The New York Times reports that BP asked Twitter this week to rein in the BPGlobalPR Twitter feed :
Twitter contacted the operator on Tuesday about specifying that the feed, called BPGlobalPR, isn’t actually a product of BP’s public relations staff.
“BP requested that the account holder be asked to comply with Twitter’s guidelines regarding parody,” Twitter said in a statement Wednesday. “Twitter subsequently provided suggestions of best practices that are found on our parody policy page .”
Yesterday, BP had
told Ad Age
that it had nothing to do with the addition of a disclaimer to the BP-mocking Twitter account:
BP spokeswoman Heidi Feick said the company had not asked anyone to change the name or profile of the feed in any way. This answer came after Ms. Feick conferred with colleagues who knew about the feed, because she said she was unaware of the existence of @BPGlobalPR when initially reached. She also said was part of a new communications team brought in to relieve those who had been there for the past few weeks.
The company’s intervention, or non-intervention, came 20 days after the BPGlobalPR feed began mocking BP, by which time the parody had attracted some 140,000 followers.
