It is the battle of the birds! Well, at least it was against the Twitter bird and the Cardinal, but not anymore it seems.It was just announced today on Mashable that St. Louis Cardinals Manager Tony La Ruzza dropped a lawsuit against Twitter regarding someone posing on Twitter as himself, even though it was not him. The article says that La Ruzza did not get any compensation from Twitter, and it appears that this is the end of the matter in this particular case.
This is one of the main risks about being online is the fact that you really do not know who is online. Your corporate reputation and personal identity can be dramatically affected by one person posing as you and posting whatever they want on the web and on these various social media web sites. Plus, the other challenge that is raised is what happens if there are individuals out there that do not want to be known – and want to be anonomyous to the world? How can a public relations professional deal with this? This does bring up an interesting issue that we as a profession need to address to be proactive in our strategies and tactics.
People can pretend that they are anybody, or they can have an alias and try to hide their real identity. Twitter has recently launched an application where it makes sure that individuals verify their account to avoid this type of situation in the future. However, there is still a risk in my opinion – people will always try to get around the rules and find new ways to adapt to the new forms of technology.
These are just a few of my thoughts about this case. It will be interesting to see how this develops and if there are other cases like this in the future. Hope you all are having a great day!
Best Wishes,
Karen
0 Comments