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Social Media Fail: PayPal

PayPal has parted ways with one of its top executives after he posted a series of inappropriate tweets. 

Rocky Horror Show

Rakesh “Rocky” Agrawal joined PayPal two months ago as director of global strategy, and had years of experience working as a consultant for e-commerce companies.

However Agrawai's tenure at PayPal was to be short lived after attending a jazz festival in New Orleans that turned into a Twitter tirade.

All that jazz

At around 1am local time Agrawal began sending a series of insulting, often indecipherable tweets that took aim at his colleagues including PayPal VP of global communications Christina Smedley.

“Duck you Smedley you useless middle. manager”, read one tweet. “People who should be fire from paypal Don Christmas a pool a kick” was another.

Agrawai then tweeting Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley and venture capitalist Bryce Roberts, generously offering to turn the company into a $50 billion business with this tweet:

“.@dens @bryce @fredwulskb I can turn foursquare into a $50 billi OK n company let's chat”.

Fallout

The tweets were soon deleted, but not before a few enterprising Twitter users saved them – unlike Agrawal's position at PayPal.

The company quickly released a tweet explaining Agrawal had left the company and PayPal had zero tolerance for disrespectful social media activity. It did not specify whether he'd been terminated or resigned.

For his part Agrawal variously blamed some of the tweets on the Twitter interface of his Galaxy S5, and also tweeted that he resigned voluntarily from PayPal. 

Whatever the reason the lesson is clear: at home or the office any employee has the ability to damage their personal and professional reputation, often with high consequences. Tweet with care at jazz festivals.

At the time of writing there was no word on whether Foursquare had responded to Agrawal's offer. 

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