Michael Jordan’s son Marcus seemingly propositioned a porn star on Twitter in what was meant to be a private message. But he isn't the only person to hit that “send” button too soon. From Charlie Sheen to Anthony Weiner, see other Twitter mishaps.
Like his basketball legend dad, Michael, Marcus Jordan has game—sort of. The University of Central Florida point guard apparently sent a tweet to porn star Rachel Roxxx that read “@xxxrachelroxxx too bad u wasnt n the chi this weekend was ready for round 2, 1st black one huh? dm me back boo lot more for u $$” Jordan later claimed the tweet was part of a “#Conspiracy” and denied propositioning the porn star. “Everybody that knows me knows I would never send an ‘Accidental’ tweet like that … Whoever it was, nice prank tho,” he wrote. Though Jordan reportedly doesn’t follow the porn star on Twitter, he follows a number of her, ahem, colleagues. And Roxxx appears to follow him.
Just over a month ago teenager Trayvon Martin was killed walking home from a convenient store in his own neighborhood. While the man who killed him, George Zimmerman, is currently in hiding, some people wanted to take action against his killer into their own hands. Do The Right Thing director Spike Lee reposted a tweet that included the alleged address of Zimmerman’s home. But the address is incorrect, and actually belongs to an elderly couple who now fear for their lives. Elaine McClain, 70, has a son named William George Zimmerman, who lived with her briefly in 1995 and has no relation to the watchman who killed the young teen. Lee has yet to remove the tweet, but it’s safe to say it would be the right thing—to take it down, ASAP.
For the second time this month, Stelter sent a message to his 100,000 followers that he had intended to be a private DM (direct message) to a source. On December 29. Stelter tweeted “hey I was watching the sign-off yesterday & wondering if you’d talk to me about it for my morning book. embargoed til 2013. any time today?” Stelter deleted the tweet and followed up with “... And that’s the last time I ever send a direct message.” Stelter responded to his Twitter followers with comments like “i hate twitter” and “clearly I don’t understand how the new twitter interface works! my apologies.” In a later interview Stelter wouldn’t reveal who he was trying to message, only writing, “no comment re: the intended recipient, whose email address I will now try to guess. So old school.”
ABC News' Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper had to do some major damage control last night when he tweeted that acclaimed producer-director Roger Corman had died. Tapper immediately deleted the false report from his account and tweeted an "oops" message to his followers: "I was wrong about Roger Corman—bad info. Apologies." But others had already responded to his initial tweet. One follower—a writer for Esquire —was skeptical: "Suddenly hesitant about that Roger Corman RIP tweet. @jaketapper though, as ABC White House correspondent, would have access to such info." Tapper then responded with a slew of frantic tweets, begging his followers not to retweet the false report and apologizing profusely for his "bad info".
It has been quite the year for Charlie Sheen. The actor added to his list of eyebrow-raising moments on Dec. 12 when he accidentally tweeted his cell phone number to his nearly 6 million followers. The tweet was intended to be a direct message to Justin Bieber—how those two even know each other is still unknown—and Sheen received roughly 1,800 text messages, causing his phone to completely crash.
The New York Times’ TV and media writer Brian Stelter broke news on Dec. 13 that he didn’t necessarily intend to. The journalist meant to send a direct message regarding a shake-up at ABC News, but instead sent a public tweet to his nearly 97,000 followers. The tweet was retweeted 25 times and Stelter followed it with a tweet immediately after, writing, “Well that was embarrassing. That was supposed to be a DM.” Although Stelter tried to cover his tracks further by tweeting his source was a two-day old Page Six story, the story turned out to be true and it was public knowledge by the end of the night that George Stephanopoulous would replace Christiane Amanpour at ABC News.
The granddaddy of them all, it wasn’t really what Anthony Weiner wrote and more of what he posted on Twitter. Weiner eventually admitted to sending a lewd tweet that he intended as a direct message, though he originally claimed his Twitter account had been hacked. Weiner was initially nonchalant about the occurrence, tweeting, “Tivo shot. FB hacked. Is my blender gonna attack me next? #TheToasterIsVeryLoyal,” immediately following the lewd tweet, which he deleted. But the casual denial was not enough to stop the scandal from exploding, and within two weeks of near-constant “Weinergate” coverage, Weiner resigned. His Twitter account remains up, though it is inactive.
It wasn’t a single person, but rather a host of media outlets that made several Twitter mistakes during the frantic afternoon that U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in January 2011. NPR, CNN, Reuters, Fox News and the much-followed news site, Breaking News.com, all tweeted that Rep. Giffords had died from the shooting. The sites all corrected their mistakes several minutes after posting that Giffords had died, some deleting their initial tweets—which set off a social media debate—to prevent retweets from spreading inaccurate news.
No one knows if the employee that sent out a tweet on the official Secret Service account that read “Had to monitor Fox for a story. Can’t. Deal. With. The. Blathering” kept his or her job. The Secret Service said the tweeter had believed that he or she was posting to a personal account. “We apologize for this mistake, and the user no longer has access to our official account,” the Secret Service said in a statement after the incident. But really? So. Completely. Hilarious.
It must have been a slow night for the Red Cross. In February, this tweet showed up on the official account: Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch beer … when we drink we do it right #gettingslizzar.” Slizzard” is a slang term used in the South that means getting drunk, and the company followed up the errant tweet with a bit of humor: “We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.” The tweeter appeared to be social engagement manager Gloria Huang, who sent out a note on her own Twitter account: “Rogue tweet frm @RedCross due to my inability to use hootsuite… I wasn’t actually #gettingslizzard but just excited! #howembarassing.” The organization was actually praised for handling the snafu well, and received a slew of donations—including $100 from Hootsuite, the social media dashboard company mentioned by Huang.
A social media manager at New Media Strategies sent a tweet proclaiming “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet nobody knows how to f---ing drive” to Chrysler’s over 7,000 followers. The company immediately deleted the tweet, following it up with this tweet: “Our apologies - our account was compromised earlier today. We are taking steps to resolve it.”
A web show, “What’s Trending,” that was part of CBS sent out a mistaken tweet in September 2011 that claimed that the now-late Apple CEO Steve Jobs had died. The tweet put CBS in hot water as news organizations around the world rushed to confirm the news that had been sent out by the show. The original tweet on the “What’s Trending” account read: “Reports say that Steve Jobs has passed away. Stay tuned for more updates.” CBS severed ties with the show and its host Shira Lazar soon thereafter.
In November 2010, former Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd’s official account tweeted “U love torturing me with this shit,” and it blasted out to his 13,000 followers. His staff deleted the tweet within three minutes and followed it up with this: “From Dodd Staff – Apologies to Dodd's followers, last tweet was not from Chris Dodd.”
Much like Weiner, you can’t really make this one up. Meg Whitman, now the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, made a bid to be California’s governor in fall 2010, but wasn’t helped by this tweet, which left off a letter of the URL to the intended article and instead sent clickers to a YouTube video of a cross-dressing Japanese man playing the guitar. Yes, you read that right.
In September 2011, Facebook creative director Ji Lee accidentally sent out this tweet describing a new feature to the social media site called “Listen With Your Friend” to his some 5,000 followers, which he quickly deleted. The tweet went live a day before the company was set to unveil the details of Facebook Music, one of them being the “listen with your friend” feature, which Lee inadvertently leaked.
In the throes of the NBA lockout debate, Players Union VP Rogers Mason Jr. sent out this tweet that seemed to imply that a deal would be reached soon. (It wasn’t.) Mason claimed that his account had been hacked and that the rogue poster had made the tweet to look like a direct message.
