a cat in a tree

Owing your soul to the company store: does your employer own your Twitter account?

As I’ve discussed in the past, new social spaces and interactions are changing so fast that they force us to adapt and develop new protocols on the fly. One issue that has been hotly contested, and which has yet to be satisfactorily resolved is how we clearly delineate between our personal and professional online personas, particularly those of us who both live and work on the web.

We still don’t have this anywhere near to being sorted. A recent post by Malkuth Damkar about the way in which Twitter makes celebrities of us all makes the point that people who would otherwise escape notice are often judged and gossiped about on Twitter in a way that’s disproportionate; as though by conversing publically, we’ve abandoned our right to privacy and respect. Not to mention the recent furore concering hapless British Twitterer Paul Chambers who jokingly threatened to blow up an airport ,then found himself jobless and facing criminal charges, which is an entirely separate can of worms.

Media and marketing website Mumbrella recently covered an exchange on Twitter between a journalist (of sorts) and the personal account of someone working in PR, as evidence of a sometimes tricky relationship between the two disciplines.

While naturally journalists often choose to ignore context and nuance for the sake of a good headline, this seemed a particularly unfair conflation of public domain and public interest. The journalist has a relatively large public profile and is employed by a media organisation, arguably making her tweets our business; the other person is not – and public or no, her personal Twitter account exists independently of her employer.

It served as an excellent example of this rather messy grey area. I’ve personally hired people because of their significant digital presence – people who came to my attention because of the way in which they communicated online and their degree of influence. And I’ve been more than happy for these people to use their talents for the good of the company, for example by sharing content to their personal networks, using data gathered from their accounts etc.

By creating a social media usage policy that, reasonably enough, prohibited any mention of confidential or sensitive information, I could, as a boss, be reasonably sure my team were clear about what would be appropriate to share via both the corporate and personal accounts and allowed common sense to guide their behaviour in the grey areas on an ad-hoc basis.

But I think with hindsight I sometimes got it wrong. On one occasion I effectively muzzled a team member who had a long standing online stoush with another public figure, arguing that as he linked to the company website from his Twitter bio, this feud would reflect poorly on the company. I now think that I should have suggested he remove the link, and made clear he was operating under his own auspices and his views were not shared by his employer.

Non-celebrities with large Twitter followings and extensive personal networks have generally developed them through communicating interesting content in an expressive manner, with a distinct voice and point of view. Crucially, this influence is built up over time, not on the company dime.

By allowing employees to use their personal influence to share content, engage communities and achieve corporate objectives while simultaneously restricting the individual’s right to express a contentious view or enter into critical discourse, the company is attempting to have its cake and eat it. Not only is this problematic from an ethical standpoint, but it’s also ultimately illogical: a toothless tiger can only maintain its edge for so long before the social network begins to sense inauthenticity and drift away. I for one choose not to follow people I feel to be little more than an RSS yes-machine.

Drawing the line is essential. My suggestions – and this is a work in progress, subject to review and evolution – is that professional and personal accounts need to be separate. If you refer to your employer in your bio, your account is going to be inextricably linked to their profile, at least in public perception. So don’t risk it. Unless there’s a scenario in which your boss will compensate you for allowing the company to bask in your reflected glory – which could mean attributing a dollar value to influence, or specifically stating in your contract that your network is an asset the company will be able to use during the life of your contract with them – then be very wary of using your own account as another channel for sharing corporate content – whether on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else. A profile that’s specifically you @your company might be one way of resolving this, or by using shared corporate accounts.

Because nobody wants to end up like Tennessee Ernie…

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go;
I owe my soul to the company store…

Written by acatinatree

January 29, 2010 at 4:46 am

Posted in Social Media, brand, digital, netiquette, online identity, rules of engagement, twitter

Tagged with facebook, linkedin, malkuth damar, miranda devine, mumbrella, nathalie swainston, online reputation, paul chambers, personal brand, PR, public interest, twitter

Everyday’s a schoolday: what I learned from Hopenhagen.

with 8 comments

Last week I submitted a bid to be the HuffPost citizen journalist at Copenhagen. All in all, it was rather a wild ride, beset by obstacles, weird moments, highs and lows…

I didn’t win, but I learnt a lot, very fast, which I think counts as a win overall.

