Social media expert's "fired ghostwriter" takes over Twitter account

The Twitter account of Mark Davidson, a self-described social media professional, has apparently been taken over by someone claiming to be an ex-employee who had been paid to ghostwrite Davidson's tweet-feed. Actually, the hijacker claims to have been part of a staff of three such ghostwriters, and makes further damning accusations about Mr Davidson's social media competence.

Unfortunately using ghostwriters on Twitter isn’t anything new or particularly unusual – even some of Twitter’s biggest names have done it – but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. At best it’s lazy and duplicitous, and hardly puts the ‘social’ in ‘social media’, and at worst it all goes pear-shaped like this.

Social Media ‘Professional’ Fires Twitter Ghostwriter, Forgets To Change Password, Hilarity Ensues

• [Huwman]

  I think this almost calls for a new word. “Doppeltweeter”, perhaps?

  • [Thorzdad]

    Schadentweeter?

• [Duncan Margetts]

  Or they could be called  ”Tweet Whores”

  • [Huwman]

    …or “Tweet-Tart”, maybe? Is “Tweet-Walker” pushing it? Hmmm. There’s more possibilities than I first realized!

• [Pishabh Badmaash]

  I prefer to call it Velveeta

• [Tagishsimon]

  Tweetenfreude.

• [MrEricSir]

  I thought “self-described social media professional” simply meant “talentless and unemployed”?

• [cs]

  Hold on one damn second — do you mean @RealCapnCrunch isn’t actually written by Cap’n Crunch himself, but a ghostwriter?! 

• [Adam Cahan]

  Makes sense, actually. Now I don’t feel so bad about not being a twenty-four hour tweetaholic.

• [Adam Rice]

  This is exactly what I would expect from a self-described “social media professional” Oh, and MrEricSir—”social media consultant” is how you say “talentless and unemployed.”

  • [Rezeya Montecore]

    Oh, come on, stash the mandatory sarcasm (not to mention the hint of class warfare) and give the poor kid a break. You know what “talentless and employed” probably means? “22-year-old English major who desperately combed the job listings until he found someone that would give him a chance.” Are you seriously going to tell us, in this economy, that is a reason for shame?!

    You don’t have to like what he does for a living — I don’t — but the chances this poor kid considers it a career are probably approximately nil. Could we at least agree that we should count our lucky stars he didn’t end up a telemarketer? :p

    • [Paul Laroquod]

      Actually a telemarketer is exactly what he is.

    • [Adam Rice]

      I was talking about Mark Davidson, not his Twitter ghostwriter.

• [C W]

  Sounds like a lame publicity stunt.

  • [nosehat]

    Sounds like a lame publicity stunt.

    Lame perhaps, but it looks like it was a very effective publicity stunt in spite of that!  I’d never heard of this guy before.  Now I have.  I’m sure his number of followers has gone through the roof as a result of this.  If that was his conversion goal, he’s succeeded.

    • [Paul Laroquod]

      Getting extra Twitter follows would only meet an fool’s definition of a ‘conversion goal’. Conversion means actual $$$.

• [John Ohno]

  Isn’t ‘social media professional’ just a code-word for those annoying spam/porn bots that follow you on twitter and then try to sell you things when you mention a key word?

• [x jeremy jarratt]

  Nobody’s bullshit detector is going off? This just reads way too much like a dude with too much time on his hands and using it to amuse the crap out of himself. Social media “experts” are usually basically just unemployed people who sit around Facebooking and tweeting all day. Who really thinks any of them have the bank to pay not one but THREE ghost tweeters?

  • [Rezeya Montecore]

    *raises hand* Ahem. Trust funds? Of bloody course I think they have the bank to pay for ghost tweeters. The craigslist employment ads around here are loaded with these people, trust-fund babies who still think it’s 1999 and will be forever. I don’t have any trouble whatsoever believing they have the cash on hand to arrange something like this.

• [Steven Sweet]

  I believe some misunderstanding of this post has happened: what I am getting from this is that a ‘social media professional” was paying someone, or the team, who work for probably more than one person, and one of the people on said team got enraged/fired/something negative and outed this person he was ghostwriting for. Used his executive controls he had on this “professionals” account and wanted to reveal the background to why some richfamous peoples’ tweets are just so darn witty and insightful. Sad that someone pays someone else to project a wittier/smarter/cooler image of themselves… “look at what my brain does! Of course I’m richfamous, just look at my tweets! I am this creative even via tweet!” 

• [Readydot WeAre]

  Check out the update on the linked article! Hilarious!!!

• [hostile_17]

  Let’s hope he gets back control of his account, and outs this so-called writer so he never writes again.

• [Bubba73]

  The first couple of comments on the linked article are hilarious.

• [Cicada Mania]

  Who you gonna call? Ghost Writers!

• [ZikZak]

  In the virtual, we know one person can take on many identities.  One person can be many people.
  But also, many people can take on one identity.  One big person can be made out of many little people.

• [ThePiquedGeek]

  this is prolly just a stunt by a “social media expert” that hasn’t yet landed the “viral” attention he thought it would, or he had a great idea while drunk and didn’t think about the next step…

  • [ThePiquedGeek]

    the “hilarious drunk comments” read like an SEO dream! too many keywords to count, with nothing really damaging said. Do you all remember the girl who told off her boss with a cue card video that all turned out to be fake? That’s my Viral Watergate, the point at which people learned not to take what the internet says at face value, question everything #theInternetJadedMe

• [x jeremy jarratt]

  http://www.ismarkdavidsonreal.com/

  Points for trying, but points taken away for trying WAY too hard. If this isn’t him, then i’m not a pope.