Is it okay to delete your own tweets? Is it authentic and transparent to do this? What if you’re in the business of authenticity and transparency? Is it less okay?
My friend Lindsay Manfredi tweeted this question yesterday, and it got me to thinking.
What if you delete your own embarrassing tweets?
Is that being transparent??? Just curious.
What if they’re embarrassing? What if you said or did something that, upon reflection, made you look like a total idiot, and you just wanted to erase all evidence of it?
If you were David George-Cosh (@SirDavid), technology reporter for Canada’s National Post, you probably would. (I’d link to his Twitter page, but it was suspended.)
In April 2008, he had a veritable Twitter meltdown and got into a profanity-laden shouting match with PR pro April Dunford.
It started when April tweeted Reporter to me”When the media calls you, you jump, OK!?” Why, when you called me and I’m not selling? Newspapers will get what they deserve. Then things got all F-bomby.
Somehow, his dustup made it to the MediaStyle blog, plus several other social media blogs. After attracting a lot of unwanted attention, @SirDavid deleted the evidence. Too late. Someone took a screenshot of it, and it lives on now and forever. Including here. (Hey, I’m helpful that way.)
While his embarrassment is more than understandable, it raises the question about whether it’s appropriate to delete your tweets. After all, social media is about authenticity.
Let the real world see the real you. If you’re a kind and helpful person, put out kind and helpful ideas and information. If you’re a teacher at heart, teach others. And if the real you is a short-tempered foul-mouthed jerk, and you put that out into the Twitterverse, let it ride. If you get drunk at your friends’ weddings, feel free to post the evidence of your lack of decorum on the My Friend’s Getting Married, I’m Just Getting Drunk Facebook group (with nearly 200,000 members now).
Just be prepared to deal with the consequences when you do. Like when your Facebook photo gets found at the top of a Google search by an HR director. Or when your blog about your anti-government screeds are discovered by your pro-government boss. Or when your Twitter meltdown on a public relations pro makes the social media rounds.
If you’re in the business of being authentic and transparent — like a newspaper reporter — then you need to let your mistakes live on. (After all, you’re in the business of exposing other people’s shortcomings.) Or better yet, just don’t put tweet/post/upload that stuff.
If you don’t want any skeletons in the closet, don’t stick the bodies in there in first place.