This isn’t sour grapes – the guy that got the gig was so much more deserving of it than I (good luck David Kroodsma!) but knowledge is power, so I wanted to share my ‘key learnings’, (to use a hideous phrase aptly described as “what an ‘opinion’ becomes when spoken by an idiot“).

It’s scary out there.

I’ve often had a tendency to be impatient with consumer-facing companies who are reluctant to dip their toes into the ocean of the social web, taking the view that if as a brand, you’re already being talked about, like it or not, and a decision not to participate means you relinquish not only control but the ability to respond or learn.

However, my experience of effectively putting myself in exactly that position gave me a new appreciation for the fact that giving up control is a scary thing to do. The internet can be a hostile and terrifying place. I got some negative comments on my Facebook profile, I got hate mail – ok, only one email, but that was one more than I’ve ever got before. If you put yourself in the public domain and are aligned to a set of values, there is truly a perception that you’re fair game, that you lose your right to complain about and much less control what people think and say about you. And perhaps that’s fair – which is a thought to be explored elsewhere – but it had never really been brought home to me with such clarity before. I’m a behind-the-camera person – to find myself stage centre, albeit in a very small way, was new territory, and I think it’s given me some insight that will help me do this on behalf of clients with greater sensitivity in the future.

Of course it was far from all bad -I was truly humbled by the volume of support and positivity I received. Thanks people; you’re amazing!

Usability Uber Alles

I heard from a number of people that they found the HuffPo voting process incredibly difficult to use. You had to sign up an account to be able to register, but that was unclear; the ‘log in with Twitter’ function allowed you to log in but didn’t then count your vote unless you had a pre-existing HuffPo account linked to that Twitter profile; there were seven stages to get to register…in terms of usability it was nightmarish.

I’m inferring that this means hundreds of people who were perhaps less engaged would have fallen out early in the process. If you like me and still found it a hassle, how much less likely is a stranger to bother completing the journey?

(Although my mum managed to vote, so perhaps we are spoilt and impatient internet people with unreasonable expections..?)

Cheats never prosper

There was a high level of vote spamming, a few contenders sabotaging other entrants’ videos by ranking them poorly and generally a fair bit of the sort of behaviour you’d expect from YouTube trolls rather than people on a mission to save the planet. I was miffed, but while it certainly damaged my chances of making it to Copenhagen, the people responsible for the nefariousness didn’t win either, so while I’m a loser, I’m a loser with my principles intact.

Content really and truly is king

Australia was late to the Hopenhagen party, so I got my entry in on the day submissions closed and with only two days on the campaign trail before voting closed.

I made a rather hurried video and frankly, it wasn’t much cop. As you can doubtless tell, I’m rather awkward in front of the camera and my editing skills were rusty. I had some last minute help from some kind and brilliant people but essentially, the film was pretty bad. The concept was good – it’s an homage to an incredible Argentinian film (link pending) but it fell down at execution. What did that mean? It meant that there was little or no way it could travel outside my network. The votes I got were as a result of the goodwill and friendship of people I interact with on a personal level, but the moment the content left my own network, it failed. Second tier networks relied on that next group’s personal influence, but this influence became weaker and weaker because it wasn’t backed up by something anyone wanted to share.

My asking my friend to vote for me is fine – people probably voted for me without needing to quality check the content – that’s how friendship works. But my friend then asking someone who doesn’t know me to vote is less compelling, and without something amazing to share (on top of the barriers to voting already outlined), there is no possibilty that my friend’s friend is going to pass on the message to their friends. I forgot to press the ‘go viral’ button, if you will.

Let go

I learnt something I perhaps once knew but had forgotten: the heady, intoxicating joy and power of seizing the day, taking risks and daring to try. I’m a perfectionist by nature, and creating something sub-par and sending it out into the world with my name attached was genuinely painful. But on balance, without trying, I would never have learnt so much, been overwhelmed by the generosity and kindness of so many people, and on a more prosaic level, the message about climate change would not have travelled as far and wide as it did. It was a clever word of mouth / social media campaign by Ogilvy: winning the competition was so much less important than getting people talking, hopefully inspiring them to think about climate change, take action, take back the power. And in that respect, it was a resounding success.

