I’m not a big fan of big oil.
So I was amused when a totally unsolicited tweet singing the praises of Chevron’s work in the Gulf of Mexico appeared in my TwitterStream.

So far as I know Chevron had no direct connection with the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

However, an oil company touting its work in the Gulf? That wound is still a little too raw. Others agreed.

Twitter is a free service that’s scrambling to monetize itself;  ‘you get what you pay for’.  But for both Chevron, and especially Twitter, this looks like a pretty clueless misstep. Chevron sponsored a provocative tweet, and Twitter’s delivery really didn’t seem to have any consideration for audience targeting.

Curiously, while I was re-tweeted several times:

…the current twitter link defaults to Chevron’s tweet, not mine.

And my original response tweet is not appearing in my web-based Twitter feed. http://twitter.com/john_weeks
(I can spot it on TweetDeck, which is a third-party app.) This has happened to everyone who hit ‘reply’, not just me.
(Search for @Chevron and try it yourself.)

Great way to quash discussion and potential backlash, Twitter!  Sequester hundreds of tweets, make them almost impossible to access as ordinary tweets and redirect their URL to a sponsored tweet. Looks like you want to head off a similar backlash as happened with McDonald’s.

Maybe it’s time to look into Weibo.  😉