Monday, November 14, 2011
Watch What You Tweet
CollegeCandy: The internet has been flooded with news and speculation surrounding the Penn State scandal. Everyone is talking about it, even celebrities. In case you missed it, Ashton Kutcher had a serious foot-in-mouth situation when he tweeted, “How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste.” He apparently had not been informed of the situation and later deleted the tweet and apologized. Ashton has since turned over his twitter account to his managers.
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21 comments:
This seems like common sense. These are the same rules that apply to Facebook or any other social network. Twitter is just easier to expose yourself and to be mean because it is just used to express your thoughts and not to connect with people necessarily. I also have been fallowing occupy and there is a lot of information that goes on twitter that is false and if you just look at one person or one prospective it is really confusing and bad because shocking misinformation can spread so fast because of re-tweeting.
Isn't it interesting how the rules of social interaction naturally evolve. Articles like this are an attempt to codify the rules of social interaction I feel like we all know. That's why Zoe called this "common sense." We all have an intuitive sense of what we should and should not be doing with social networking. That doesn't mean we always follow that protocol. Just like we make real life social faux pas. The issue with social networking is that it is quick. Especially with twitter on the phones and such, it's just 140 characters away. You can say things you might regret in another minute.
I found this article funny because I find myself failing to follow a lot of these rules. However, I very deliberately tweet under a pseudonym and keep it pretty separate from my name and life. It allows me some more freedom when posting, and makes twitter a decent outlet for those 140-character bursts of inspiration. Even so, I still try to follow a lot of these rules, such as making sure my grammar is correct and my posts won't have repercussions. I rarely mention names or tweet "at" people just because the internet makes it so easy to add weight to statements and trace things back to someone in a way that misconstrues whatever was meant to be said.
Everyone should read this article and take it to heart. I see a lot of people posting really inappropriate things on the internet, as if they don't realize that pretty much anyone can see it. I know that this article states the obvious (as my fellow commenters have pointed out), but I still see lots of people failing to follow these rules. What's up with that, man?
I would also like to see an article about how to tweet effectively as a self-promotion / networking / marketing tool.
I'm not much of a tweeter, nor do I follow many tweets, but being taught in a cyber school most of my life, I learned early that you have to be careful what you say on the Internet. I think when you learn this at a young age, it is something you do without much thought anymore. Stupid things can get repeated, or in this case retweeted. It is easy to think you are anonymous sitting in a room typing on a computer or on an iphone, but it's not. Not only is what you say published for anyone to see, but things said years ago are still floating around in cyberspace. If people would just think before they type or tweet we wouldn't have so much misinformation. Unfortunately, I don't see this changing any time soon.
I agree with Zoe that this should be common sense. I don't think people really realize how much impact their "words" can have. In this age of instant information one has to remember that once something is out in the ether you can't change it. Just because you hit delete doesn't mean that someone hasn't already seen something you wrote and passed it on. I would also stay away from targeting specific people in your feeds even if you are not friends it may get back to you. I am also friends on facebook with people I have worked with in the past or hope to work with in the future and them having a good opinion of me is important. So think before you type and be aware that nothing online is private.
I agree that these rules seem like common sense, however these rules are not followed very often. It's surprising to read this article and then look at some twitter accounts. Twitter is so public, and posting is a good way to get a sentiment out, but that has a backside as well. It's easy to access. I would think that these trends like bad grammar and dirty laundry (etc.) would be more of a problem with kids and younger adults on the internet, but it seems that it is a problem that spans through many different ages. It's startlingly immature. I wonder if these trends spread from kids towards more mature people. It's certainly become the norm to treat twitter like a loose diary.
I think the real difference between Twitter and FaceBook when it comes to this topic is that while Twitter has less personal information tied to it, it is indeed open to anyone and anything with internet access. Yes there is a privacy setting, but most people who are avid Twitter users will say that by making your account private you are defeating the intent of Twitter. On the flip side, viewing restrictions and profile settings are almost an expected norm when it comes to FaceBook. I think generally people seem to forget that while they both fill a similar social niche, they are drastically different in how people approach them etiquette wise.
The problem with Twitter is that it provides the same false sense of distance and anonymity that the rest of the internet provides. People feel that there are different rules about social etiquette when communicating via text or anonymously. Then, when anyone gets offended, the response is, "Calm down, it's just the internet, have a sense of humor." When it comes down to it, it's still people interacting with other people, even if it's not face to face or between people who know each other personally. It's just lazy and selfish to decide that communicating on the internet means you get to be rude and thoughtless.
I agree with other comments that this does seem like common sense, but there are also so many relatively new "rules" of interacting within social media, that it's no surprise how often people are having these "foot-in-your-mouth" situations. This article does a good job of pointing out some ways of keeping the peace within the twitter/facebook community in ways that individuals might not think of until after they have made a social faux pas. I do think that a lot of the things in the article should be common sense, but it does serve a helpful purpose to those who may not be aware of these rules of tact.
