Twitter is Becoming Even More of a Force

(Thanks to The Dutiee Blog)

Many people follow Twitter to keep up on the lives of some of their favourite celebrities, or to network with others in their chosen field. I maintain a Twitter account for our office that is becoming well-known in the field of educational technology. It's a great way to stay informed on a whole variety of subjects.

It really came into its own during the Iranian Green Revolution of 2009, where the Iranian government blocked mobile phone feeds and other avenues of access to try and restrict what got out of the country. But they couldn't block Twitter without blocking the Internet totally, and Twitter became the place to get a lot of information out about the protests, the violence, the government crack-down, and all of that. I think a lot of people gained a new respect for Twitter after that.

There have been other examples of Twitter becoming prominent in the news cycle, of course. Just ask former Congressman Anthony Weiner.

However, it was only recently where an example came up that showed Twitter to be not only an outlet for the news, but also as a driving force behind some of it. In this case, if you don't follow Twitter, or the blogs that referenced it, you probably didn't hear about it.

I'm not going to get into a political debate in this post, but the example does involve politics. The Obama campaign has been making hay with a Mitt Romney family trip many years ago where the carrier containing the family dog was tied to the roof of the car. The campaign has noticed that whenever this story is brought up, Romney's negative ratings go up. It's pure gold, baby!

But Jim Treacher from the Daily Caller actually read The Audacity of Hope, one of Obama's memoirs, and noticed a line in there that struck him. It was about a time as a child when Obama was living with his stepfather in Indonesia.

"With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy)."

Yes, you read that right. Obama ate dog meat. And didn't seem to mind it.

As soon as Treacher tweeted this, Twitter went on a rampage. Numerous conservative pundits and just regular people on Twitter started joking about it. The hashtag "#ObamaEatsDogs" became so prominent over the next few days that it actually ended up making the ABC news web site among other news outlets. Many "traditional" news outlets ignored it, of course (it didn't make any of the televised news shows, for example. Just perhaps their web sites, like ABC's). If you get your news from the New York Times and that's it, you've still never heard of this (until now, I guess, since you're reading my post).

It reached the point where some Obama staffers were actually fighting this out on Twitter with the other side, trying to keep the Romney meme alive while still trying to dismiss the Obama meme.

It reached so much prominence that Jimmy Kimmel made some jokes about it at the White House Correspondents Dinner last weekend. In fact, Obama himself made three jokes about it in his presentation there.

Can you believe that? Obama himself was making jokes about something that started on Twitter. There were some in the audience, who don't follow Twitter or many online blogs, who only get their news from "regular" news outlets, who turned to their compatriots and asked "why is the President joking about eating dogs?" They'd never heard of this before.

I don't bring this up to make political hay. You know I'm a conservative. Many of you out there are liberals. You know we disagree on a lot politically.

However, the reason I'm bringing this up is because this meme that rose to such prominence that even the President himself is joking about it began on Twitter and stayed online for the most part. In fact, many news outlets that covered the Correspondents Dinner didn't even mention the dog jokes.

Would you have thought something like that was possible even just a few years ago? For a story that reaches the national consciousness to have begun on Twitter?

Even more of a reason to at least know about Twitter, even if you don't have the inclination or the time to actually use it much.

Because it too can become a driving force behind the news.

The Perils of the "Automatic Follow"

You're innocently reading the tweets from those you follow on Twitter. Oh look, Christina Aguilera just said something really interesting! And she mentioned somebody else too.

You look at this person's timeline, see that she also posts interesting stuff, and you decide to follow her too. You click that follow button.

And a few minutes later, you get a notice that she's following you back! Wow, she must have seen that I was following her, come to my timeline and read what I had to say, and decided I was interesting enough to follow as well! Even though she's busy 23 hours a day doing shows and attempting to entertain the masses. I'm so special!!!

Actually, you're not, though it's a nice thought.

Instead, she has something set up that automatically follows whoever is following her. And often sends a "direct message" (a private tweet seen only by the person it was sent to) to each follower.

It's a weird mindset, though there are articles defending the practice.

Many times I get somebody following me who obviously hasn't read my tweets, other than maybe the one that brought me to their attention. They do a Twitter search and find keywords in my profile, such as "conservative" or "xbox" or whatever. They follow me. I read their timeline, decide that while they're probably ok people, their tweets are not something that I want to habitually read.

