misTweeting an embargo?

Last week I was mildly amused to watch two well known and respected journalists slate a PR story that - thankfully - wasn't mine on Twitter. "New leader in rubbish PR stunt of 08. Firm gets psychologist to "identify" new net deprivation syndrome they call "discomgoogolation" announced ruskin147 (aka Rory Cellen-Jones - BBC). "@ruskin147 oh, is discomg... a Sunday for Monday? No doubt." replied charlesarthur (Guardian)

What I didn't realise was that this same story actually only broke this morning. You can note also that ruskin147 wasn't impressed with this coverage "cannot believe that even Reuters fell for "discomgoogolation". For shame! Only goes to show how smart PR people are…"

Embargoes are never 100 per cent reliable but Twitterers were reading about this news, albeit in brief, five days before it launched. Although 118118, sponsors of the survey, won't be too upset as they've still secured thirty plus pieces of coverage to date, this could have been potentially damaging if the journalists had been discussing a story of financial bearing.

I'm not a great advocate of placing rules and regulations on things like Twitter, which are intended to be informal social networking arenas, but I think it is something PR's need to be taking into account and addressing when pre-selling news to journalists who are active in this sphere.