When the BP oil disaster started back in April, a Twitter account was set up under the name BPGlobalPR. Now initially, you might think this account was set up by BP in order to disseminate information to the public about the crisis. That is, until you begin reading the tweets from this account. Like this one:
I’m pretty sure this didn’t fool anyone into believing this was a real account. This parody continued undiminished until this week, when BP apparently put the pressure on Twitter to make the account holder comply with Twitter’s Terms of Service as it relates to parody accounts. So the account holder changed the bio to read as a clear disclaimer against any relation to the real BP:
We are not associated with Beyond Petroleum, the company that has been destroying the Gulf of Mexico for 51 days.
The only thing they haven’t done (so far) is change the name to include the descriptive term ‘fake’, ‘not’, or ‘fan’. Of course, the account has never carried the blue verified check mark in the upper right hand corner, so that should have been a big tip-off to anyone who was confused.
So where do we go from here? So far BP has not indicated that they will ask for a complete take-down, although this is not outside the realm of possibility. But would this really be good for publicity right now?
