Change Your Password Before You Fire Your Twitter Ghostwriter

Mark Davidson didn't, so things got drunk and hilarious this morning

Mark Davidson has 55,000 Twitter followers not only because he's famous. He also paid people to tweet for him. He's one of those Twitterati that cultivated a following because he acts as an Internet aggregator, sending out the right combination of links and funny 140 character musings while engaging with his legions. He was winning at Twitter. Until he fired one, and then it all came crashing down, reports All Twitter.

When normal bosses fire their normal underperforming employees, companies usually disable access to building security, to prevent theft, revenge, and other uncomfortable former employer-worker interactions. After firing his ghostwriter, Davidson forgot to change the password. The fired writer took to the bottle, then to Twitter.

The ghostwriter did a lot of damage. First, he outed his ex-boss as a fraud. Then he dissuaded future ghostwriter hopefuls from applying for the job because "he is cheap,"  meaning the pay's not that great. And then he ended with a burn: "and change your freakin' password." He really got the best revenge any fired human could want. The account could be a fraud, as All Twitter points out, but that would be a pretty clever ruse.

While this might hurt Davidson's Twitter cred, all the publicity probably doesn't hurt his account, at least in the short term. And honestly, if his other two ghost-tweeters continue full steam ahead, he should be fine. But that's assuming they don't wise up to the crap pay and start Tweeting fart jokes, or something.

Update 3:25 p.m.: This is all starting to look like a stunt. Seven hours after the Davidson account got hacked by his former employee, it looks like his other employee got fed up with the backlash and quit. "Oh. I am so not dealing with this **** today. My only responsibility on this account is to respond to *all* @replies and @mentions. I quit," he tweeted. Sounds quite scripted.