Yet Another Social Media Blunder

An employee in charge of Cheapflights UK’s twitter account recently tweeted “Oh for f*cks sake, stop crying you silly bint.” Rather than tweeting on her account, however, she accidentally posted it on the Cheapflights account. Her tweet was in reference to watching Katie Waissell on “The X Factor”. Cheapflights quickly deleted the tweet and issued an apology (view here). Luckily, a blogger captured a screen shot of the tweet before it was too late ;). (below)

My first reaction to this tweet was, “Oh no, she dropped the F bomb!” Then it occurred to me that “silly bint” was some sort of derogatory term of which I was not familiar. Upon further review, I discovered that it’s a negative term for a female, similar to a whore. This term significantly increases the damage done by the tweet. Both terms are highly inappropriate in any context, but even more so on a corporate Twitter account. We often forget that social media, if used improperly, can negatively impact an image. This serves as yet another reminder to be careful with both personal and business social media accounts.