So I don't follow them. Soon, thanks to a service I signed up for that alerts me when somebody unfollows me, I get a message saying that they dropped me. All because I didn't follow them back.

Thus, many people think that, if they want to keep people following them, they have to follow back anybody who follows them in the first place. Hence, the auto-follow feature.

But today I happened upon a problem with this that I hadn't thought of.

I received a notice that Ms Sancha LPG was following me.

Her profile says "THE SEXIEST Bisexual XXX LATINA RAPPER I LOVE MY MEN AND MY SEXY BITCHES LETS PLAY XOXO"

Ummmmm, ok. I don't know how she found me, but I'm sure she'll drop me soon because I'm not following her back.

However, in the email I received telling me that she was following me, it also told me that "you follow a user who follows" this person.

And who shows up in that section? A semi-prominent (at least on Twitter) conservative pundit.

Now, maybe he has a secret obsession with sexy bisexual Latina rappers. I don't know.

But I doubt it.

Most likely, he has an auto-follow set up that follows anybody who follows him. And for some reason she decided to follow him. Probably for the same reason she followed me.

People can go through the people you follow, unless you hide your tweets. I would think you'd want to know who you follow, to make sure you don't have any "undesirables" in there.

Who you follow says something about you and your tastes. Or at least it should.

And for those of my readers not really interested in Twitter but who read this anyway (or who just look at the pictures), here's your prize.

Also, when I post about Twitter, Evette usually starts using it again, another reason to post this. :) (let's see if she's reading this...)

Finally, it's appropriate that I'm posting this today, because I'm currently (Ok, in a couple of hours) at the Northern Voices social media and blogging conference.

I'm sure I will have lots of fun (ah, the wonders of blog post pre-scheduling! Since I wrote this yesterday). Follow my Twitter feed for updates, as I do plan on tweeting from there.

*Edit* Surprise, surprise. Sancha's Twitter account has been suspended.

Hootsuite Complaint - Resolved!

Back in November, I had a complaint about Hootsuite, that wonderful web-based social media platform that will let you keep track of a lot of things all in one place.

It was the retweeting (RT) function. While I loved the fact that it let users both use the old RT function where you can type your own comment in addition to what you're retweeting as well as the new one.

(I'm not going to explain retweeting again, for those of you who don't know, I did in my original complaint).

The original Hootsuite problem was that, while they allowed you to use both RT functions, you had to go into your preferences and choose one. Sometimes, you want to RT something without comment, and sometimes you do want to comment.

Why should I have to go into my Preferences and change it each time I want to do one or the other?

My original complaint got a response on Twitter from Hootsuite's CTO, Simon Stanlake (@sedsimon). I was quite amazed by that, and once he understood my complaint (he misunderstood me at first, thinking I was saying that Hootsuite didn't offer both options), he agreed that it was a good idea.

Lo and behold, a couple of weeks ago I go to RT something, and it says "Retweet to your followers?" with a box that says "Yes" and a box that says "Edit". If you click on "Edit," it will do the RT the old-fashioned way!

I was in seventh heaven, and I've been meaning to blog about it but haven't gotten around to it.

I think Hootsuite should be commended for making this change, and I'd like to take credit for it.

Because I'm that awesome.

Ok, it may have been in the works already, but considering the Mr. Stanlake's response to me ("good point. Appreciate the feedback"), maybe nobody had mentioned it?

I don't know.

I'm just glad it's working now. I love being able to make the decision on the fly and comment on what I'm retweeting.

Or just send it along without worrying about it.

Thank you, Hootsuite!!!

And for those of my followers who aren't interested in Twitter but read through all of this anyway, or if you're just looking for pictures, here's some more cookies for you, to go with the one you got in November.

Taking Twitter Too Seriously

In honour of my good friend Evette's return to Twitter today after a very long absence, a Twitter post!

Ok, actually, I was considering doing this one anyway, but it's posted today to honour her...

Remember yesterday's post about the Robocop statue in Detroit?

It turns out that it's very possible that this started out as a joke that took off. The mayor of Detroit, Dave Bing, as asked on Twitter about the Robocop statue. Was it a joke? I've heard differing reports on this.

Whatever the case may be, Mayor Bing took it seriously, and denied that Detroit public funds would be used for this statue.

