Downing Street Ruffles Twitter's Feathers

Dean Nicholas
By Dean Nicholas Last edited 162 months ago
Downing Street Ruffles Twitter's Feathers

0109_twitter.jpg An amusing tale comes to us by way of this week's Private Eye: it seems that the official Downing Street Twitter account has run afoul of the social network's rules. @number10gov has been banned from following any more users after it became the third highest follower in the world. The account currently follows 472,453 people, meaning that (assuming an average 4.5 tweets per user per day) whichever luckless sod is monitoring it sifts through an astonishing 2.25 million messages daily. Government IT boffins have blamed a rogue auto-follow setting for the snafu. But who was the perspicacious sage who coined the memorable phrase, "too many tweets might make a twat", in a radio interview last year? Step forward, Prime Minister David Cameron.

Last Updated 02 September 2010