Off Balance: Twitter CFO accidentally tweets M&A plans

PROFESSIONALS and execs are always being urged to embrace social media and be more open and transparent, but one CFO who should have known about the risks of using social media is Twitter CFO Anthony Noto.

And if Noto wasn’t aware of the dangers of being fast and loose on the social media platform, he is now. On Monday, Noto committed a classic Twitter faux par after he appeared to have accidentally sent a public tweet which disclosed confidential corporate strategy plans around a potential acquisition target.

“I still think we should buy them. He is on your schedule for Dec 15 or 16 — we will need to sell him. I have a plan,” Noto tweeted. The offending tweet was later deleted.

It is unclear how the error took place, although Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser confirmed to Bloomberg that Noto was trying to send the message privately. The slip up is commonly referred to as a “DM fail,” for “direct message fail.”

Still, Off Balance loves to see a CFO using his own company’s products, but will understand if Noto chooses to revise that strategy.