For other marketing stories seeIn a posting yesterday, Mike Hickinbotham, senior social media adviser at Telstra, said:

"Last night I said that Telstra hadn't shut down Leslie's Twitter account. This was based on the advice of my colleagues. It's factually correct, though it's also true that Leslie's senior managers independently told him last night to stop."

In his previous update, Hickinbotham had stressed that Telstra had not shut down the Twitter account.

This afternoon he said: "Leslie is not prohibited by Telstra from twittering as the Fake Stephen Conroy, as long as the satirical nature of the account is clear, and it doesn't interfere with work and as a personal initiative. True, it's arguably questionable for a Telstra employee to be dabbling in satire that is prone to being confused with his role in the company. But in keeping with the principles of social media, we try to take a light-handed approach to the problem, assuming that users are smart enough to judge for themselves what to think of other users."

He concluded his post with advice to other companies: "Luckily Telstra was already pretty advanced in developing policies for social media. If other corporates haven't begun writing their policies, this illustrates it's time to do so now."

For other marketing stories see:

http://mumbrella.com.au/2009/03/18/telstra-okay-we-did-tel l-fake-stephen-conroy-to-stop/