What Has Been Twittered Cannot Be Untwittered (Oh Shit!)

Twitter. It's like inviting an unknown amount of invisible strangers from around the world to eavesdrop on your conversations. Or join them.

This can be a great thing that enriches your life and connects you in ways that you could never imagine. Also, it can screw you out of a good job and make you famous in ways that you don't want. It's something a Twitter user called theconnor found out this week after making this post:

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

Okay maybe not the best way to announce that on such a public forum. But when it's just you and your cell phone it can be easy to forget how many eyes could eventually end up on what you're writing. It wasn't too long before a Cisco employee saw the post (searching for Cisco on Twittersearch?) and responded with:

Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.

Oh shit! Theconnor quickly changed her account to private but the word was already out by then. More and more people were talking about what had happened and 'Fatty Cisco' soon became an internet meme. The Twitter/blog posts usually went something like this:

look at what this unwise person wrote on Twitter + be careful what you write! + haha.

But who was this person really? A Google search for 'theconnor' turned up a web portfolio complete with her full info. Theconnor's physical address, phone number, and picture was out there for the world to see. Oh shit! Eventually the site was taken down, though it's still out there in various cached incarnations. And apparently the domain name belongs to someone else now because instead of a portfolio now there's a blog titled 'Utility of a Fatty Paycheck':





In a situation like this it's a natural reaction to go run and hide (both physically and digitally). But I think doing the opposite would have been the best way for theconnor to do damage control. Even a simple statement like 'Yeah I fucked up, now get on with your lives.' would have been better than packing up shop and leaving the conversation to well...anybody else.
 

Here's a few more Twitter Oh shit! moments:

Politician endangers lives via Twitter -Oh hi. I'm a high ranking member of the US House Intelligence Committee and I have Twitter! I will now reveal a secret mission and endanger lives just to tell you that I have Blackberry service in Iraq.

Executive insults client and entire town -Dear FedEx employees, thank you for coming to my presentation on digital media. By the way your town is a hellhole and if I had to live here I would literally die.

Journalist has Twitter meltdown -A journalist that felt like somebody was being unfair and making him look like an ass on Twitter. So he acted like an ass on Twitter.

Juror's Twitter posts could cause mistrial -Sometimes you should just keep your gloating to yourself. Because you know, it might cause a mistrial and stuff.



More:

Cisco Fatty + YouTube Hitler -Hitler's weighed the utility of a fatty paycheck from Cisco against the commute to San Jose and hating the work. And he's decided to take the job after all.