For the third time in the past year, the Associated Press (AP) has updated its social media guidelines, this time to deal with correcting erroneous tweets and deleting tweets, as well as proper procedure for designating a re-tweet, according to a press release from the news agency.
The AP's social media guidelines last were revised in November 2011 to warn against re-tweeting of opinions, prompting criticisms that the AP just didn't understand social media.
This third revision illustrates the difficulties news organizations face as they try to take advantage of new digital technologies, but while using old print mentalities. For example, last August ESPN's new social media guidelines also prompted complaints, especially the policy to not break news on Twitter.