Now all we need to do is save the planet…

Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it – Goethe

Especial thanks to Natalie, Dermot, Ky, Gavin, Barry and Felix

Written by acatinatree

December 11, 2009 at 7:47 am

Posted in Social Media, brand, digital, future, ranting, saving the planet, twitter, viral, word of mouth

Tagged with brand, citizen journalist, climate, climate change, cop15, Copenhagen, hopenhagen, natface, ogilvy, school, Social Media, wisdom, word of mouth

Hopenhagen – my hope

with 2 comments

Hope. It’s such a small word for something so important.

Hope sustains us through the dark times; it’s what remains when all else is lost. It’s powerful yet fragile – when things go wrong we talk about our hopes being dashed, crushed, trampled upon…In a secular age when we laugh at superstition, we still cross our fingers, make a wish as we blow out our birthday candles and knock on wood.

Hopenhagen recognises that it’s the one emotion we all share; it’s at the heart of what it means to be human.

This campaign is so vital – the summit at Copenhagen is genuinely the most important meeting of our lives. And while few of us may be directly involved in the summit itself, or the decision making that will occur there, it’s up to all of us to make our voices heard, to stand up and be counted and ensure our leaders know we demand action – decisive, strong, affirmative action on the future of our planet.

I’m submitting my application to be Hopenhagen’s citizen journalist representative because I believe it’s my responsibility to get the message out, to make sure the important information reaches the wider world and to empower people to tell their stories and to demand change. I’ve been trying to take better care of my environment for a number of years now, but I’ve begun to realise just how dependent we all are on one another. There’s a bigger story to tell, many voices to be heard and thanks to the unprecedented reach and accessibility of new technologies and the power of the social web, we have the best chance yet of enabling the voices of the many to be heard by our leaders.

Through my involvement in the Tcktcktck campaign I’ve seen the potential for change when people across the globe make the decision to speak out on why it’s so crucial for us to act, and to act now, and we’re only at the start of our journey.

There are so many worthwhile organisations all striving to reach the same goal; TckTckTck, Vote Earth, Hopenhagen and many more, locally and globally. What really matters is not which group you lend your support to, or which petition you sign. What matters is that you add your voice, take action, reach out and tell someone else about it today.

We don’t have all the time in the world, and we can’t allow ourselves to be swayed by commerce, apathy or to be daunted by the sheer size of the task ahead. We know that the cost of action may be high, but the cost of inaction is unknowable; it’s a risk we can’t afford to take, for our own sake and the sake of future generations.

Hope is all that was left after Pandora unleashed the box of ills upon the world, to succour us and keep us going when it seems the way ahead is too tough. We none of us know exactly how climate change will impact us, but it is our duty to take responsibility for the planet, our effect upon it, and more than this, to make a choice about the kind of world we want to live in. I want to live in a world that cares; that makes decisions that will benefit the many, not the few; a world where we are united in our desire to make positive change in our lives.

This is my hope.

It would be absolutely amazing if you’d vote for me. Thank you.

Written by acatinatree

December 2, 2009 at 9:42 pm

Posted in Social Media, digital, future, saving the planet

Tagged with activism, citizen journalist, climate, climate justice, climate summit, cop15, Copenhagen, Hope, hopenhagen, huffington post, tcktcktck

Why FourSquare is anything but…

with 8 comments

FourSquare. In the immortal words of Thierry Henry, “let me break it down”.

FourSquare defines itself as “part friend finder, part social city guide, part nightlife game’.

The team claim that they “wanted to build something that not only helps you keep up with your friends, but exposes you to new things in and challenges you to explore cities in different ways.”

It’s a geosocial site (and application) which enables you to ‘check in’ at places and share details about your activity. More importantly – and this is what sets it apart from BrightKite et al - it syncs info about local businesses to enable you to share your favourite places, give people tips about the things and places you love and create a to a to-do list based on the recommendations of friends and neighbours.

