Twitter to the rescue!

Brad being a dutiful Twitter user responded:

Brad Paisley (paisleyofficial) on Twitter via kwout

Wow, isn’t Twitter awesome!

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.

So, on the June 18th episode of The Daily Show, Stewart reports to us how the house republicans are trying to compare what is happening in Iran to their own “oppression” in the house and they are both using Twitter to speak out. Here is one example of the ridiculousness:

Twitter / Pete Hoekstra: Iranian twitter activity s … via kwout

I guess I see the point he is trying to make, but sometimes we need to put issues in perspective. The people in Iran are using Twitter because they have no other outlet to the world since the Iranian government has shut down their access. The members of Congress can get on the news whenever they want. I don’t think that Mr. Hoekstra was trying to trivialize the situation in Iran, but it seems like he could choose his tweets more carefully.

But, it’s not just politicians! After a great post on The Nation regarding the use of social networking to report in Iran, this was the response of one reader:

Iran’s Twitter Revolution via kwout

Comments like this make me realize how out of touch with reality some people are. People like markhammel don’t understand what freedoms exist in this country that don’t exist in other countries. I guess there may still be some questions over the 2000 US election, but in reality the election was supervised closely and openly and when there was a dispute, a re-count took place and legal action was able to be followed all the way up to the Supreme Court; a democracy/republic in action! In Iran, hand written ballots were counted in less than a day and a winner was declared and there is no legal recourse.

Even if you feel like the 2000 US election was not handled properly, you should be able to see the difference. The people in Iran, can not protest and file law suits. They have to use technology to secretly stage and coordinate their protests against the government.

This site does a phenomenal job of summarizing some of the coverage via social networking. Below is the clip from The Daily Show.

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.

So, I went to Ace Hardware to buy a switch for the basement stairwell. I wanted a black flat switch, which they didn’t have, so I got a white flat switch. The switch coast $3.99 and I had a $5.00 Ace Rewards coupon. I got to the register and the total was $4.27. The cashier informed me that I had to spend $5.00 before tax in order to use the reward. So, I went to find a candy bar which cost $.99. I went back over to the register and now I had only spent $4.98. I asked the girl just to charge me $.02 and she said she couldn’t do that. So, now pressed for time, I went and grabbed another candy bar. This brough my total fo $6.14 (I think) and so I had to pay them $1.14.

In the end, I got a $4 switch for about $1, but I still find it absurd that I have to spend the full $5 in order to use the coupon.

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!

Twitter Project — Questionnaire 2 (After the 1st Weekend)

Twitter Project — Letter (E-Mail) to Parents

Purpose: To determine if Twitter can be a useful tool in a high school physics classroom.

Hypothesis: Twitter will not be a useful tool in a high school physics classroom. (Note: For those of you who have not enetered the world of academic reasearch yet, this hypothesis may seeem odd. If this is your educated guess, why would you even bother? This is what is referred to as a null hypothesis. You assume that the change in the variables will have no effect and then you measure you data from that.)

Useful: These are some of the data that will be examined to determine usefulness:

• Forgetting About the Homework
• Homework Completion
• Class Relationships
• Reduced Frustration or Anxiety About Homework

Anticipated Procedure: Students will voluntarily sign up for Twitter accounts and follow the appropriate class account. Mr. Kupfer will send out a daily homework tweet after 4:30 each day. Students will be able to read this tweet and respond if necessary. Other tweets may be sent out each day as necessary. These other tweets might be interesting links to articles about class topics or information about class projects.

Rationale: Twitter is one of the fastest growing applications on the Internet. Many educational technology folks are discussing how to use Twitter in the classroom and we are joining the masses. In many cases, Twitter is a much more useful tool for information dissemination because people can check Twitter a lot more easily that there e-mail or a website. Twitter can be used to distribute information in a variety of fashions and in a variety of the fields.