Tweeting EU commissioners and Chanel No. 5

On Monday afternoon (30 January), in the middle of a routine exchange on digital issues, the EU commissioner in charge suggested she might not be wearing any clothes.

Or to be more exact, that she might only be wearing perfume. Some 140 people rushed to spread the news.

Neelie Kroes was tweeting. The Dutch commissioner, who has clocked up around 35,000 followers, was conducting a live Twitter debate on cloud computing and data privacy. At one stage in the discussion, stepping som...