Social media runs in real-time. Real-fast real-time. If you want to play in the pool, you better be in the pool for the entire party.

Brands/people etc have looked foolish in the past when they’ve scheduled auto-tweets that get sent at bad times during world events like disasters, elections and otherwise.

However, this one from 30 minutes ago takes the cake.

There was a RadioHead concert scheduled tonight in Toronto at Downsview Park. Tragedy struck, and some of the staging collapsed before the show, where at least one person died and many more injured. Obviously the news spread like wildfire:

Obviously a horrible tragedy that has occurred at too many events this year.

LiveNation, the promoter for the event also tweeted that the show has been cancelled, so people would not head to the venue.

The problem being a half-hour later they sent another tweet, this one obviously pre-scheduled to get people to tweet about the show!

And right away they were getting nailed on Twitter:

Everyone makes mistakes, including people behind brands. This type of one is preventable. Stop scheduling tweets. They aren’t 60,000 word books, it’s 140 characters. If you can’t take the time to type them (10 seconds) and be there when they send, don’t send them at all.

The problem is LiveNation wanted the benefit of people tweeting about a show in real-time, without actually being there in real time themselves. That tweet sat there for about 45 minutes before somebody took it down. That’s about 45 days in Internet time.

Our hearts here at UnMarketing go out to the family of the victim and those who were injured.

(Thank-you to Benjamin for bringing this first to my attention)