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Did The UK Press Con A 104-Year-Old Woman Into Joining Twitter For Digg Bait?

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Here’s a standard tale on Digg right now about a 104-year-ancient British woman who uses Twitter. It’s an obvious headline: “World’s oldest Tweeter talks cuppas and casserole.” It’s Digg bait. But what’s worse is that if you examine the tale closely, it looks like the UK push may have gotten the poor ancient lady to sign up for Twitter just for their tale!

The tale is about how Ivy Bean uses the hot social network to post mundane updates about her 104-year-ancient life. But take a look at the picture in the tale. On the screen next to Bean, you’ll see her Twitter page with a whopping two updates. These two tweets were sent out at the same time, the day before the tale ran in a number of UK publications. In other words, Bean signed up and sent her first two tweets at the time all these guys were writing their tales. Or, to place it more clearly, this whole tale was staged.

Bean sent out her first tweet at 2:02PM PST (6:02PM local time in the UK) on May 14, it read “I’m enjoying Twitter for the first time and having my photo taken” (the picture used in the articles). The Sun, which also ran the tale, has an even better headline. “103-year-ancient Ivy likes to Twitter” — clearly, she does — I mean, she had been using the benefit for a whole two seconds before the tale was life reported. Worse, The Sun gets poor Bean’s age incorrect (they say she’s 103 years ancient).

We get some flack for running a lot of tales about Twitter, but this is just pathetic. Though maybe it shouldn’t be startling. Twitter is red-hot right now and “world’s oldest Twitterer” is an simple Digg headline. And the Telegraph, which did get the Digg headline, gets nearly 10% of its traffic from Digg, according to Compete.

Does anyone know any 105-year-olds? I need to friend them for a tale. And I’ll be nice enough to give them a Twitter ID that doesn’t imply they won’t make it to their next birthday.

[photo: PA]

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