Maybe we aren’t in as much trouble as I thought. Clearly there is an awareness of the issue out there and through that awareness hopefully the internet culture (of the few bad eggs out there) will change as we realize that we will not tolerate that kind of attitude towards each other.

Via ReadWriteWeb I read a list of the Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time. The #2 video is called Charlie Bit My Finger — Again. In order to save you the trip, here is the video:

The video is very cute, especially when little Charlie starts cracking up at the end. Maybe you have to be a parent who has had your finger bit by a kid to truly appreciate the humor, but that is not really the point. My frustration was not with the video, but rather with the comments below. There are people that are just mean to the family that posted this cute little video.  Here is a brief example:

I think it is fine if Kanzo93 doesn’t find little Charlie funny, but does he really need to post that comment? I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but I guess I hope just hope for the best in people. I know the internet provides a certain level of anonymity, but what does Kanzo93 get out of post that? Now, maybe that was just one out of context comment from him, maybe is a normal happy guy. I tend to think not, but like I to believe the best in people. Let’s check his profile:

Alas, no, this 27 year old man from the UK is just mean. People like this just make the internet less fun. Now, I certainly don’t mean to just pick on this comment, because as you can see above and below, several other people felt the need to make just unnecessary comments. But, this was the one that happened to be there when I logged in tonight. Here are a more comments in the same vain.

I think what it comes to is The Golden Rule, If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. However, we need to start adopting an addition to that: If you wouldn’t say it in person, why say it online?

If these people actually met the dad and watched the video, they would never say those things. I’m not sure exactly how we change this mentality, but maybe it just takes each of us to call out one person when they see this behavior. Perhaps all we can do is be the model of the internet user we would like to see and hope the rest of the world follows. Or, maybe it can’t be changed at all. I hope that isn’t true because that would make me sad for humanity and I know we are moving towards a world where more and more communication is going to be faceless. Hopefully each us go forward and make sure our comments and appropriate and fair and hope that everyone else falls into line.

Start by creating a new file, unless you have a file already that you wish to share.

Select the type of file you wish to create. In this case I chose document.

Type information in your document and the select the share button in the upper right hand corner beneath the sign out link.

Select Invite people… to invite others to collaborate.

Enter the e-mail addresses of the people you wish to share with and click Send.

Verify that each person has the permission you want them. You can either set them to be able to edit or be able to view and click Save & Close.

On the main screen you can verify that you shared the document under the Folders/Sharing column.

?

Twitter to the rescue!

Brad being a dutiful Twitter user responded:

Brad Paisley (paisleyofficial) on Twitter via kwout

Wow, isn’t Twitter awesome!

For example:

This story probably wouldn’t have left New York if not for YouTube making it viral. I have seen it on The Daily Show and heard it discussed on the Nick Digilio Show on WGN because it was high on the Yahoo Buzz Search.

The face on the co-anchor is awesome!

The most current example is Congressman Pete Stark from California. The conversation went like this:
Senior Citizen to Congressman Stark: “Don’t pee on my leg and then tell me it’s raining.”
Congressman Stark’s Response: “I wouldn’t dignify you by peeing on your leg – I wouldn’t waste the urine”.

Before YouTube, this comment maybe would have made the pages of a paper in California, but now it is a national story I heard about on a NPR’s Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me quiz show, all because of YouTube. I think this is an example that shows that all public figures need to be on notice, that if you say something unprofessional or beneath your level, it will get noticed and it can travel across the globe.

Here is the video:

But, of course there are those who do not use Twitter wisely and get themselves in trouble. There is the infamous story of the person who got a job offer from Cisco and tweeted about it and, seemed to lose the job. It went down like this:

What You Post On Twitter Can Cost You The Job: The Cisco Fatty Incident | Gradversity.com: Breaking Into The Entry Level Job Market via kwout

Even after this, you still see an amazing number of people post negative comments about their work place and other situations on Twitter. I think part of the problem is that people don’t realize how big Twitter is becoming and they don’t realize how public Twitter can be if their profiles are not set to private.

