Posts Tagged ‘fired’

Costly Tweets

Gilbert Gottfried’s ill-timed and politically incorrect Twitter message last week in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami could be the latest instance in which someone has paid dearly for thoughts put down in 140 characters or less. “Could be the latest instance” is the operative phrase here as, at the rate things have been going, people seem to be getting fined, fired and publicly chastised right and left for pressing the Tweet button too soon.

Last August, The Daily Beast ran an in-depth piece on those who saw a marked decline in their paychecks after a remark was sent to their followers on the micro-blogging service.
As should be expected, and as Twitter’s popularity remains unabated, the list has grown.

Atlanta radio announcer Chadd Scott was put out of work for criticizing Delta Airlines on Twitter.

NFLer Terrell Owens’ announcement on Twitter that „A lucky fan wearing my jersey 2day will get a signed football by Me & Ocho Cinco! My asst will pick U out!! Good luck!”

And, of course, there was 50 Cent’s equally inappropriate remark about the Japan quake last week.

1 Tweet = 1 Lost Job + 1 Huge Following

An “online marketing specialist” who lost his job last week at the Hungarian branch of Vodafone has become something of sensation on Facebook – with at last check close to 2,100 fans.

According to a report on the Hungarian business portal Portfolio.hu, Tamas Muller was sacked from Vodafone for making one witty Twitter tweet. On December 4, rival mobile carrier T-Mobile’s Hungarian network was down, a fact that was announced at @tmobilehungary.

Muller retweeted this announcement and added “OK, give us a ring.” You can read the infamous Tweet here (in Hungarian).

Muller had only been with the firm for three months, and the incident happened immediately after he was promoted to online communication director. In fact, this article announcing his promotion appeared the day before the less-than-140-character missive.