(that just sounds so weird, especially if this were the Mayor Bing in question)

The whole thing took off from there, resulting in the news story that my post was about.

This is a cautionary tale about putting *too* much stock in Twitter, or pretty much anything else on the web, without multiple confirmations.

Erroneous celebrity death notifications have gone flying around the Twitter-sphere more often than Taylor Swift changes clothes in one of her concerts. Mistaken news items have also been propagated heavily before corrections have to be issued.

Twitter is an excellent place to stay informed because the news can be so instantaneous. It's also very hard to censor, which is why it did so fabulously during the Iranian protests of 2009, and why Egypt moved very quickly to block all Internet access during the recent protests (they didn't want the same thing happening).

But you do have to be careful. Don't believe everything you read, especially if it sounds too strange to be true. Really, why would the Canucks trade Ryan Kesler, one of their best players, for a depth defenseman like Ian White? But that rumour was flying around Twitter yesterday until the Canucks GM squashed it...via Twitter, actually. (Yes, he has his own account).

And if you're a public official, you might want to step back and think a minute if you get what seems like an outrageous question. Is this a serious question? Maybe direct message them (you can do that if they're following you) and see if it really is serious?

As with any other function of the Internet, it always pays to be careful. Hoaxes abound (keeping Snopes.com in business); stupidity and ignorance can run rampant.

It's also an excellent tool. So don't let these warnings keep you away from trying it.

Just be aware.

Which is good advice no matter what you're talking about.

Hootsuite Complaint: Re-tweeting

This post is going to be kind of an "inside baseball" post for those who are active in the Twitterverse. But I'll try and make it entertaining enough that even if you're not into Twitter, you'll enjoy it.

At the recommendation of some friends, way back a few months ago (I barely remember yesterday, so don't expect me to remember when), some friends were raving about Hootsuite, a social media web-based platform that lets you control many of your social media outlets: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and many others. It really is a marvel, and so handy! Since it's web-based, you can access it anywhere, which makes it even better.

But there's one problem with it right now. An annoyance that I rant about on Twitter once a week or so.

It's Re-tweeting.

And no, that doesn't sound as dirty as it sounds (or as scatological).

Basically, for those who don't know, "re-tweeting" (or RT for short) is when you pass along somebody else's tweet so that your followers can see it. See, your followers might not be following this person, so they wouldn't see it.

While most of the time RTs are something you agree with, sometimes it's something that you just find interesting.

It used to be that the format of the RT was like this:

"RT @internetdweeb This twitter thing sure is fun! I wonder how many of my friends I can suck into this?"

(Let's see if the person referenced there is actually reading this blog or if she bailed at the beginning)

Since Twitter has a 140 character limit, you had to be careful when RTing, because sometimes something you wanted to RT would end up being too long.

So Twitter decided to make it easier by changing the RT function so your followers see the tweet in its original form, with a note stating that you're the one who RT'd it. Thus, there are no additional characters and you can safely RT everything!

That's a win, right?

Yes, for the most part.

The beauty of the original form of RTing is that you could add a comment, as long as you didn't go over 140 characters.

The above RT was 103 characters, so I could have made it like this:

"You're an idiot. RT @internetdweeb This twitter thing sure is fun! I wonder how many of my friends I can suck into this?"

See how that works? You can insult the person *and* re-tweet what he says! It's a win-win.

But the new RT function doesn't allow that.

Oh no!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some Twitter applications give you a choice, either using the RT function as Twitter has now designed it or "quoting" the Tweet, which has the effect of the original RT function.

Re-tweeting in the current manner is like taking your hot girlfriend to a party. Then they let her in but keep you out. People know you brought her, but you're barred from bragging about it.

When this change occurred, Hootsuite allowed you to choose which RT function you wanted to use.

That's cool, right?

To an extent, yes.

Sometimes you just want to RT something without comment. Or you want to RT something but doing so in the old way would put you over the character limit.

Other times, you want to comment.

So you may want to go back and forth in what RT method you use.

However, on Hootsuite you have to choose which RT method you want in your preferences. Then you have to save your preferences. If you want to go back and forth, you have to go into your preferences every time to change it back.

Why do you have to do this? Why can't they make it so, when you click the "RT" button, it says "Do you want to RT or quote?"

