Categories: Social Media

Chris Huhne’s tweet is not deleted – it’s still visible in this Twitter RSS feed

What happens when you accidentally tweet something that you really should have emailed? You delete it right away; the only thing is Twitter is pretty slow at deleting tweets.

Huhne deleted his tweet but not before people took screenshots of it.

On Friday the UK’s Secretary of Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne, caused a stir online when he accidentally tweeted this mysterious message, “From someone else fine but I do not want my fingerprints on the story. C”.

The tweet was posted on October 7 at 18:10 and deleted about an hour later.  Unfortunately for Huhne, while the tweet might be gone from his public stream it is still visible on his Twitter account’s RSS feed.  In fact it’s the only tweet there.

Chris Huhne's tweet RSS feed, "From someone else fine but I do not want my fingerprints on the story. C"

The reason for the delay is that Twitter manages public feeds and RSS feeds differently, so while the message is not visible on @ChrisHuhne’s public account it has remained in his account’s RSS, and may do for a few days.

By practice Twitter keeps all tweets online (here is the first message tweeted by this site in September 2010) but removes older messages from the searchable index after a few days (a search for our first tweet shows it no longer shows up in Twitter’s search results).

It is, however, possible to permanently save tweets using Google Reader – something Chris Huhne may not like.

Huhne’s Department initially said that his account had been hacked; speaking to the Irish news site The Journal the Department said, “We’re pretty sure it’s a hack. It’s definitely not Chris Huhne. We believe his account must have been hacked.”

Huhne isn’t the first politician to fall victim to Twitter’s slow deletion process; In August, Irish politician Joe Costello T.D got into trouble when he tweeted and deleted a nonsensical message (“@willmcgrath81 z. M zzz zz. Z”) to a student in reply to a question about university fees.

What Huhne was tweeting about remains a mystery, some papers believe it may have something to do with his marriage or political infighting, although somewhat poetically the errant tweet came the day after Huhne’s department held a Twitter Q&A.

Ajit Jain

Ajit Jain is marketing and sales head at Octal Info Solution, a leading iPhone app development company and offering platform to hire Android app developers for your own app development project. He is available to connect on Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

View Comments

  • is this really what we can expect from you non-story's upon non-storys, Joe Costello didn't get into trouble for butt tweeting somebody, please try harder.

  • is this really what we can expect from you non-story's upon non-storys, Joe Costello didn't get into trouble for butt tweeting somebody, please try harder.

  • It appears it was all about cats and immigration... "he was the source of a story in Saturday's Guardian pointing out the similarities between her speech to the Conservative party conference and that of a speech by the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage."http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/oct/09/huhne-says-sorry-over-may-cat-story

  • It appears it was all about cats and immigration... "he was the source of a story in Saturday's Guardian pointing out the similarities between her speech to the Conservative party conference and that of a speech by the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage."http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/oct/09/huhne-says-sorry-over-may-cat-story

Recent Posts

AI safety for kids a top concern for COPPA compliant AI startups

June means the start of summer is upon us, and as teachers put the 2024-2025…

2 days ago

DARPA to simulate disease outbreaks: model lockdown, vaccination & messaging strategies

Why is DARPA modeling disease outbreaks & intervention strategies while simultaneously looking to predict &…

3 days ago

ManagedMethods launches Advanced Phishing solution against rising tide of malicious emails 

Earlier this year, a report from non-profit organization the Center for Internet Security shone a…

4 days ago

DARPA ‘CoasterChase’ looks to mitigate stress with ingestible neurotech

DARPA is putting together a research program called CoasterChase that aims to mitigate warfighters' stress…

4 days ago

U.S. Fusion Power Plant Design Passes Independent Review

In the global race to develop and commercialize fusion power reactors, U.S. scientists have reached…

5 days ago

Pet Health Meets Convenience: New Partnership Aims to Empower Pet Owners with At-Home Testing

Innovative Pet Lab, a science-forward company offering at-home health tests for pets, today announced a…

1 week ago