Apparently there IS no faking it on social media if today’s events surrounding the revelation that senior Telstra employer Leslie Nassar was the person behind the Fake Stephen Conroy account on Twitter.

A few people were beginning to suspect Nassar was the man behind the account and I’m guessing he outed himself before the press did it for him. The tweet in which he made the announcement looks like it has been deleted.

The sequence of events seem to be this: Nassar announced himself as the account creator (he has joked about being other people from time to time), it was reported on a number of blogs and the SMH that he was infact the person behind it, the Conroy Twitter account appeared to be deleted, Telstra announced that they had not asked Nassar to stop tweeting, they then announced they had in fact asked Nassar to do the right thing, Nassar reopened the account and tweeted:

But this is where the story gets interesting. It appears Telstra were in fact the one’s “faking it”. On its “Now We Are Talking blog“  Mike Hickinbotham wrote that he wanted to get the facts straight that:

• Lesile is not going to lose his job as a result of announcing he is the Fake Stephen Conroy
• Telstra did not shut down Leslie’s Twitter account. Fake Stephen Conroy (twitter.com)
• Telstra did not out Leslie as the Fake Stephen Conroy
• Telstra’s policy is that only selected spokepeople deal with the media

He then went on:

Analogies are developed to educate employees that social media ‘is like a conversation within a group of friends on the bus.  The conversation is meant strictly for the group, but it’s not a private conversation’.

The case of Leslie is different, he understands the whimsical nature of social media and in particular Twitter.  This isn’t a case of solving the problem by offering social media training.  Leslie made a conscious decision to engage in social media.

Telstra is learning the best way to engage in social media – notice our response has come in the form of a blog versus a media release.

We believe transparency promotes credibility.  This post is about getting the facts into the open.

I was pretty impressed with what I believed to be an honest response from Telstra and there is no denying social media throws a lot of challenges up for large corporations. I also knew Nassar to have had a few Twitter accounts in the past and I wondered if the fun was taken out for him now that people knew who he was. Had the Telstra blog not been broken, there would be a congratulatory comment from me applauding its openness. In fact, I did congratulate it on Twitter, and I noticed a few others doing the same.

But my alarm bells started ringing though when @M_Hickinbotham started tweeting something that didn’t quite fit with the NWAT post.

Turns out Telstra is not as transparent as it would lead us to believe and had Nassar not had the courage and gumption to speak up and risk losing his job, it would have got away with it. It appears Telstra had in fact asked Nassar to stop tweeting.

If Telstra had any sense they would have seen the opportunity for good publicity that Nassar offered them. The fact that Nassar is a Telstra employee tweeting on an OBVIOUSLY fake account for the Communications Minister only added to the humour.

I can only hope that it exercises “good judgment” here and looks to learn from the situation and redeem itself. I trust they don’t underestimate the backlash against them should Nassar lose his job.