Sky score own goal over Chloe Everton’s risqué Twittering
Risqué tweets from the popular Sky Sports presenter Chloe Everton were banned by worried TV bosses way back in January, but unwittingly their approach almost certainly ensured the rude tweets would reach a wider audience.
No doubt the tweets would make you blush, but they were reaching a very modest audience of just over 2,600 followers and ordering their removal backfired for while Chloe Everton quickly deleted the offending tweets, took fright and then seeminglyabandoned her account, fans promptly recorded her double entendres for posterity.
This meant when the media got a sniff of the story in March the risqué tweets still existed and were ready to be quoted by the newspapers writing up the story and had now reached a far bigger audience than they otherwise might.
For example, here are some of those tweets (Chloe Everton's typos!):
- "the sign on the ticket machine im at says: slot out of action. I know the feeling"
- "swimming training with a friend, for a laugh on his suggestion, went down, touched the bottom, when i came up had too much in my mouth"
- "They are saying there could be 8-10 inches tonight, I'm hopeful"
- "right, really ought to get up but ive already been told its freezing and dull. its none of those things in my bed"
- "going down too easily...the wine that is"
- "amazing climax!"
- "bad head today, things just aren't going my way"
They are not that bad are they? And are surely suited to the nature of sports presenting on Sky? Clearly Sky thought not!
It is easy to say with hindsight, but a much better approach would been to have carried on tweeting and gradually deleted the offending tweets, which then would then have been less likely to have been recorded elsewhere. Also, if the account was still live it would not have reinforced the ‘angry bosses’ angle that the stories follow. Not least as it has grown by at least 800 followers since this story broke.
Sky has pioneered the embracing of social media and it is a shame that the response to a few risqué was old school kneejerk and clearly misunderstood the nature of social media.
Of course, how many more people will tune in to watch Chloe Everton now this story has identified the blonde presented to such a larger audience? Perhaps ever Twitter cloud does have a silver lining.