The Trouble with Twitter – GE Lighting

Our North American sister publication, EdisonReport.net ran a story this morning with quotes from the WSJ and Bloomberg on the speculation that GE may put their Lighting Business for sale.  Our headline is “With Appliances Sold, Could Lighting be Next?”  Contrast our headline on Twitter, to the below tweet which appears to be from Jeff Imelt, Chairman and CEO of GE, “Trying to reshape the GE Company, so I may consider selling the lighting division of production.” 
The faux-Immelt tweet links to the same Businessweek/Bloomberg article as Edison. The problem is that there is no such quote in that article. Although there is a picture of Jeff Immelt in the twitter feed, the name is Plaid Immelt. A difference easily overlooked by people when they see the tweet and read its contents.

Of course, a tweet like this can cause wild speculation and rumours to fly around – especially when some lighting news sites don’t read all the details and double-check before publishing. So take care; on Twitter, any idiot can appear to be anyone they want and say anything they want, no matter how reckless.

By Julie Allen

09 Sep