JPMorgan Cancels Twitter Q&A After Deluge of Negative Tweets

JPMorgan has cancelled a question and answer session on Twitter after it prompted many thousands of negative tweets, focusing on the bank's perceived misdeeds during the financial crisis.

At least two-thirds of 80,000 tweets sent using the hashtag #AskJPM were negative, according to Topsy, which analyses Tweets.

One of the company's senior bankers who worked on Twitter's share sale, Jimmy Lee, had planned to take over JPMorgan's Twitter page on Thursday in an online marketing event.

But by yesterday afternoon due to the scale of the abuse, the company cancelled the event, announcing: "Tomorrow's Q&A is cancelled. Bad Idea. Back to the drawing board."

The bank has been the subject of intense vitriol since its $13bn settlement for mis-selling mortgage-backed securities and its $6bn London Whale trading losses.

Abusive tweets included: "Quick! You're in a room with no key, a chair, two paper clips, and a lightbulb. How do you defraud investors?"

The Wall Street bank is not the first to incur the anger of Twitter users when attempting to hold an online question and answer session.

Just last month on the day it announced price rises of 10%, British Gas's #AskBG Twitter campaign was flooded with anger at rising prices, profits and executive pay.

JPMorgan has been involved in a number of scandals that have seen its fine and controversial image grow.

JPM currently has just over 9,000 followers on Twitter.