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1. Tenant sued
by landlord
When Amanda Bonnen described her Chicago apartment as “moldy” on
Twitter, she had no idea of the legal trouble that would ensue. Her
landlords, Horizon Group Management, took offence to the message, claiming
that she “maliciously and wrongfully published the false and defamatory
tweet, thereby allowing the tweet to be spread throughout the world”,
and sought at least $50,000 in damages. But a judge in Cook County, Chicago,
eventually threw out the lawsuit, saying the tweet was “too vague”
and “lacked context”. Nonetheless, the furore was a stark reminder
that thoughts and views shared online do not exist in a vacuum, and have the
potential to come back to haunt the sender.

2. Habitat
hash-tag spam
The brave new world of social media can be a minefield for “traditional”
brands making their first foray in to online marketing. Habitat was forced
to apologise after it used the Iran election to help publicise money-saving
discounts at its store. The person in charge of the company’s Twitter feed
added keywords, known as hashtags, to their tweets, to ensure Habitat’s
messages appeared on Twitter’s list of trending topics. The timing of the
stunt was unfortunate — at the time, Twitter was being used by protestors
in Iran to organise rallies against the disputed election results, and to
inform people in the West about how they had been treated. The appearance of
offers for discounted bookcases and coffee tables among messages about
police brutality and pleas for help did not go down well with the
Twitterati. œJust read about your hashtag abuses, wrote Caramboo on
Twitter. œYou utter scumbags, Ill never visit your shop again. Habitat
apologised, and said the “hashtag spam” was an error, but it’s a
cautionary tale for companies that think engaging with the online community
is as easy as setting up a Twitter account.

3. Tweeting live from a funeral
The tragic death of three-year-old Marten Kudlis, killed by a motorist while
queuing for ice cream, devastated the community of Aurora, Colorado. Local
newspaper, Rocky Mountain News, dispatched journalist Berny Morson to
cover the funeral – on Twitter. The resulting stream of tweets – describing
every stage of the service, from the sobbing of relatives to the lowering of
the coffin in to the ground – make for truly uncomfortable reading. There’s
a cold detachment to the messages, caused, no doubt, by the need to condense
an emotionally charged event in to 140-character messages. But it
demonstrated that even in today’s permissive society, where make-ups,
breaks-ups and the minutiae of daily life are shared through
social-networking sites, some things should never, ever be “live blogged”.

4. Facebook
Beacon
With 400 million users around the world, Facebook is sitting on huge amounts
of personal data that many advertisers would sell their souls to get their
hands on. Mining this data is one sure-fire way for Facebook to boost its
profits, but it also has a duty to its users to protect their privacy. Its
efforts to square this circle have resulted in some significant mis-steps,
the most famous of which is Beacon, Facebook’s ill-fated attempt at an
online advertising platform. The aim of the service was to exploit the power
of “word of mouth” marketing – it inserted details of purchases
made at participating websites in to the news feed of Facebook users, making
it visible to all their friends. But some users complained that that they
had not been aware these details would be shared –one user said it meant
her husband knew what she had bought him for Christmas. Mark Zuckerberg,
Facebook’s chief executive, was forced in to a humiliating U-turn, admitting
that the service had been a mistake, and changing the rules so that Beacon
became opt-in rather than opt-out. Beacon was shut down completely in
September 2009, following a class-action lawsuit from disgruntled Facebook
users.

5. Google Buzz
This was Google’s attempt to replicate the real-time status updates that have
proved so popular among Twitter and Facebook users. Buzz, which plugs in to
a user’s Gmail email account, connects people together based on names in
their address book; it auto-followed people based on who users emailed most
frequently. The problem was, as many people pointed out, the service was
switched on automatically, which resulted in some people being connected to
other people they had no wish to network with. Blogger Harriet Jacobs was
furious about the service, which resulted in her being automatically
connected to her “abusive ex-husband”, putting her “actual
physical safety” at risk. Google admitted that the roll-out of the
service had been less than perfect, and made some changes so that it was
easier for users to hide their list of followers, block new followers, and
dictate who appeared on their public profile.

6. Labour
candidate sacked over ‘offensive’ tweets
Stuart MacLennan, who was standing in Moray in Scotland, used his Twitter
account to moan about having to go “up north” to his constituency,
branded elderly people “coffin dodgers”, called local people “chavs”
and insulted rival MPs, including Nick Clegg and Dianne Abbot. Although most
of the comments were made before he was selected to stand for Parliament,
the resulting uproar is a timely reminder of the digital permanency of
online comments.

7. Worker
sacked for calling job ‘boring’
After a hard day at work, Kimberley Swann logged on to Facebook to let off
some steam. She updated her status, complaining about her “boring”
job, only to be hauled in to the manager’s office the following week to be
told her services were no longer required. The incident led to accusations
that companies were using Facebook to “snoop” on their employees,
and resulted in the TUC calling on businesses to turn a blind eye to such
comments. “Most employers wouldn’t dream of following their staff down
the pub to see if they were sounding off about work to their friends,”
said Brendan Barber, TUC general secretary.

8. Sacked
on Facebook
Thanks to social networking sites such as Facebook, our “social graph”
– the number of people we’re connected to — is growing every day. But one
employee, known as ‘Lindsay’, clearly forgot that she was friends with her
boss on Facebook. So when she updated her status to complain about her “pervy
boss”, it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise to discover a
‘wall’ message, from her employer, telling her not to bother coming in to
work again. “I’ll pop your P45 in the post and you can come in whenever
you like to pick up any stuff you’ve left here. And yes, I’m serious,”
wrote her disgruntled boss.

9. Too
ill to update
Eagle-eyed employers in Switzerland dismissed one office worker after they
noticed that she had updated her Facebook status while off sick – and was
supposedly too ill to use a computer. The lady said that she was suffering
from a migraine and needed to lie in a darkened room. Working on a computer
would exacerbate the condition, she said. But when the company discovered
she had updated her Facebook status, it said that is “destroyed its
trust” in the employee, and prompted her sacking. The woman, for her
part, claimed she had accessed the site on her iPhone, while confined to her
sick bed. She also accused the company of creating a fake Facebook persona
in order to befriend her and monitor her online activities.

10. Job
offer retracted on Twitter
Twitter user œtheconner was happy as she had just landed a well-paid job from
internet company Cisco, but was not sure whether to accept. She tweeted the
following: œCisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of
a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.
However soon after the company rescinded the offer tweeting: œWho is the
hiring manager? Im sure they would love to know you will hate the work. We
here at Cisco are versed in the web.