Social media has started to grow out of just the "social" part of it. Some people even go as far as having a personal twitter and a professional twitter. With 140 characters, people are expected to express exactly what they feel about what they ate that day as well as their current projects at work.
While I do use twitter, I do not use it to the extent of many of my colleagues and classmates. However, it has proven extremely useful in networking. My next leap in four square... I see the uses but the idea of it still freaks me out.
I hate Twitter and I'm so over it. People can be so stupid with what they post. Even blogs like these you have to be careful with what you say because you don't know who is going to read it. Words can weigh a lot depending who reads it and what it's about. And just because you delete it does not mean it suddenly gone. It's still in peoples minds and it will probably stay there for a while. Of course everyone does something stupid like this once in a while but we should all try a little harder to think before we post.
Anything you put out on the web is going to be public to some degree, and even if you think it won't be there's nothing stopping someone else who sees it from passing it along. Twitter in particular is prone to "re-tweeting" someone's comments, giving them a range much wider than the original author may have intended. Even if your own account is protected from public access someone searching for you may see a copy of your posting in someone else's account, rendering all of your efforts to protect your own account rather pointless.
I agree that these rules are common sense. You should follow normal social etiquette, don't talk badly about others, don't use poor grammar, don't give too much information… But people do these all the time even outside of social networking. The same people who have poor tact online probably exhibit similar behavior in real life as well. Twitter accounts are easy to see if an employer or backstabbing friend wanted to get a hold of it. I think that our generation still doesn't have a good sense of what you should or shouldn't post online. Our parents come from an age of being paranoid about "Big Brother" watching, but we only take 2 seconds to okay a gps tracker on our phones and allow friends to track us. We upload photos of our dogs in our houses and anyone can tell from where that picture was taken using the gps information. Now you have the world wide web knowing where you live and what kind of dog you have. These social networking rules are simply social interaction rule with internet caution attached.
There is always someone telling us to watch what we tweet or facebook or post online in general. It is all the same. I don't know how many times the same rules can keep coming up. Basically, don't post anything you are embarrassed by. Some sites take a while to state this, but its fairly true.
As for posting inappropriate things that offend people, what you say is probably going to offend someone somewhere, but that can be okay. It can spark discussion which can lead to change. It could also result in anger and unproductive arguments, but hey that is what some use the internet for.
@Pia I think there was an article earlier on this blog about self-promoting. They are really easy to find if you are interested as it is also an over-discussed topic.
aspects of this are stupid. tweeting with correct grammar? the whole idea of twitter is based on incorrect grammar (i.e., the hashtag with no spaces, using symbols to create hyperlinks). yes i agree with being appropriate and being classy and not spilling your high school drama all over twitter.... but we have 140 characters to tweet a little something about our life.. not get a job. incorporating abbreviations and shortening words in order to fit an idea into the tweet is perfectly acceptable.
This is good information, but it is also common sense. I once took a seminar on how to communicate effectively using social media. The person that taught the seminar warned the audience about facebook posts and tweets that hurt the company. The next day that "teacher" posted a snarky comment on facebook. We all make bad decisions from time to time; hopefully those decisions are not posted for the world to see. THINK about what you are posting before you hit "submit" you can't take it back.
These are good tips if your boss or mother or possible employers are going to be looking at your tweets. But that doesn't have to be the case. You don't have to share your username with people, or post your full name in your profile. It's not as easy to find people on Twitter as it is on other social networking websites. Also, you can make your tweets private, and only share them with the people you know are reading. Then you can be as politically incorrect and snarky as you want. I think people just need to be smart about who is watching, but that doesn't mean you HAVE to be super polite and positive all the time.
I feel as if these are rules that we hear over and over again not just about twitter but also about facebook or any other social networking site. And year many people never understand. There are so many people who post things that they regret. Remember that these pages are a representation of you to everyone and therefore people need to represent themselves in the best manor possible.
There is a transition that comes in everyone’s life when they go from being a kid with a computer to a professional using social media for freelance networking. During this transition it becomes important what one put on their Facebook/Twitter. A inside joke may be funny to an old friend but to a potential employer it could be damaging. I work for a small theatre company and on a few occasions, we have declined people work because of what we found on their Facebook. Social media may tell someone more than they want you to know. I think that Ashton Kucher made a wise choice. I will also be handing over my Twitter account to my handlers.
This article raises some key points and a lot of people blindly tweet their stream of thought which can be very dangerous. On the other hand this article brings up the importance of using the right your/you're and their/they're/there. I CAN'T BELIEVE people don't know how to use these words correctly in tweets, on facebook, in email, in papers. THIS BLOWS MY MIND. It is a very easy concept to grasp and the number of times that I have seen something stressing the importance of using the right one is astronomical so I can only imagine the offenders have seen one of these a time or two yet still manage to get it wrong. I seriously don't understand how someone can do that.
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