Chalk this up as one of the oddest emails of the week.
A person who represents AT&T asked our permission to retweet a story we published on GeekWire a few days ago.
Our response: Ugh, yeah.
We appreciate AT&T taking the time to ask, but isn’t the whole idea behind Twitter to showcase stories, thoughts, photos and other random tidbits of information — all of which are shareable and consumable by the general public?
At least that’s how I thought Twitter worked.
No need to get a green light from us or any of the other millions of people on Twitter — yeah, that’s you @BarackObama or @KatyPerry or @LadyGaga.
Here’s the note we received, with the person’s name removed.
I hope my email finds you well. My name is _________, and I am reaching out on behalf of the AT&T Developer Program.
From time to time, AT&T (on Twitter at @attdeveloper @ATT, @ATTSmallBiz, @ATTBusiness, @Uverse) likes to re-tweet or tweet key industry and company media coverage, such as your recent segment titled, Majority of Americans download zero smartphone apps every month: http://bit.ly/1mvgyZF
AT&T would like to request permission from you and geekwire.com to tweet a link to your segment. Do we have your permission to do so?
Additionally, in order to streamline these requests, may we also have permission in the future to re-tweet future articles without contacting you each time?
I’m happy to answer any questions. Thanks for your consideration.
Just bizarre.
I’m not sure what sort of corporate lawyering went into this request or why the person sending it didn’t have an AT&T email address, so I asked some PR contacts at the wireless giant what the heck was going on. They say the email is legit, and that the company’s corporate branded sites have pretty strict guidelines around what can and can not be retweeted.
OK, good to know. And for anyone out their wondering, yes it is absolutely fine to retweet GeekWire stories. We’ll gladly accept the traffic. Here’s our Twitter handle: @GeekWire.
