The power of Twitter: Dow plunged from false tweet

THIS is scary. Twitter is the new grapevine. There are renewed calls for Twitter to add some correcting features after this week. Stocks Plunge, Quickly Recover, on Fake Tweet – MoneyBeat – WSJ. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged within minutes early this afternoon, after somebody hacked an AP Twitter account and posted a bogus tweet saying the White House had been attacked. The Dow, which had been up about 130 points, fell into the red within two minutes, and then bounced back just as quickly as it became obvious that the “news” was false, and a prank. The story was immediately debunked by the White House. Jay Carney debunks AP Twitter hack: ‘The president is fine’. WSJ remarked that the tweet was retweeted over 1800. Obviously, it reached some pretty important people. It’s not clear how many times the retweets were retweeted. Twitter and other instant rumor spreaders were under scrutiny last week during the Boston Marathon bombing investigation. I admit I was on the police scanner site tweeting what the officers were saying. Of course, not even that can be confirmed. The officers have no verification. So, I quit doing that. People wondered if that even might trigger a [...]