Is @MediaBistro's Twitter co-editor @MaryCLong a #socialmediadouchebag?

It's a fair question, given that Ms. Long asked on Wednesday, "Is Randi Zuckerberg A Twitter Bully?"

In case you haven't been following the earth-shattering story of how Sister of Zuckerdood (and Zuckerdood in her own right, until 2011), Randi Zuckerberg, went off on a friend of a friend who tweeted a photo that Ms. Zuckerberg thought was set with tighter privacy restrictions. The photo ended up being passed around the Internet, much to Ms. Zuckerberg's anger and chagrin.

Naturally mediabistro picked up on the incident, and the intrepid Ms. Long explains why she commented on it:

People are saying it isn’t news (though it so obviously is)
or they’re having fun focusing on the hilarious irony of the slip-up
and her reaction to it – but what about the poor woman who
unintentionally shared this “private moment?”

What's news about a rich woman with a weak professional resume getting upset about her personal stuff ending up all over Teh Internetz? It's not even as if the photo was really all that interesting or salacious in the first place.

No, the irony is the story, since Zuckerdood himself was also caught with his pants down by changes in the site's Byzantine privacy policies back in 2009.

The incident reinforces the notion that there are fundamental flaws in Zuckerbook's infrastructure. Given the amount of money invested in the now-publicly-traded company, this should give the Zuckerdoods pause. It should be something discussed by the likes of Ms. Long and her colleagues.

But no, how Randi Zuckerberg reacts to a friend-of-a-friend is the real story here. According to mediabistro, this is a case of cyberbullying. Ms. Long doubles-down on news value of the story with the thesis of her article. Ms. Long thinks Ms. Zuckerberg should have been smart enough to realize that asking the original poster to delete the original tweet would be closing the barn door after the horse was let out. After all, lots of people no doubt have screen-shot the original tweet and saved the original photo, so there's not much point in taking said tweet out of Da Twittah, is there?




I'm trying to find the threat in Zuckerberg's request to delete the tweet that transforms this from a request to bullying. There's no "do this or else" involved here, either explict or implied. She's actually quite polite here, and it's natural for someone caught out in public like this to want to stop the bleeding.

Still, Ms. Long sees this as bullying.

Looks more like phoning in your column from here.