sent out to hundreds of thousands of people through social media. This blog was then retweeted to more than 1.5 million people.
Twitter has replaced the graphic to one which now has the exact same endorsement tweets but they are attributed to Twitter employees. Twitter has also made a public apology to the users whose accounts were misrepresented. At least one of the users has replied that he is not satisfied with “Twitter’s one-tweet apology” and will be contacting a lawyer to discuss the unauthorized use of his account. Read More…