Twitter trouble for politicians

>>> let's talk super bowl because it was the most tweeted super bowl ever. more than 24 million tweets. but one of them was fum geed by an idaho lawmaker who apparently approved of a somewhat racy promo for the cbs show "broke girls." republican congressman raul labrador tweeted we liky broke girls. that tweet was deleted after only 14 girls and his office blames the tweet on, quote, a staff error. but labrador, who is a mormon and father of five, is just the latest politician to feel the heat for their tweets. here to talk about the perils and pitfalls of twitter and other social media is our friend, the co-founder of social media magazine.

>> nice to be here.

>> so it's deleted after 14 seconds.

>> well, deleted after 14 seconds except, guess what, it was just on national tv forever.

>> so explain that. you think you delete it and it's gone.

>> everything that you do with technology is permanent, permanent fingerprints. you can put it on twitter and take it off 14 seconds later. it doesn't matter. once you put it out there, it's out there. there's no vacuum cleaner to suck that comment back in.

>> of course, the famous one was anthony weiner and when he had his infamous example of tweeting gone wrong. he initially said his twitter account had been hacked.

>> yeah.

>> labrador, a staff error.

>> well, here is the thing, all the politicians, for that matter corporate america , ceos, do they actually tweet themselves? or do they have somebody hired to do it? is there a process in place for approval? i mean, in the old days politicians learn from henry kissinger who said does anybody have any questions for the answers i'm already going to give? twitter is an opportunity to just put out messages, but you got to be very, very careful about how you do that.

>> let's talk about another tweet . this was from senator ben cardin cardin. it reads could a carbon text be part of future budget negotiations? but then the website politwoods tracks it. so is there really no advice that people could have except you better think about that before hitting send.

>> well, yes. you need to filter. some filter. not just in the emotional spur of the moment that you're going to send something out that you want to take back. look what gets the attention. what gets the attention is the website that tracks deleted tweets.

>> yeah.

>> that's the place that gets the attention. so you better be darn sure if you're going to tweet it, that you want it to stick out there permanently.

>> and then there's these back and forths sometimes. senator john mccain got some flack for a tweet a few days ago. so amehmadinejad wants to be the first iranian in speech. wasn't he just there last week. he was referring to iran sending a monkey into space. that drew charges of racism. he sent back lighten up, folks, can't everyone cake a joke. amash responded maybe you should wisen up and not make racist jokes.

>> if you know john mccain , john mccain is not a racist. it wasn't a racist comment, but what we have is a conversation going on in 180 characters back and forth. it's just like text messages . it's the same thing. we can't really have a conversation that way. nor can we tweet back and forth that way anything that's an issue of substance. so, you know, senator mccain can defend himself all he wants in the twitter world. it's never going to come off the way that he wants it to.

>> so i guess the question for some people is, if twit ser a way to get information but we know that a lot of people like to learn personal things or personal opinions, if you're following someone who is famous in particular, you want to feel like you're an insider. here is what first lady michelle obama sent out during the super bowl . watching the super bowl with family and friends. beyonce was phenomenal. i'm so proud of her. is safe the way to go but when you're safe, are you sometimes bordering on boring?

>> well, you know, that's pretty boring to me. that said, michelle obama has a lot of followers who might be interested in what her opinion was of beyonce. but, you know, i think, especially for politicians, better to be safe than to be sorry. you have to live with sorry for a long time.

>> like forever.

>> forever is right.

>> eric, it's always great to have you on the program.

>> great to be here.

>> thank you so much.

>> by the way, if it doesn't say cj at the end of the tweet , somebody else tweeted it, so i'm very, very -- i learned from eric two years ago when we started "jansing &