We can all look back and laugh

Yesterday we had a blast going over Rupert Murdoch's first foray into Twitter, the scolding he got from his wife and his spat with Jack Dorsey. But this morning it turned out Wendi Deng's Twitter account was a fake, even though it had been verified by Twitter for a time yesterday.

"You might ask 'why didn't I tell them?' But surely Twitter should be checking out its Verified status more carefully? No?" the user behind the parody account tweeted this morning. "It might be only a small matter, but you have to worry about the management of News International and Twitter if they can both readily confirm, for a while at least, that this was the account of a very noted personality."

Mr. Murdoch's account has been continues to be confirmed by both Twitter and News Corp., and he never indicated the Wendi Deng account, which was interacting with him heavily, was a fake. That probably lent a lot of credence to the account, although if Mr. Murdoch demonstrated anything in his first few days on the service, it was a blissfull ignorance of how it worked and the line between public and private.

"I was as surprised - and even a little alarmed - when I saw the Verified tick appear on the profile," the faux Wendi Deng wrote this morning. "Above all this was a bit of fun. But I'm definitely not married to Rupert Murdoch. The thought terrifies me. Imagine his sweet whispered nothings."