Twitter exec Anthony Noto in direct message gaffe 25 November 2014 Last updated at 10:50 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." Former New York congressman Anthony Weiner accidentally posted a picture of himself in his underwear. After first claiming he had been "hacked," Mr Weiner later admitted he had intended to send the image as a direct message.