Social media is, quite obviously, the gift that keeps on giving, especially from a content point of view. Whether it’s professional athletes showing their ignorance of current events, or techie CEOs who post pictures of dead elephants, or some racist rant from someone who immediately realizes the error of their ways, social media is simply a fount of wonderful content.
Granted, the signal-to-noise ratio isn’t always great, especially on Twitter, but if you can sift through the chaff and locate the wheat, many times it’s well worth the effort. Take, for instance, the following tweet issued by the Secret Service. Apparently, one of their understudies had access to the recently-launched Twitter account and during the course of the evening, they let their thoughts be known about Fox News — in a far and balanced manner, of course. Naturally, such an “offending” opinion was removed, but not before someone snatch a screenshot of it, as seen here:
Hat-tip to Boing Boing for the capture
As indicated, the tweet has been removed and the Secret Service’s feed has returned to its antiseptic “Meet our recruiters at such-and-such’s career day” type of tweets. They also issued a statement concerning the post, saying:
“An employee with access to the Secret Service’s Twitter account, who mistakenly believed they were on their personal account, posted an unapproved and inappropriate tweet. We apologize for this mistake, and the user no longer has access to our official account. Policies and practices which would have prevented this were not followed and will be reinforced for all account users.”
Oh, boo. Live a little, guys. Think about the discourse that potentially could’ve taken place between Fox News’ minions and your agency. It could’ve been epic. Instead, we, the people, have been denied by the high road. Furthermore, Fox News didn’t respond on their Twitter, meaning we’ve truly been denied a chance to witness a great moment in social media history. Again, boo.
As for the Secret Service’s Twitter account, they currently have over 20 thousand followers, but they haven’t been so kind as to follow anyone in return. Um, shouldn’t they be following President Obama? I mean, that’s their job, right?