Americans love parody. If they didn’t Saturday Night Live wouldn’t have survived a single season on TV, let alone 30.

Nearly everyone who watches the program clearly understands the skits are designed to get laughs by poking fun at newsmakers often by stretching the truth. On social networking sites, however, the jokes are not always so obvious.

Twitter and Facebook have guidelines for posts that are intended to poke fun at newsmakers. But they’re not always followed. Here’s a recent example of a Twitter parody account, @bpglobalpr that takes aim at British Petroleum:

Twitter’s guidelines recognize that parody is a legitimate form of speech. That’s why Twitter has stated that people who open ”fake” accounts should clearly indicate that in the page name. In this case, “fakebp,” or “notbp.”

From the heading and the logo below (in case you didn’t notice it has dripping oil) a reader could easily get the impression this is really BP’s pubic relations site. As of May 26, this fake site had drawn almost 44,000 followers.

While BP may be a sitting duck for Social Sabotage, don’t think for a moment your organization is immune. Check the social sites daily to see if your brand and your company are being misrepresened. Report fake Twitter or Facebook pages immediately.

Or if you want to engage in parody, remember there’s little body language in 140 characters of text. So make your intentions clear.

There has been a lot said and written about BP’s public relations performance in the aftermath of the Gulf oil disaster.  Frankly, it’s premature to cast a verdict.

Oil from the Gulf of Mexico disaster floats ashore in Venice, La.

To the company’s credit, BP came out immediately to accept responsibility for the cleanup and made its CEO and other company experts available to the media whenever the media wanted answers.

BP also deserves high marks for its use of the social media space. The company set up a designated section on its Website to provide regular updates, photos and videos of its personnel explaining the actions it was taking to slow the leak on the Gulf floor, and the steps it was taking to reimburse fishermen, business owners and their employees who were facing economic losses as a result of the spill. The company also provided up-to-the-minute updates through Twitter and asked for the public to report any sightings of oil that had washed ashore.

There were also some missteps, particularly early on. BP’s miscalculation of the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf may have cost the company some credibility. There was also a battle played out in front of television cameras in which BP tried to shift some of the blame to Transocean, the company that owned the oil platform. While it’s true Transocean owned the platform, it was BP’s oil that was spilling into the Gulf. It would have been far better from a communications standpoint for BP to accept full responsibility and settle any recriminations with Transocean behind closed doors.

How BP’s reputation will fare long-term will depend more on what the company does from here on out. How fast can the leaking well be plugged? How well does the company handle the cleanup of the Gulf and the protection of the Gulf Coast ecosystem? And most importantly, will the businesses, their employees and property owners receive fair compensation for their losses?

Only when all those questions are resolved should the company’s crisis communications be put to a verdict.