The opportunity for business is enormous, allowing brands to reward consumers who are advocates, to monitor, engage with and respond to users and to further cement consumer loyalty, e.g. offering you a free coffee if you check in at your local cafe four days in a row.

The B2C commercial imperative is obvious – can businesses afford not to have a presence on FourSquare?

The reason it’s so addictive – and will, I predict, become massive in Australia – is that it’s framed as a competition, with just enough hipster credibility not to feel contrived.

You become the Mayor of a certain location by checking in there more frequently than anyone else, are given badges for particular activity (adding new places, spiked activity at night etc.) and user statistics are updated weekly on each city’s leaderboard (currently Likeomg, Warlach and I are amongst Sydney’s biggest hitters) – thus appealing directly to the ego and plugging in to our desire to be seen as influential, in the know, hyperconnected digital douchebags….

Rewarding users by offering them ultimately meaningless and arbitrary trophies demonstrates an extremely sophisticated understanding of the psyche of the early adopter/ digital native on the part of the creators.

It’s been hit by so much activity in Australia since its launch (in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne) on Friday that the servers needed to be upgraded, and I am still finding much of the functionality within the website is limited and buggy. It works like a charm on iPhone though, which is after all where the heaviest use will occur.

Scoble says FourSquare is the next big thing, suggesting it’s as significant as the Twitter API release:

“It enhances your experience in each location. Check in at the Half Moon Bay Ritz and you’ll see tons of “tips” that people have left for you. Francine Hardaway, for instance, tells you where the best dog beachis. I tell you how to save $40 on smores. Other people tell you that Tres Amigos is the best Mexican place nearby”

This certainly looks like the first site developed for internet on the move that’s actually going to make it to the mainstream – the execution isn’t quite there yet but it seems to be well thought through at a strategic level, cleverly rationalised and with the key component -monetisation – built in from the beginnning.

FourSquare: pressing the “go viral” button any day now….

Written by acatinatree

November 24, 2009 at 4:21 am

Posted in Social Media, advertising, digital, mobile, technology, viral

Tagged with apps, digital, douchebags, foursquare, geosocial, go viral, hipster, iphone, likeomg, warlach

The Charter for Compassion: using our social media powers for good

with 3 comments

I was honoured to be asked to participate in the Charter for Compassion short film in which a number of Australians gave their views on what compassion means to them. It was very rewarding to watch as social web tools were pressed into the service of doing good in the world, with no commercial objective.

More importantly, it was a genuinely humbling experience, not only because of the stories I heard during the filming, but also because thinking about the word and the concept made me realise how deeply held my belief in the importance of compassion is, how I often overlook this amidst the noise and distraction of my busy modern existence and how fervently I believe I need to act with compassion in order to feel a sense of ease and self-worth.

The brief connections and tiny interactions we carry out every day are charged with potential; each one is the chance to change someone’s life for the better. What I do at work is all about these moments of contact, and since I have no problem with the notion of “adding value” to interactions on behalf of a brand, or in a commercial context, why don’t I invest every single moment in my personal life with the same weight?

Because I’m tired, or preoccupied, or running late, because trying to understand why you’re being obnoxious is more effort than dismissing you, because if I give two dollars to this guy I’ll feel guilty for not doing the same to the next person who asks, because frankly I don’t like the look of you, because I’m having a irksome day…these are all reasons to not act with compassion.

But I want to live in a world where strangers smile at each other, where children don’t die of neglect in the middle of large cities, where we help isolated, damaged people rather than ignoring them, where we welcome outsiders into our communities, where we reach out with kindness to someone every single day of our lives. If I want to live in this world, I have to create it myself, and this is my commitment to doing that. It’s not an avowal of sainthood, just a recognition that all good practice comes from mindfulness.

Because one day I might be down, and I hope you’ll be there to lift me up.

I was privileged enough to be interviewed along with some inspiring people:

In order of appearance, they are: Adriano Zumbo, (me), Dr Stephen Saunders, Neil Perry, Melissa Leong, Barry Saunders, Mitzi Macintosh, Mark Pollard, Julie Posetti, Venerable Sujato Bhikkhu, Gavin Heaton, Reverend Raymond Minniecon, Bronwen Clune, Reverend Bill Crews, Rabbi Mendel Castell, Graham Long and Tim Burrowes.

