Twitter apologises for throwing 'ill-chosen' frat-themed party

Twitter has apologised for throwing a frat-themed party at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

The soiree, held for Twitter’s revenue team, came to the public’s attention after an employee tweeted a photo of the party room. Later removed, the image was screenshotted and retweeted by the organisation Global Women in Tech, along with the hashtag #brogrammers.

The image shows Twitter’s headquarters transformed into frat house, complete with beer pong table, pizza boxes and a banner reading “Twitter Frat House”.

A spokesperson from Twitter told Mashable: “This social event was in poor taste at best, and not reflective of the culture we are building here at Twitter. We’ve had discussions internally with the organising team, and they recognise that this theme was ill-chosen.”

The fraternity system is a network of male-only organisations on US university campuses. Several fraternities have made headlines or been shut down in recent years for offences stemming from a deeply embedded culture of hard drinking, misogyny, racism and sexual assault.

These accusations mirror criticisms levelled against the tech industry, where a mostly white, male cadre of founders, programmers and venture capitalists have created what some call a ‘boys’ club’ in Silicon Valley.

Twitter’s own struggles with diversity have been well documented; just 30% of the social media giant’s workforce is female, representing 21% of leadership roles and 10% of technical roles. Non-technical roles are evenly split between men and women.