The tweeter and the phweeter

JULY 26 – Most people by now know that a tweeter is someone who posts online or via SMS a short message containing no more than 140 characters.

Well, there’s now the “phweeter” or phoney tweeter.

Such a person pretends to be someone else – usually a recognisable name – on Twitter.com, the popular micro-blogging website.

Part-time Singapore model Celestina Tiew, who has appeared on the cover of men’s and car magazines, is a victim of a phwee-ter.

But if you did not know better, reading her Twitter posts, you might have been avidly following updates on what she did or even ate in the last few months.

For instance, on April 27, she was on a shoot for a television show. A few days later, she attended a beer festival before heading to Kuala Lumpur.

Though these are true accounts, they were not posted by her. She suspects the phweeter rehashed them from her blog entries.

“I didn’t even know what Twitter was. I asked a friend to explain the website to me, and she told me she had been ‘following’ me all this while,” the 19-year-old told The Sunday Times.

By choosing to “follow” a user on Twitter, you will receive a notification each time that user updates her profile.

Two weeks ago, Tiew registered her own bona fide account and posted a link to it. She now has 100 followers, while the fake account has

170 followers.

Regarding the phweeter, she said: “I’m not sure what I can do about it. I will probably take more action if the person starts posting false or negative things about me.”

Tiew had previously discovered fake accounts in her name on two other social networking sites – Facebook and Friendster.

She said: “There must be a reason why people are doing this. Somehow this is happening more often and it is starting to irritate me.”

Companies are being hit by phweeters too.

A Twitter account started under the username SQAirlines, for example, has close to 2,000 followers and carries a Singapore Airlines (SIA) logo.

It even posts weekly updates on fare promotions and readers are invited to send in feedback on their experiences aboard the Airbus A-380 airliner.

When contacted, a company spokesman said Singapore Airlines does not maintain a Twitter account.

“We are aware of the Twitter accounts that regularly publish information related to Singapore Airlines. We will continue to monitor these accounts closely,” he said.

The spokesman added that, where possible, SIA will “help facilitate discussion or sharing of information” but it preferred to “let these communities direct their own activities as much as possible”.

It has not verified the identity of SQAirlines’ owner and has not asked for the account to be removed.

The phweeter’s activities “do not seek to misrepresent the airline and its business operations”, but the company will closely monitor its activities, the spokesman said.

Under the terms of use published on Twitter’s website, started in 2006 by Americans Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, “parody impersonation accounts are allowed to exist”.

But the profile information on a parody account “must make it obvious that the profile is fake, or it is subject to removal”.

Last month, Twitter also introduced a “Verified Account” feature to ward off phweeters.

Users who can prove who they claim to be get to display a “verified account” blue-and-white button on their profile pages.

For most followers, however, the best advice is to take everything you read with a pinch of salt.

Ian Loon, associate director of media agency Starcom Media Worldwide, said users are smart enough to spot most fake accounts “through the consistency and quality of tweets coming from the owner”.

But he agreed that phweeters can be a menace.

He said: “They are likely to be malicious and a misrepresentation of the brand, which can lead to inconsistencies in what the brand wants to say.”

But Kristina Boey, a consultant with XM Asia Pacific, a digital marketing and technology consultancy, takes a more sanguine view.

“Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing a Twitter chat between the real account with the fake account. Especially if it’s a well- known personality or brand, it could possibly create positive buzz.”

Lawyer Bryan Tan, a director at Keystone Law Corporation, said legal liabilities could arise from phoney accounts on Twitter and Facebook.

“It could be defamatory if the person has said something affecting the reputation of the real person and this is exposed to others. Or if someone impersonates a celebrity to endorse a product – that could be fraud,” he said.

But he added that very often, the biggest hurdle to resolving such issues is tracking down the perpetrator.

“Obviously they (the phweeters) are already doing something wrong by registering the false account; they will probably try to hide their tracks subsequently,” he said. – ST