On Wednesday night, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama met in Denver for their first presidential debate of this election season. Not surprisingly, the highly anticipated showdown was the talk of Twitter, including from one unlikely political pundit.
While Obama and Romney exchanged barbs, the Twitter account of @KitchenAidUSA (the company that makes kitchen appliances and accessories) posted a Tweet about the Obama presidency. The Tweet was quickly removed, but thanks to a retweet by Tara Olson (@futureadexec), the Tweet lived on:
#socialscandel indeed.
After deleting the Tweet, the @KitchenAidUSA account posted this response:
I can only speculate what happened here, but my guess is the person who manages Kitchen Aid’s Twitter account accidentally Tweeted from the company’s account instead of from their personal account. Again, that’s just speculation, but I could see how it could happen.
Whatever the case may be, this is a great reminder to Tweet carefully. No Tweet is that important that you must rush it out and make this kind of mistake. Also, a good practice that I follow is if you’re going to Tweet something controversial, type it out then walk away from your computer for a moment. Take the time to think of all the ramifications that it might come from that one Tweet.
The person from Kitchen Aid who posted this Tweet is going to have a tough day at work on Thursday. That is if he/she still has a job.
UPDATE: According to Mashable.com, KitchenAid’s Senior Director of Marketing Cynthia Soledad sent the website an email that read: “During the debate tonight, a member of our Twitter team mistakenly posted an offensive tweet from the KitchenAid handle instead of a personal handle. The tasteless joke in no way represents our values at KitchenAid, and that person won’t be tweeting for us anymore. That said, I lead the KitchenAid brand, and I take responsibility for the whole team. I am deeply sorry to President Obama, his family, and the Twitter community for this careless error. Thanks for hearing me out.”
So now KitchenAid has a new problem, having released private details of a person’s employment …