Twitter attributes fake tweets to real users in advertising campaign

Earlier this month, Twitter became the latest social network to allow advertisers to carry out ‘targeted advertising’ based on browser tracking. But the micro-blogging site allowed users to opt out of this, and was hailed for keeping a keener eye on maintaining users’ privacy as compared to some of its social media peers. But a marketing miscalculation on the part of Twitter has exposed how the chinks in their advertising campaign still need to be worked out. Twitter, according to reports, decided to use real users to promote its new television ad targeting platform. The problem came when the site attributed tweets to users who hadn’t tweeted about the subject at all. [caption id=“attachment_982617” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Twitter logo. Agencies[/caption]A report in the San Francisco Gate newspaper details how a post in Twitter’s advertising blog posted tweets by users Subhash Chander, William Mazeo, and Neil Gottlieb, wherein they were supposedly singing the praises of an imaginary ad for something called Barista Bar. The imaginary tweets (for example, “I wish I could make fancy lattes like in the @baristabar commercial”) have now been taken down, and replaced by tweets by Twitter employees. Expectedly, the Twitter users who were quoted in the advertisement weren’t amused.