RTÉ2′s TV FORAY into social media has already run into a spot of Twitter bother.
An online prankster has set up a Twitter account purporting to be the official account of The Social, hosted by Craig Doyle. The fake account – @rtethesocial – has been tweeting all this morning, asking Today FM’s Ray Foley and RTÉ Daily Show host Daithi O Sé to give them a retweet.
The fake account has forced the real official account (still with us?) to respond to confused viewers and insist that they are the real deal. The official account is @rtethesoc.
Unfortunately for The Social – which aired its first episode last night (see #thesocial and #rtethesoc hashtags on Twitter for viewers’ reaction to it) - the show left itself open to confusion by putting up the wrong Twitter account onscreen at the start of the show.
Blogger and social media enthusiast Darragh Doyle noticed the mistake last night. This screengrab from the show clearly shows @rtethesocial on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen:
While there was no account registered on Twitter for @rtethesocial at the time the show aired, some bright spark clearly jumped on the opportunity and had one up and running by this morning.
The prank comes less than a week after several fake Twitter accounts were set up purporting to belong to RTÉ sports broadcaster Peter Collins. RTÉ confirmed to TheJournal.ie at the time that Collins is not on Twitter at all. He reiterated the point on the Marian Finucane Show last Saturday.
