The not-so-old adage of "Twitter Giveth" can turn to "Twitter Taketh Away" on a dime, as witnessed by the hacking incident on @foxnewspolitics early Monday morning.
After commenting last week in the PR News blog on President Obama's upcoming, tech-savvy "Twitter Town Hall" (set for Wednesday), it's only fitting that cyberspace would regress and show its ugly side on July 4 when hackers broke into the Fox News twitter account and announced that Obama had been assassinated in Iowa—when actually he was safe and sound at Camp David.
Apparently hackers were able to get into the Fox News e-mail account that accessed the Twitter page. The six tweets were up for 10 hours after being posted early Monday morning, and Twitter officials were unable to explain why the posts were left up there so long for all to see. As a result, people on Twitter made light of the incident and razzed Fox News for much of Monday. It's a little ironic that, given the network's steady criticism of the Obama Administration, the Secret Service is investigating the source of the false tweets.
As the political race heats up heading into 2012, does this incident raise the possibility of hackers acting informally, formally or unknowingly on behalf of candidates and/or political parties?