Count MTV as another major brand whose Twitter account was apparently hacked* this week (in case you missed it, see Burger King here and Jeep here).
Being hacked, while slightly embarrassing, doesn’t actually seem to be all bad news for companies. Burger King’s Twitter feed, for example, gained followers during the attack and it is a lot of free publicity.
A sample tweet from the apparently hacked account:
MMM. THIS BURGER TASTES GOOD!!!!!!!!!! #MTVHack
— HACKED MTV! (@MTV) February 19, 2013
*But were they really hacked at all? This from Reuters’ deputy social media editor Matthew Keys:
Screen grab: BET’s social media manager minutes before purported MTV/BET “hack” – twitter.com/iankar1/status… via @iankar1
— Matthew Keys (@TheMatthewKeys) February 19, 2013
UPDATE: Apparently it was all a joke.
We totally Catfish-ed you guys. Thanks for playing! <3 you, @bet. 😉
— MTV (@MTV) February 19, 2013