Think Before You Tweet – 5 Things You Don’t Want To Mention On Twitter.
Twitter is an open social network, this means anyone can read your tweets (unless you protect them) including your friends, co-workers and also lovely lawyers. Obviously, we hope not everyone in the world is looking to sue you, but it’s good to think before you tweet.
1. Don’t say it if you can’t prove it. That’s the best way to not get sued. If you tweet something that would cause your followers to think less of the brand (or person) you have criticised, and ultimately damage their reputation, then you are liable for libel. However, if you can prove your point is true, or that your comment is fair and a matter of public interest, then go right ahead.
2. Remember your audience. Your boss or company follows you? Is it worth tweeting about how you didn’t do that report? The bloke you fancy in the office? The benefits you are illegally obtaining? If there are certain people that don’t need to know things, then keep your Tweets relevant to your audience.
3. Burglar Bill. Whilst you may not have your address on your Twitter Profile, can it be found on the internet? In this case, may be best not to tweet when you are going on that extended holiday minus all your worldly goods.
4. Harassment laws still apply on the internet. A bully recently was sentenced to 6 months in prison for threatening to kill someone on Facebook. We hope you aren’t bullies, but remember that everyone can see the comments you make, so that friendly jibe about beating your mate up at the weekend may be taken out of context by observers.
5. Copyright still applies, you can’t go around claiming you invented the Post-it note, Spencer Silver and Art Fry will be on to you!
Everyone can read your tweets, so make sure you are fair (and not malicious) to the brands you dislike (unless you have proof, that is) and don’t threaten to beat up your mate.
Christopher Cornell of Sci-Tech Today is writing an interesting piece on how employers must have social media policies. He starts out with reminiscing about the Domino’s Pizza case where two employees videoed themselves doing nasty stuff to food, and then uploading it to YouTube. I reckon it is self-explanatory that if you do something disgusting or illegal while wearing the brand’s uniform, displaying it through an open medium it will generate negative buzz and damage the brand. You don’t need any policies against that. It is like having policies against robbing banks while wearing your McDonald’s uniform.
However, Cornell also talks about how your own Social Media appearance reflects the brand. As many companies have Social Media profiles, their employees are the ones representing that profile online:
“I’ve found that social networking has blurred the line between one’s professional and personal life. For example, if I want a sales person to invite all of his professional contacts to our Facebook fan page, I need him to have a Facebook profile. Once, his profile appears on our corporate fan page, I may click on his profile.”
This of course means that as your personal on-line space is merging with your employers, you will more and more take your work with you home, and your ability to clock out will no longer be as apparent.
“I cannot control how he represents himself, but I can tell you that it isn’t the most professional representation of one’s self if his personal life is posted all over his profile.”
Social Media is making our lives a lot easier and gives us more freedom, but it is also limiting our autonomy. If my Facebook profile is linked to my employer’s, prospect customers will be able to in detail see what people are representing the brand, and the line between the professional and social person is becoming less defined.
The Southeastern Conference’s (American college sports organisation) ticket policy was basically a ban against communicating to anyone outside the game. No game updates, no photos and no video were allowed to be posted to the Internet while at a game. The SEC wanted to be the sole Tweeter.
Of course, this is absurd. It’s unenforceable, and everyone will hate you. Plenty of concerts and sporting events do not allow cameras, but to really prevent all visual content that would mean not allowing mobiles, but everyone will hate you.
Naturally, everyone hated SEC. They hated it all over the Internet, which results in a worse problem for the organisation than they started with.
They noticed and have responded with a revised ticket policy, which allows you to Tweet and take photos now. No video seems like a reasonable request, but they’ll have a fun time enforcing it.
This video has been doing the rounds over the past month or so and when I first saw it I didn’t know whether to laugh out loud or cringe. It does however have to be the best wedding entrance ever. The video, set to R&B star Chris Brown’s “Forever” became an overnight hit and has accumulated 19,840,571 views and 86,015 comments.
What i noticed in particular with this video is the click to buy links, giving viewers the opportunity to purchase the music track on ITunes. By doing this the rights holders of the track have been able to capitalize on the mass popularity generated by “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” resulting in the sales of the track, Chris Brown’s “Forever” to increase dramatically since then. Reaching as high as number 4 on the ITunes chart a year after its original release. I find it fasinating how a simple piece of content can have so much power and influence. I’m interested in seeing how other artists, bands and even brands will get more involved with the monetization of USG on sites such as Youtube….watch this space
I have always been impressed with people that are a bit too lazy to learn the real thing, but still very keen on practicing it. Like people becoming the world champion playing Guitar Hero instead of learning how to play the guitar, or just not being able to keep from singing really loudly with a false voice at parties, to their peers’ great appreciation, instead of actually learning how to sing. Some people decide to every day write a blog, instead of actually sitting down to write something of real substance.
Last week the UK Air Guitar Championship was held in the O2 academy in Islington, and the winner, Wildthing37, is being sent on to the world championship in Oulu, Finland, the country who has brought to the world great acts such as tough guys Lordi and cool cats Boomfunk MCs, to go face-to-face against his likes in the ultimate air guitar showdown.
You might sense the sarcasm in my tone of voice, and I must admit that I have never thought highly of people playing Air Guitar. But after looking at this video from TIME’s website I must say that I am pretty impressed! These guys are putting on a way heavier performance than most acts they are imitating.
Maybe next year this Air Guitar virgin will also be on his way to Oulu to face the best of the best in the World Air Guitar championship. I just need to come up with a cool stage name!
Much like Apple took a stand against the PC, Box.net is taking on their competitor, Microsoft’s SharePoint. Box.net and SharePoint are both online services for sharing content.
A promotional email sent by Box.net says:
“We’ve noticed a lot of businesses are switching from SharePoint to Box.net because we make it easier to share content and collaborate.”
In addition to offering a free trial (the unsatisfied get 3 months of SharePoint for free), Box.net is encouraging consumers to tweet their frustrations with SharePoint using the hashtag #SharePointBlues for a chance to win a t-shirt. Their favourite tweet will win not one, but two, Macbooks.
Everyone has heard the phrase ‘Got Milk?‘. This extremely famous advertising slogan, which uses has been adopted to outside the dairy FMCG market, was in 2002 named one of the 10 best commercials of all time. And probably rightly so, as American awareness has reached over 90% (meaning there are more Americans that know of this commercial, than actually knows how to read)
Now, the National Milk Processor Board have produced another campaign, not directly related to milk:
Through out the United States there is increasing number of reports of missing cows. How? Farmers have noticed alien space ships beaming up the dairy-producing bovine. And the reason? No one knows, but there are speculations around the aliens being after the cows’ creamy milk.
This campaign is really clever, and I love how they are not mentioning the brand at all throughout the website. I actually had to do a little investigatory research to find out who was behind this campaign.
Go to www.cowabduction.com to see for yourself how the cattle soar up into the skies!
A really awesome website by MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art) in New York. Designed to make visitors experiences more personal using Facebook.
With Your Facebook profile you have your tastes, indicate your lifestyle, show the things you like and dislike. MoMa uses this information to your advantage. MoMA connects to your profile in the social networking site, scans it, analyses it and then the interesting bit… matches your preferences in the in your profile with the experiences currently offered at the museum.
Within in a space of a click you are given personalized recommendations of all the things that you should see. You can then simply share this information within your network and on twitter. Your customized visit plan can then be saved where you can then adapt it,
This idea got me thinking that many sites require you to enter details about yourself. With an idea as simple as this why should we be typing in such information manually?
