Free Speech Impediment? August 7th, 2009

The Greeks Called it Hubris — It’s tempting to be smug when something you don’t like (or understand) seems to fail. The Wall Street Journal led today with a piece about the  supposed frivolity of Twitter, focusing on the fact that a denial of service attack left an  out-of-date pop icon with an inability to text his every move to legions of followers. What  the cranks at the WSJ don’t understand is that Twitter is actually a platform which feeds  into an array of applications that companies and individuals are using to communicate. I’m  old enough to remember similar criticisms of AOL going down (back when it was the dominant  force in e-mail and web access in the home). Old media can mock new media, sure, but it kind  of falls flat as their own audience shrinks to historical lows.

Business as Unusual “Follow us on Twitter” may not sound like a convincing marketing plan,  but don’t knock it til you’ve tried it. The most successful practitioners understand that,  in the end, people will only follow you if you understand what captures their interest. And  as a supplier of goods or services, social media can actually provide pretty good insight  into what holds people’s attention and what turns them off. In fact, in the new interactive  web environment, even a used car salesman can build a following, if he knows what he’s  doing.

Turns out Freedom of Speech Has a Price Although social media is fantastic at letting you  share your thoughts, ideas, jokes, etc. with everyone you know, you need to remember that  anything you tweet can and will be used against you! Why? Unlike e-mail, or instant  messaging or texting, Twitter posts are searchable to anyone who is registered with the  service.  So be careful about naming people or organizations in your rants…er….tweets.

Getting Real Speaking of which, when I began blogging years ago, one of the things I  counted on was that to my readers, I was an anonymous person living somewhere else,  interacting with people they didn’t know. This allowed me to take liberties in the way I  structured my stories and, to be honest, sometimes vilify people who just happened to  stumble into my universe. But now that everyone in my personal and professional sphere is  connected to me in one or more social networking webs, I have to be much more honest, much  kinder, and much more introspective. After all, even “reality TV” is heavily edited.  

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