If you have looked at the Twitter account of Biz Stone, one of the
co-founders of the social network, lately you might think his account has been hacked. Dozens of tweets that have the same message were sent to several other users from his account: “Will you endorse @EdLeeforMayor for Mayor on @Votizen?”

All of the tweets that share the same message have been posted by a third-party app belonging to Votizen, a service which encourages its users to announce their commitment to carrying out their civic duties (i.e., voting) through their social media profiles. The tweets suggest that Stone was showing his support for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who is seeking re-election. The blast of tweets was sent over a period of a few minutes.

The tweets were sent from @biz to a wide variety of accounts including several high-profile accounts like @celtics (which Stone follows), @instagram, and @whitehouse. A tweet was also sent to @obviouscorp, the startup incubator where Stone is focusing his efforts after cutting back his day-to-day Twitter involvement earlier this year.

Here are a few of the tweets that were sent from Stone’s account:

You get the idea.

However, rather than having his account hacked, it seems that Stone was just trying out Votizen. According to a tweet from Sean Garrett, Twitter’s vice president of communications, Biz simply hit the wrong button.

One thing’s for sure, though: Votizen just got a healthy dose of free publicity. Votizen welcomed Stone to its service with a tweet and suggested that it might need to tweak its share button a little.

Meanwhile, Jason Goldman, a co-founder of The Obvious Corporation and Twitter’s former vice president of product, made fun of Stone over the spammy tweets.