Top Twitter official suffers a 'DM fail' moment

San Franciso

TWITTER Inc has just tripped up one of its top executives.

Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto publicly tweeted about a plan he has to buy a company, including how he could make the deal happen at a meeting in mid-December.

The message was posted on the microblogging service on Monday, and then deleted. Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser confirmed that Mr Noto was trying to send the message privately.

Mr Noto had tweeted: "I still think we should buy them. He is on your schedule for Dec 15 or 16 - we will need to sell him. I have a plan."

It is unclear who the intended recipient of the message was, and which company he was interested in purchasing. Mr Prosser declined further comment.

The incident shows that even top members of Twitter's executive team, who are on a mission to better explain the company's product potential to Wall Street, sometimes have trouble using the service.

The slip-up is so common that it has a name - a "DM fail", for "Direct Message fail". These have happened on a relatively regular basis.

In a high-profile Silicon Valley DM fail in 2010, startup investor Dave McClure mistakenly tweeted - publicly - that fellow Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway was throwing him under the bus over allegations that he was working with others to control the market for financing startups. Improving the way private and public messaging works is one of Twitter's top goals for its product, executives said at a meeting with investors this month.

Mr Noto, previously a technology banker at Goldman Sachs Group Inc and a former CFO at the National Football League, was an early adopter of Twitter, joining in 2009 when few other bankers used the service. Twitter has since become more acceptable in financial circles, especially when the Securities and Exchange Commission said in 2013 that it was an approved way for companies to distribute new information.

Mr Noto took on the CFO role at Twitter in July, and led the San Francisco-based company's effort to raise $1.8 billion in convertible debt in September.

Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo said in an interview in October: "Anthony's ability to come up to speed quickly has been just delightful. The rigour that he brings to everything he does is fantastic and causes everyone he works with to make sure they're being just as rigorous as he is. It ups everyone's game." BLOOMBERG