Rupert Murdoch Stumbles in Twitter Debut

News Corp CEO deletes tweet about British holidays
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 2, 2012 4:13 PM CST
Rupert Murdoch Stumbles in Twitter Debut, Deleting Tweet on British Holidays
News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch delivers a keynote address at the National Summit on Education Reform on October 14, 2011 in San Francisco, Calif.   (Getty Images)

Rupert Murdoch's big Twitter debut hasn't gone too smoothly, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The chief executive of News Corporation joined Twitter less than 48 hours ago and started with a message that he quickly deleted: "Maybe Brits have too many holidays for broke country!"—which he wrote while holidaying in the Caribbean. His wife, who also seems to have joined Twitter, reacted with: "RUPERT!! delete tweet!!"

He duly did so, and later revealed to his 40,000 followers that his Twitter profile was ruffling some feathers: "I'm getting killed for fooling around here and friends frightened what I may really say!" But his presence on Twitter—which the microblogging site has verified—seems to show that he's softened his antipathy toward cyberspace. In a 2009 Vanity Fair article, Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff wrote that Murdoch had called the Internet "predatory"—and, yes, considered it a den of "porn, thievery, and hackers." (More Rupert Murdoch stories.)

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