Learn more and affirm the Charter now at charterforcompassion.org.

Thanks to Natalie for inviting me to get involved.

Australians on Compassion from TED Prize on Vimeo.
The Charter is here:

Written by acatinatree

November 16, 2009 at 5:40 am

Posted in Social Media, digital, film, future, saving the planet

Tagged with charity, charter for compassion, saving the planet

All the #Media140 that’s fit to print

with 2 comments

One of the recurring themes at the Media 140 conference in Sydney has been redefining the function of the journalist.

One perspective is journalist as curator – providing context, sifting and interpreting data to allow information to travel beyond our immediate horizons.

As I’m generally a helpful, kind and conscientious human being, not satisfied with merely providing the Twitterverse with peerless live reportage of the Media140 event, I have put together a list of the most interesting coverage of the two day conference for your edification and delight…

(N.B this is a starting point – I’ll be adding to the list as I find new content. Please feel free to make suggestions, and apologies for any glaring omissions)

The chatter on Twitter…

Laurel Papworth says journalists need to tear up their press cards -”it was always our content and we’re taking it back”. It’s about the human narrative…

Linen Suave on why the blogger / journalism polarisation is a little like fighting bears.

Kate Taylor wants to see some innovation based love-ins…

Barry Saunders looks at Turnbull’s mode of engagement with his constituents

Valerio Veo is the bastard child of new and old media

Jay Rosen tells journalists to grok it before you rock it.

Crikey on the News journalist’s oversharing

The ABC coverage of Turnbull’s ghost tweets.

Kate Carruther’s pithy summary of the first day’s discussions

The Twitter usage during the Iranian elections case study from @riy

Using Google Wave rather than Twitter for the conference backchannel

Derek Barry on the ABC’s Mark Scott on the importance of new media and the ABC’s social media policy

Duncan Riley is enraged at the idea he’s not earning his clams online.

Jude Mathurine’s presentation on why the future of journalism is in mobile social networks in Africa.

Bernard Keane on Ghettos of agreement.

Margaret Simon’s coverage and roundup of Media140 on The Content Makers (HT Kate Taylor)

Stilgherrian’s Media 140 bookmarks on Delicious. (edit: Stil has also added what can only be described as the motherlode of Media 140 links to his blog.)

….and my guest post about authenticity over objectivity on Mumbrella.

The defining photo of the conference taken by Neerav Bhatt – Mark Scott.

Written by acatinatree

November 6, 2009 at 7:25 am

Posted in Social Media, digital, future, twitter

Tagged with ABC, barry saunders, bear fighting, Bernard Keane, bronwen clune, dancing monkeys, duncan riley, jay rosen, journalism, Jude Mathurine, kate carruthers, kate taylor, laurel papwoth, linen suave, Margaret Simon, mark scott, media140, mumbrella, neerav bhatt, Social Media, stilgherrian, twitter, wolfcat

Love is the Seventh Wave

with 4 comments

I’ve been using Google Wave for a few weeks now and while I’m aware I’m still very much a novice, I’m confident that this is a fair appraisal of its potential and the limitations of the current iteration.

Attending #GWSUG gladdened my heart somewhat as it quickly became apparent that despite being possibly one of the least geeky of those present – and I lean heavily towards the pointy end of the bell curve in geek terms – I was by no means alone in my experience of the Wave.

Helpful and entertaining presentations by Brett Morgan and Pamela Fox certainly deepened my knowledge and understanding but it’s clear that this is a tool very much at the development stage.

My initial impressions haven’t altered substantially three weeks in: in short, it often feels as though one is drowning not waving.

I’ve seen a number of people make the comment that Wave feels very much like IRC: the format is such that it can be inchoate, messy and confusing. The ability to comment on replies, edit existing messages and delete posts at any point in the timeline means that without repeatedly re-playing the wave, it’s nigh on impossible to fathom what’s going on.

However, to dwell on this is to miss the actual purpose of Wave, which is – as Daniel Tenner suggests in his excellent review – for working, not shirking.

