Ok, I admit it: I watched Big Brother tonight and enjoyed it. They had these people crawl through this caramel sludge and then dig stuff out of this gigantic mound of popcorn. It was great.
They also have borrowed a page out of another reality show’s handbook by placing a “saboteur” in the house. This adds a new wrinkle to the show but it also facilitates a great opportunity for social media interaction. And CBS is taking full advantage of this. Their website is fully integrated with Twitter, MySpace and Facebook allowing viewers to submit ideas for the saboteur. Sounds fun, right?
The only problem is that they took a little too much advantage of the situation and squeezed two tweets out of me when I was only expecting one. I definitely submitted the top tweet (yes, my idea for the saboteur was to clog the toilet – that would be great TV!). But I didn’t submit the bottom, or first one.
CBS, is this really worth it? Is it really worth compromising the trust of your viewers for an extra mention Twitter.
I say it isn’t.
NealStewart.com 
In this case, it’s got to be an executive that doesn’t use Twitter that insisted they tack that second message on in order to “maximize” the opportunity. But you’re absolutely right, they maximized that one instance at the expense of the relationship.
Even if your customers are idiots (present viewer excluded), I think your goal with these type of messages is not to make them look like idiots. Your goal should always be to make them look cool.
What inspired you to give them access to your account, though? I can’t imagine letting CBS send tweets for me.