Is this My Tweet? Twitter...your Business...at a Crossroads

Fake Tweet Causes 4 Minutes of Panic on Trading Floors

This fake Tweet:

Editor's Note: I added, "Fake, Fake, Fake"

Caused a swift crash in the U.S. stock market.

This chart reveals the costly cascade:

One-Minute Chart: $SPY (the ETF tracking S&P 500)

The drama ended in a blink.

Many millions of dollars were lost.

This is a reputation-defining moment for Twitter.

For The Associated Press.

For you.

Put simply, how can I trust your information, if I can't trust the Tweet it arrived on?

What happens if it's your account, but not your Tweet?

Reexamine your operations, CEOs.