The now infamous pic that Noah Elliot tweeted from the back of a police car

Social media sharing has just reached a new level as the CEO of Twitpic, Noah Everett,  a photo sharing app for Twitter, shared a pic of the back of a police car as he was being arrested. This bring us to the question of how much sharing is too much sharing? Or a better question, is there such a thing as bad sharing in business?

Many people would argue that people share too much about themselves, their lives, their..ahem..intimate details. But that is in your personal life. What about your professional life? Is personalizing your brand now becoming a tell-all? Is twitter the new corporate Taxicab confessions? Already we have had Red Cross getting drunk, Chrysler tweeting road rage and Weiner showing his, well…

The red cross rogue tweet ended up in extra fundraising, Chrysler buried their story as fast as possible and likely fired the guy who made the tweet, and Weiner stepped down from his office but was offered a job at Huslter.

But Twitpic is not hurting their brand. Though you could argue that every CEO is the face of their brand. Lets be realistic. If Steve Jobs got arrested for public nudity people would care. The CEO of Twitpic….who? What it did show was that power of social media for creating brand awareness.  Because he is the face of Twitpic, even if it is a face that you are unfamiliar with, and he did tweet this sensational event, the drama and humor of it was too much to contain.  Yes his picture went viral. Of course it helps that he has 2.8 million follower on Twitter.

Because of who he is, the sensational element of his tweet made it go viral. Because no on is invested in the public (or private) activities of Noah Everett, announcing to the world that he was getting arrested does not really affect his personal brand. What it did do was bring his actual brand more into the public eye.  This was his real world demonstration how you can share anything on Twitpic….literally anything.

Though not an intentional marketing strategy. Noah Everet did successfully put his brand in the headlines and might have created a public brand for himself in the process.