This morning, the @foxnewspolitics Twitter feed was hacked and populated with tweets reporting the death of President Obama. A group called Scriptkiddies claimed responsibility.
As I am writing this about 3 hours after the messages were posted, the offending tweets were still live. Assuming they will be taken down soon, I took a few screen shots. (Click to enlarge)
Here are a few things I take away from this.
Don't retweet something unless you are sure.
Had you seen the fake tweets from Fox News in your stream, you should have taken a moment to look at Google News or some other place to see if any other news sources are reporting the news. Confirmation is essential. In this example, hundreds of people retweeted the misinformation.
Have a plan in place in case your organization is hacked.
The compromised Twitter ID is still showing the offending tweets hours after the incident. My guess is that the Twitter ID was changed by the hackers, so Fox News may be having trouble getting into the Twitter ID. That's understandable.
There should be a notice on the Fox News Politics site that explains what happened. As of this writing there is no such notice. A search of the site brings up nothing.
At the very least, the main Fox News twitter feed should have a notice about the hack. But the last tweet from @foxnews was 8 hours ago as I write this. It's sort of embarrassing that a real-time news organization has gone so long without seemingly noticing what's going down.
If you're in a real-time business (and aren't we all?) your site and Twitter feed are not comfortable Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm toys. They are instant communications tools.
A crisis happens when you are least prepared
Remember, when a real-time crisis happens to your organization, it is likely to be on a holiday, or a weekend, or at night, or when the boss is away.
In this case, since this happened early in the morning USA eastern time on the 4th of July long weekend, it was all of the above.
Who has the keys to the site?
If this were to happen at your organization and you were the first to see it, could you get an update to your site at 5:00 am on a holiday?
Do you know how to get an update your company's Twitter feed in a real-time situation?
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If you look at the retweets, you'll notice they all seem to be comments about the account being hacked. Not people retweeting "misinformation" as news.
Posted by: Brucecolwin | July 04, 2011 at 07:43 AM
Bruce - good point. I didn't even look at the actual RTs. So I am guilty of not following my own lesson! Thanks.
Posted by: David Meerman Scott | July 04, 2011 at 07:58 AM
This is a large example of why companies need to always be ready for problems that could occur to their online marketing techniques. There are definitely some lessons that can be taken away by other users of Twitter from this hack.
I do agree with the above comment from Brucecolwin that some of the RT are saying it is a hack.
Posted by: Dan Hench | July 04, 2011 at 07:58 AM
Thanks Dan. Some good lessons indeed. Most people I know who tweet for companies are one point of failure. If they are asleep or on holiday, the feed is not updated. We need to move beyond this.
Posted by: David Meerman Scott | July 04, 2011 at 08:03 AM
Good catch, David.
Funny: an hour ago Fox News made a public apology - http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/04/foxnewspolitics-twitter-feed-hacked/ - but the tweets are still there.
Posted by: Geno Prussakov | July 04, 2011 at 09:52 AM
*puts on conspiracy hat*
Doesn't it seem like this could be an (extremely poor taste) ploy by Fox News for publicity?
Posted by: Adam Singer | July 04, 2011 at 02:02 PM
Geno - It took them something like 8 hours to admit what had happened. And they are a real-time news organization? Yikes.
Adam - I seriously doubt that...
Posted by: David Meerman Scott | July 04, 2011 at 02:28 PM
Seriouisly? Fox News doesn't know how to 'delete' a Tweet? This is inexcusable, and once again confirms that Fox News is not a valid 'news organzation' worthy of respect or validation.
Posted by: Crcpr21 | July 04, 2011 at 05:04 PM
Seriously? It's obvious from your comment you hate Fox News, but - bias aside - did you read the story? Their account was hacked and apparently the password changed, so they couldn't log on to delete the tweet.
Posted by: Brucecolwin | July 04, 2011 at 08:51 PM
Anyone who wants Any president of these United States dead is a very sick twisted person. Stop confusing disagreement of policy and politics with complete and utter madness.
Posted by: Growing Lights | July 05, 2011 at 01:16 AM
I'd like to separate politics from the incident. I do think Fox News screwed up big time because they took more than 8 hours to respond. That is totally unacceptable for a real-time news organization.
However, I think the Fox News problems were because of incompetence, not because of any sort of bias.
Posted by: David Meerman Scott | July 05, 2011 at 06:15 AM
They made a mistake, it's inexcusable but not the end of the world.
All this says to me is that they're still getting used to this whole Twitter web social interaction conversation thing. It's nearly 2012 and everyone who is anyone "gets it," but we have to remember that there are still millions of people around the world who have no idea what a Twitter or Tumblr or Stumble is.
I agree with you David, the problem here isn't that it happened or who it happened to, it's that the issue wasn't resolved for so long. But was that the fault of Fox News, or Twitter? Who knows where the communication got cut off. That's what they should be "tweeting" now... where they (or Twitter, or whoever else) went wrong.
Posted by: Tanner | July 05, 2011 at 10:54 AM