"I've emailed them back and my position is, I've read their rules, I’ve reread their rules. I still don’t understand how I broke them. I think they’re making up their rules as they go along frankly."
-- Journalist Guy Adams of the Independent, commenting on Twitter's decision to suspend his account over a negative tweet aimed at NBC and its coverage of the Olympics
Here's what happened: Adams tweeted the e-mail address of Gary Zenkel, the head of NBC's Olympics coverage, last Friday, suggesting that people write him to complain. NBC of course filed a formal complaint with Twitter -- so Twitter suspended Adams's account, claiming that Adams had violated its privacy policy. Thing is, Twitter is an official partner of NBC's Olympics coverage. Are you starting to see where things stink here?
Adams's Twitter feed has now been reinstated with both NBC and Twitter's apologies, but not only does this little incident highlight the danger of the titanium-hulled corporate synergy which Comcast NBC Universal has become legendary for, it proves that NBC still doesn't understand how social media works. The network doesn't get that as a giant media organization, it can't simply flirt with social networking platforms and expect to control how much or little of itself is rendered transparent because of it. It's all or nothing. Either you accept that you pretty much have no privacy by submitting to new media or you close yourself off completely (and even that won't really work anymore). It's staggering how willfully blind these organizations continue to be -- how stuck they are in a mindset that's thoroughly obsolete.
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