When Brian Biggs posted an article on his fake-news blog BBSpot about Paid Premium Twitter Accounts, it was supposed to be a joke. The article, which described several "tiers" of premium Twitter accounts, was written in a jocular, informal style, without any outgoing links or citations, and featured some pretty silly monetization plans for the microblogging platform (including one called EmbellishTwit, a service the BBSpot claimed would take a tweet like "Just had a whole wheat bagel and coffee for breakfast," and make it into an imminently more exciting one, like, "Just got in from clubbing all night and Heidi Klum is spreading brie on a baguette just flown in on the Concord for my breakfast.")

But for some reason, the joke stopped there. By the time the post hit Twitter, it wasn't being posted and Re-Tweeted as the faux-news it so obviously was - it was being ReTweeted as real, actual news.

And herein lies one of Twitter's more interesting qualities. True, Twitter is a lightning-fast medium of communication that allows us to disseminate information around the world faster than we've ever thought possible. That also means, of course, that it allows us to disseminate misinformation faster than we've ever thought possible. And that's precisely what happened to the BBSpot article - furor throughout the Twittersphere over the potential for paid Twitter accounts spread must faster than any potential correction ever could have. The reason? Corrections to inaccurate information don't inspire fury, ergo they don't get Retweeted.

Now, when you google "Twitter Premium Accounts," you don't see news about how a bunch of hypersensitive Twitterers foolishly posted misinformation without checking it first - you see news about the Twitter Premium Account HOAX. I take issue with this terminology. Here's what the dictionary has to say about the word Hoax:

Hoax:
1 : an act intended to trick or dupe : imposture
2 : something accepted or established by fraud or fabrication

Truth is, BBSpot didn't try to "trick" anyone. That entire site is devoted to fake and satirical news. There was no "hoax," only a joke that someone didn't bother trying to understand before spreading his outrage around the Twittersphere in little 140-character long spurts.

The lesson to learn here? Do a little due diligence before you retweet something - you could end up with a lot of egg on your face.