I did not have time to read the whole article. overall - I think it was a silly thing to do. My reason for posting was the change in customer behaviour.
I agree that companies are going to have to monitor this kind of frivolous use of social media. If they don't track it and behaviour of some particular customers, they could find a much bigger problem waiting down the track.
The Customer Service and IT departments need to talk. Then formulate new policy based on current experience. Big and old companies are god at having the meetings, often good at developing policies but not often so good at making them work.