Well, now we are getting to a point where people are being sued over their tweets. I guess this was inevitable, but we entering into a new dimension of the Web 2.0 world. Here is the summary of the story:

Tweet about apartment mold draws lawsuit :: Chicago Sun-Times via kwout

Now, we know that Horizon is a “sue first, ask questions later kind of organization,” so I don’t want to get in trouble with this post. (Although this philosophy makes me think the tenant probably was in the right here.) But rather I’d like to talk about the idea of being sued on the internet.

Since this company filed a suit, I looked up what exactly what libel is to see if this was justified:

MLRC | Libel FAQs via kwout

So, technically it seems this lawsuit would fall under this category. One aspect I am unsure of is if a company can file a libel suit. The FAQ above mentions when a person is wronged, but maybe it can go either way. In this case, the comment was made about a company. But, in this case the statement was definitely made to more than one person and it was clear who the comment was about. The question I guess would come down to whether or not there was mold in her apartment and if Horizon did anything about it. (Was the statement false or not?)

I think what blows my mind is the mindset of the management company here. Now, this tweet happened on May 12th, and the lawsuit happens two and a half months later. That seems odd. Why bring it up now?

Next, this news story, and their law suit is doing more damage, in my mind, to their company’s name than that tweet, that I never saw, ever did. I got the impression from the story that Horizon doesn’t even really care or want to address if there was mold in the apartment or not. Maybe this tweet was necessary and accurate.

John Willams of WGN-AM radio 720 in Chicago, one of my favorites, interviewed a law professor, Jim Sparta, about this today and you can listen to that interview on-line:

WGN Radio 720 – John Williams Uncut Podcasts – WGN Radio via kwout

John and Jim discussed how the internet is treated in terms of libel and free speech and covered some of the issues surrounding this topic.

Next, let’s contrast this situation with a similar event involving United Airlines. United broke a man’s $3,500 guitar while he was flying from Halifax to somewhere else (sorry I don’t remember where.) He saw them breaking it as it was being loaded onto the plane and after the flight he tried for some time to follow United’s procedure for handling damaged luggage and was eventually told, we aren’t going to help you. So, he wrote a song about his trials, posted it on YouTube, and now United is going to use his song for future customer service training. (Video posted below.) (You can hear the guitarist, Dave Carroll, interviewed with John Williams of WGN-720.)

Now, if the tweet about the mold was indeed false and was intended to cause damage, I suppose I can understand the lawsuit, but I worry about the precedent it could set on the internet, in which people will be scared to post this kind of story. One of the amazing powers the internet gives us is an uncensored voice through which we can share this kind of story to help other people out. Just today woot.com was offering the Oral-B Vitality toothbrush for sale and I thought about buying it to replace our Crest Spinbrushes. I did a Google search and found a review that changed my opinion.

Cheap Electric Toothbrush – Braun Oral B Vitality Sonic Power Rechargeable Toothbrush – Epinions.com via kwout

Now, if beckytcy‘s review couldn’t have been posted because she was afraid of being sued by Oral-B, I would have bought a brush that would have been inferior to the one I currently own. I can see why companies are afraid of this open dialog, but hopefully most will handle it as United did. I like to think that blogs will be protected under some sort of 1st ammendment freedom of speech as newspapers are. As long as people are responsible, then the speech should be protected.

Personally I try to keep my Tweets on the positive side because I know they are public and I don’t know who will see them. This is especially true of any tweets I send about work, because I do not really care to be fired if I post about my students being royal pains one day. (Not that they ever are, that is totally hypothetical.)

Only time will tell, how this sort of suit will be handled, and I for one will be anxiously watching its resolution in the courts. Hopefully as people use the internet and social networking as their consumer advocates, they will be mindful of what they are posting and be factual in their statements and not ruin this outlet for the rest of us. Further, I hope that companies will take the path that United has taken and uses these sorts of incidents to improve their image, and not make is worse.

