Top 9 Twitter Faux Pas

Top House Republican Tweets from the Green Zone

We all want our elected officials to be transparent in their motivations. But maybe there's such a thing as too much transparency when Twitter is involved.

In February, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., found himself in a bit of hot water when he updated the public on his travels through Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Just landed in Baghdad," the congressman declared on Feb. 5 at 9:41 p.m., The Associated Press reported at the time.

Later that evening, he disclosed more details: "Moved into green zone by helicopter, Iraqi flag now over palace. Headed to new U.S. embassy. Appears calmer, less chaotic than previous here."

Hoekstra said he wasn't in the wrong, pointing out that other high-level officials also tweet their travels.

But the episode led the Pentagon to review its policy, as it views such information as sensitive, The Associated Press reported.

Virginia State Senator Tweets Possible Defection

But he's not the only politician to have trouble with Twitter. When his party came close to convincing a Democratic state senator to defect in February, Jeffrey Frederick, then the state's party chairman tweeted a tease. "Big news coming out of Senate: Apparently one dem is either switching or leaving the dem caucus. Negotiations for power-sharing underway," he wrote. The switch would have created a 20-20 tie in the state Senate, broken by the state's Republican lieutenant governor, The Talking Points Memo reported. Frederick's tweet upset the upset. The Democrats read the message, mobilized and made sure the senator stayed on their side of the aisle.

Did Twitter Break Up Aniston and Mayer?

Pop crooner John Mayer didn't get into trouble for what he wrote on Twitter but rather that he was on it at all.

The U.K.'s Telegraph reported in March that the pair may have split, in part, because of all the time Mayer was spending on the micro-blogging site. The rumor was never confirmed but the buzz prompted social media blog Mashable to use the Twitter tracking tool TweetStats to figure out the number of tweets he was sending a day. Since February, it said he'd been sending about 7.4 a day. Not the volume of an addict, it said, pointing out that the break-up wasn't so much Twitter's fault as it was the lack of reported attention. According to The Telegraph, in the aftermath of their break-up, Mayer tweeted, "This heart didn't come with instructions."