The Perils Of Copy-and-Pasted Tweets

The Cali­for­nia guber­na­to­rial race took a humo­rous turn on Mon­day when a ret­weet was a mis­sing let­ter from the URL it was promoting.

Sarah Pom­pei, a Meg Whit­man spo­kes­wo­man, had inten­ded to ret­weet a post from Whit­man advi­ser Mike Murphy. Murphy’s tweet proclaimed:

Murphy Tweet Inc­lu­des Link To Endorsement

But when Pom­pei copied and pas­ted the tweet, so that she could add an edi­to­rial tid­bit, she left out the last let­ter in the bit.ly URL:

Pompei’s Tweet Inc­lu­des An Errant Link

To her cre­dit, Pom­pei hasn’t (yet) dele­ted the tweet, which had been ret­wee­ted 82 times as of this wri­ting. But ins­tead of lin­king to the press release where Whit­man announ­ces the endor­se­ment of the Deputy Sheriff’s Asso­cia­tion of San Diego County, the tweet lin­ked to a June 2009 You­Tube clip of what appears to be an ama­zing bass pla­yer. (Calling someone who speaks Japa­nese who can tell us something about the song!) Of course, the press release might get even more atten­tion with this faux pas.

I have to take issue with the LA Times blog head­line: this does not “unders­core the dan­gers of twee­ting”! The error could have hap­pe­ned with a copy-and-paste for an email.

TIP: LA Times Poli­ti­Cal blog and @tka­lli­nen.