Did TechCrunch just write a story about another story trying to get on Digg, to get on Digg?

We posted a story last week about Ivy Bean, a woman who at 104 years old had become the worlds oldest Twitterer. We initially heard about the story via The Telegraph, thought it was rather interesting and shared it with you guys, and by the number of retweets, you rather liked it too.

A day or so later, MG Siegler over at TechCrunch noticed The Telegraph’s story climbing up the Digg ladder and wrote a story titled “Did the UK Press Con A 104-Year-Old Woman Into Joining Twitter For Digg Bait?”. OH THE IRONY.

Firstly, you might con a person into giving you their watch, you might even con a person out of their life savings but you don’t con a person to join Twitter. If they did get her to join, I’m certain they would have paid – and most likely rather handsomely.

Secondly, however she joined Twitter, she’s still Tweeting as we speak – in fact, her last Tweet was just 30 minutes ago (at the time of writing).

Thirdly, and probably most significantly, who cares? It was a story which intrigued people, made people smile and did absolutely zero harm to anyone involved. Sadly, that is not the case with other newspaper and blog stories which have of many occasion lead to individuals/company reputations taking a steep dive due to a completely fabricated story. This is clearly not a completely fabricated story.