Death By Twitter: Twitter Edition

Quick, what's the worst way you can think of to have someone break up with you?

If you are an ex-Sex-And-The-City fanatic, my guess is you immediately thought of the episode where Big broke up with Carrie on a post-it note. 

It'd be tough to get less personal or emotive than that. 

Yet, today, we have news about the professional equivalent of bring broken up with on a post-it note.  Being fired, over Twitter.

The downsizing company just happens to be Twitter itself, making this digital version of a pink slip a bit more understandable.

Twitter recently announced that its interim CEO, Jack Dorsey would be elevated to permanent CEO.  Now, one of Dorsey's first orders of business is laying off 336 employees, almost 10% of Twitter's workforce.  This morning, he confirmed the move with a tweet. 

I guess there is no GREAT way to find out you are being fired, but I certainly wouldn't want to find out when I log into my Twitter feed.  I imagine the office went crazy when everyone read that!  It couldn't have been good for morale.  Still, here at Casey & Sayre, we are huge proponents of promoting your company's core expertise.  And in that sense, at least the announcement stayed "on brand".  

What do you think of Dorsey's Twitter announcement? Was it branding brilliance or just incredibly insensitive?  

Death By Twitter: PayPal Edition

The editions of "Death By Twitter" never cease to amaze me. In this edition, we highlight Rakesh "Rocky" Agrawal, a Silicon Valley big-wig and (former) PayPal executive.

His issues played out over the weekend and Monday as he basically insulted half his co-workers over Twitter. It seems from his "slurred typing" that alcohol was involved in these tweets, not to mention that he was at Jazz Fest in New Orleans!

With the lines between our personal lives and our work lives becoming ever more blurred, it has almost become run-of-the-mill to see these Twitter Fails come back to bite workers out of their jobs!

But they do always have twists and turns! As usual, most of the offending tweets have been removed from Agrawal's Twitter page (@rakeshlobster), but he continues to mention the debacle and his tweets since then have played out like a weird cryptic play that just keeps going downhill. First, there is the issue that he claims he quit while PayPal claims they fired him. Here is the tweet describing that:

"Oh. I quit pay a tonight because of self at son and aortic and ah our and hill e a s th"

Yeah, those typos are not my doing! That is literally what the tweet says. Like I mentioned, the man was having some fun at Jazz Fest. But the minute that happens is when he should put away the phone!! Things have drawn out to some quite serious claims like:

"Friends are worrying about me committing suicide. My colleagues have deserted me. Friends are flying in from across country."

I hope he is okay. But I also hope that we can get past this junior-high mentality of venting to our Twitter feeds and keep the site for more value-adding information! Still, kudos to PayPal for their brief tweet, at least referencing the issue and the company's stance on it: Rakesh Agrawal is no longer with the company. Treat everyone with respect. No excuses. PayPal has zero tolerance.

This leads me to think about Twitter and if I've ever posted something I wish I hadn't. Nothing is coming to mind, but I bet it happens to many. Have you ever wanted to take back a tweet??

Corporate Death By Twitter

Looks like the Death By Twitter curse has crossed over from Hollywood celebrities to corporate America.  The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the CFO of fashion retailer Francesca’s Holding Corp., Gene Morphis, was fired for his social media musings.

It is not clear if there is a certain company policy that Mr. Morphis violated with his tweets.  What is clear, however, is that the company was unhappy enough to fire him as he “improperly communicated company information through social media.”

The culprits?  Tweets from his account @theoldcfo (which is still live, by the way) including:

-          Earnings released.  Conference call completed.  How do you like me now Mr. Shortie?

-          Board meeting.  Good numbers=Happy Board.

-          Roadshow completed.  Sold $275 million of secondary shares.  Earned my pay this week.

-          Dinner w/ Board tonite.  Used to be fun.  Now one must be on guard every second.

The scariest thing about this Death By Twitter is that none of the tweets are THAT bad.  True, some give financial numbers, reference the board, and don’t ask me who “Mr. Shortie” is; but nothing is horrendous.  Twitter firings we’ve seen in the past have typically been overtly offensive.  Remember Gilbert Gottfried being fired as the Aflac voice due to tweets joking about the tragic tsunami in Japan?  Or, perhaps you recall CNN’s senior editor Octavia Nasr being canned after tweeting her respect for the deceased Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, who the AP called “staunchly anti-American and linked to bombings that killed more than 260 Americans”.

What we learn from Morphis’s tweets is that it doesn’t take malicious intent or blatantly provocative commentary to constitute corporate Death by Twitter.  Sometimes, it happens by slow, insidious over-sharing.