To me, even if Horizon gets it $50,000, it has done more damage to its name than before. If this tweet had become news, they could have just addressed the issue, if they were in the right they could have just said this girl is wrong and moved on. Now, their name is going to be dragged through the media, and I don’t think in a positive way.

What I find most compelling about Twitter is its real time nature. As news or events happen you can find out instantly. This might be as mundane as your friend going to the grocery store or as big as a plane crashing into the Hudson river.

Twitter broke the story first and this is becoming a big use of the social networking program.

Twitter first off the mark with Hudson plane crash coverage – Editors Weblog via kwout

Twitter has been rapidly expanding in size over the past several months. This article from mashable on September 16th, 2008:

Twitter is Growing Like Crazy: Up 422% in 12 Months via kwout

And this article from mashable on March 16th, 2009:

Twitter Now Growing at a Staggering 1,382 Percent via kwout

both indicate that Twitter is growing at a huge rate. (If you follow the link above back to mashable they have a list of the all the traffic for social networking sites.)

So, Twitter has doubled in usage between January and February, I wonder what prompted that? My contention is that the Hudson River incident really put Twitter into the spotlight. It had already been growing leading up to September 08 but the January 15th crash clearly had a huge impact on the site’s popularity.

Whoa, Twitter Mania via kwout

I don’t think anyone knows exactly where Twitter will go yet and if it will ever be able to achieve full market penetration. One problem currently, is that Twitter is not catching on with the youth.

Nielsen: Twitter’s growing really, really, really, really fast | The Social – CNET News via kwout

It seems that most teens/millenials don’t have a need for Twitter as they have other sites already at their disposal.

The Online Watering Hole – Advertising Age – GenNext via kwout

But the addition of celebrities and politicians, like Shaq, Taylor Swift, and Barak Obama, may be drawing this group in. Additionally many radio shows are incorporating Twitter as a way for listeners to interact with the show and win contests.

Another problem for the site is that recently this huge influx of users seems to have overwhelmed their servers. The site has had several service issues lately that are hopefully going to be resolved soon.

In the end, I like Twitter. I like to be on the front line of technology, so I will keep using it. For me I know it has made it easier to promote my blog via Twitter and via my Facebook profile. I am excited to see where the service goes and what it can do for me and the world.

I will go one step further and say a lot of the adult users of Twitter are people who don’t have Facebook pages and if they did they would probably use Twitter a lot less. Also, I think teens don’t use Twitter as much because cell phones are treated like a cancer in high schools. If we tried to embrace this technology rather than shun it, we might fine that we can make good things happen.

That begs the question, why do I use Twitter.

I started using Twitter just because I wanted to see what it was all about. I think social networking it great, I recently read a nice blog post about how it can build good community efforts, and I think social networking on-line has improved my off-line relationship. Specifically with my students and in other areas of my life too.

I started using Twitter at about the same time I started using Facebook mobile to read status updates and to update my own. (I love status updates because I love to know what people are doing, I don’t know why, I just like the information of what is happening — It can lead to good conversations later on.) So, at the time I started using Twitter I didn’t really see the need.

Then I discovered that I could link Twitter and Facebook. Not only did this give me a good use of Twitter, but it also allowed to me save a text message because Facebook sends you an annoying verification text when you update your status. Once I made that transition I started to use Twitter a little more, but didn’t see the greater purpose.

I went to the Illinois Computer Educators conference recently and everyone there was Twitter this and Twitter that and one of hot applications there was Tweetdeck. I downloaded this and my whole vision of Twitter changed. Now I could have several different Twitter searches open at once and also see the hot or trending topics at a given moment in time. This allowed to truly get a feel for the pulse of the Internet.

Now, I have started to use the Selective Twitter Status on Facebook so I can post tweets that aren’t always status updates. This means I can interact in Twitter a lot more frequently and I can use it post links to interesting articles to my Twitter followers (who mostly my Facebook friends too, but not all) without having them in my status updates. This is really going to enhance my use of both tools.

I don’t know exactly where this whole social networking world is headed, but I am excited!