It seems like a simple thing to do.

Come on, Hootsuite. At least acknowledge you're working on this! It would make an already great program so much better.

And yes, I realize I probably lost a lot of my readers way back there, but for those of you who persevered, or are just looking at the pictures so you jumped to the end, here's a cookie.

Thanks for your attention.

*Edit 1 (8:26 am)* - Thanks to Emily for pointing this out in response to me on Twitter. Hootsuite also desperately needs both a "reply all" button as well as the ability to add multiple users to the "reply" field without having to manually type in the extra people's name.

Thanks, Emily!

*Edit 2 (8:56 am)* - Ok, I'm a loser. I didn't remember that there *is* a "reply all" feature.

Also, you can add multiple people to the Compose field by dragging their avatar to it. Doesn't help if you don't have their avatar handy, but it's still better than nothing.

Thanks @atomicpoet for pointing these out!

*Edit 3 (10:18 am)* - @sedsimon replied to my tweet about this blog post. He's the CTO at Hootsuite, and said that I had a good point. So hopefully they will implement it in one of the next updates!

Ah, the power of blogging.

Should Journalists Engage on Twitter?

One of the cool things about Twitter is the back and forth that can develop between parties, short and punchy discussions about various issues. It can also be a valuable way for companies or organizations to respond to public input and inquiries.

Journalists on Twitter can have it tough sometimes, but most of them do a wonderful job of mixing the personal and the professional.

But is there a grey area when it comes to responding to the public regarding stuff that you've reported or written?

The Washington Post seems to think so.

According to Mashable the other day, the Post has told its journalists not to engage the public on Twitter, especially in answering any critics of their work.

It all started with a "controversial guest article online called 'Christian Compassion Requires the Truth About Harms of Sexuality,' by Tony Perkins."

The article was about the large number of recent teenage suicides that occurred after the teens were being bullied for being gay. It talked about homosexuality as a "mental condition" and stuff like that. GLAAD got into the picture, responding on Twitter and on its web site, criticizing the article. One of the Post editors attempted to defend the article by saying it was attempting to address "both sides" of the issue, and GLAAD responded with a tweet saying that there are not two sides to the teen suicide issue.

Shortly after this, a memo went out stating that Post reporters should not be responding to their critics on Twitter, or really to anybody, via their Post accounts.

This sentence in the memo (reprinted on the Mashable article) is especially striking:

"Even as we encourage everyone in the newsroom to embrace social media and relevant tools, it is absolutely vital to remember that the purpose of these Post branded accounts is to use them as a platform to promote news, bring in user generated content and increase audience engagement with Post content."

How exactly are you "increasing audience engagement with Post content" if you're not allowed to interact with people about it? Sure, you can say "thank you!" if somebody says "hey, what a cool article!" But how many people actually do that? Most responses to a post will be in a questioning or criticizing mode.

Vadim Lavrusik, the Mashable writer, puts it beautifully:

"Sure, it makes sense that they should rein in who manages the Washington Post-branded Twitter account, as that could be seen as an “official” response of the company and not an individual. But putting a stop on engagement and conversation regarding Post stories from journalists will only distance those reporters from the very community they are a part of. Perhaps a clarification to “speak on behalf of the Post,” could clear up what is okay for journalists to engage in dialogue. But it is also likely that some journalists will now avoid it altogether. There also seems to be a disconnect in what journalists are encouraged to increase audience engagement with Post content, and not the journalists themselves."

I'm not advocating that journalists get into wild debates on Twitter about their articles; there's something to be said for letting an article speak for itself. But I think the Post is taking this to the opposite extreme.

If all you want is to advertise your content, then remove your journalists from Twitter completely and just set up an auto-feed. Let boredom ensue.

But if you want your audience to be engaged with your content, then let your reporters be engaged too! Enough of this one-way street, or as Lavrusik says, "It only reaffirms the old model of “we publish and you listen,” and a model that had a disconnect from the news process and the former audience."

Then again, maybe the higher-ups don't want this because they're worried the inherent left-wing bias will come out if there's too much engagement. ("Oh, you did not just go there, did you?" - The Peanut Gallery)

Anyway, I'd love to know what you think. Should journalists talk about their articles on Twitter, especially if somebody criticizes them? Or should they just shut up and let their work speak for itself?