Twitter exec Anthony Noto in direct message gaffe Published duration 25 November 2014

image copyright Twitter image caption Anthony Noto has deleted the tweet

Finally, an excuse for anyone struggling to get to grips with Twitter - even one of its top executives sometimes gets it wrong.

The firm's chief financial officer Anthony Noto accidentally made public a tweet that was meant to be a private direct message to a colleague.

The message expressed his desire to acquire another company.

Mr Noto, who joined the company in July this year, deleted the tweet soon after.

It read: "I think we should buy them. He is on your schedule for Dec 15 or 16 -- we will need to sell him. i have a plan."

Twitter often acquires smaller firms who have created good features based around the micro-blogging service.

Speculation over which firm Mr Noto was referring to has begun.

Technology news site Recode suggested Shots - a selfie app backed by Justin Bieber - as well as Secret, a somewhat controversial app for anonymously sharing messages with a wide audience.

Others noted that Mr Noto had recently followed several employees at Mic, a news website aimed at young people.

Mr Noto is by no means the first to suffer a "DM fail".

After first claiming he had been "hacked", Mr Weiner later admitted he had intended to send the image as a direct message.