Last week as my role of Chairman IoD West Yorkshire I was asked to comment in the Yorkshire Post about Northern Rail profits up by 34%.
Bernard Ginns, Business Editor then tweeted out promoting the article.
As part of my role within the IoD, I am the champion for regional social media and have been piloting the IoD Yorkshire social media campaign. So I RT Bernard to increase coverage of the comments in the article.
Eating my breakfast on Friday and checking the IoD Yorkshire Twitter feed I saw these 2 tweets.
From a quick glance I saw that it was Northern Rail and promptly was appalled that they’d reply so rudely.
Looking at it on my MAC a few minus later I noticed it was a a spoof account called @Not_hernRail
Libelous Tweets
I continued to be appalled that someone would feel comfortable passing off as Northern Rail. What people don’t realise it what they write on Twitter could be deemed as libelous. Interesting that this person has deleted the tweets since they posted them. Surely they would have kept them live if they were comfortable with them?
Reputation Management
What amazes me further is that Northern Rail hasn’t taken action against this twitter account as they are passing off as Northern Rail. I know that there’s freedom of speech but then there’s the grey area of brand reputation management and taking legal action.
Interesting that Northern Rail hasn’t responded to Bernard Ginns nor the IoD on the article which was written.
Conclusions
There has been many articles about Tweets being libellous such as this one
from @lauren_dugan.
People are slowly beginning to realise that they cannot just write tweets and that there are implications. The need for a social media policy within a company is paramount to managing such as situation.
Secondly, there is a growing following of Northern Rail passengers who are disgruntled on Twitter, blogs and Facebook. Northern Rail need to start engaging with the people and start understanding and responding to their concerns. Fells like another DellHell uprising unless they start managing the situation.
What are your thoughts on libelous tweets? Do you think companies and people should take action against such companies or do you think it’s freedom of speech?