The real strength of Wave is all about collaboration in real time. Watching a document or piece of content come to life through a cooperative enables you to see the rationale behind changes as they’re made in an intuitive fashion, make notes, discuss alterations and agree on a final cut. Even for people who aren’t working together in the same time zone, playing back the wave gives a truer understanding and deeper insight into the process and decisions made to date.

Rather than the stilted to-ing and fro-ing of email – potentially dropping people and files along the way – or even the clever but structurally rigid Basecamp from 37 Signals, Wave gives users a fluid conversational tool that keeps everyone, from stakeholder to implementer, involved, clued-up and empowered. Being able to drag and drop files into a conversation feels smooth and logical.

The true hallmark of great design or innovation is when something feels so seamless and obvious that you can’t imagine why it didn’t already exist, and Wave has this in spades.
It won’t be long before we’ll be amazed we ever managed to work before Wave.

Photo by silverxraven

Key drawbacks

Of course Wave is buggy – it’s in a private test environment being battered around and monkey-tested by nerds for this reason. However, there are a few massive holes that will need to be addressed by the developers at the Googleplex fairly promptly.

Firstly, there are currently huge confidentiality and privacy issues: while you can branch off from a group into a private conversation, there’s no ability for users to approve or vet who is added to a Wave. Any user can invite anyone else. That’s great for transparency and accountability, but human nature being what it is, this could be the source of some of the most awkward office gaffes and breaches of commercial confidence ever to exist. Those awkward accidental ‘reply all’ emails pale into insignificance in comparison.

Without some radical re-thinking and added security settings, @ replying a DM on Twitter will come to seem like as quaint an act of indecorousness as using the wrong fork at a dinner party is to Gen KFC, when set against the risks of inappropriate Wave sharing.

Further massive usability failures include the monumental amount of RAM eaten by Wave, the fact the iPhone app is slow and creaky and Chrome is the preferred Wave browser as FireFox “doesn’t like waves with more than 100 blips in them…” more than a little irksome for Mac users.

Version control is also tricky: in order to find the original version, one has to replay the wave, pause when you reach the virgin document and paste it into a new Wave, meanwhile hoping someone else doesn’t alter it subsequently. Perhaps a ‘freeze edit’ function may assist here.

An invaluable – and presumably simple tool that I very much hope is in the pipeline is a desktop app to notify you of updates, new Wave invites and contacts. It would assist in streamlining the process and avoiding situations like the one I found myself in recently: IM-ing my team mate to ask why I still hadn’t received his email containing an urgently needed document, then discovering it had been sitting neglected in Wave for several hours*.

I’d estimate that we’re easily a year away from the release of a robust consumer-friendly version of Wave.

That said, it’s a pleasure and a privilege to be one of the lucky few getting to play in the sandpit and even at this stage the enormous potential of the tool is evident.

Catch you in the tubes….cathie.mcginn@googlewave.com.

Thanks to Warlach, Commuter_Dirge, Fridley, mUmBRELLA and all on the GWSUG wave for your user experience input and help.

*Full disclosure: we were sitting next to each other at the time. IRL interaction is so passé.

Written by acatinatree

October 26, 2009 at 6:12 am

Posted in future, technology

Tagged with geek, google, googlewave, linkedin, technology, wave

Growing up online: why the days of our digital adolescence are numbered

with 5 comments

The internet is still in its infancy, and our use of it is still developing. It’s an exciting time to be alive; I’d argue that no single technological advance since the printing press has transformed our culture, normative behaviours and society as profoundly. New possibilities and new ways of interacting are opening up every day.

However, this cuts both ways, and it’s depressing to see that one consequence of the new is a marked increase in the amount of genuinely awful behaviour performed by otherwise functional adults. Seeing ill-advised tweets, oversharing via Facebook updates and emotive personal posts, I’m reminded of the giddy immediacy of my teenage years, in which I existed in a state of selfish isolation, immersed in the frenzy of the Now.

Nothing was more important than my feelings that very second; I had no sense of, or interest in a broader context or that my actions could have consequences of any significance. And this seems to be the case for many people online; the fact one feels this way at this moment is justification enough for broadcasting that information to the planet.

I feel, therefore I post.

Hal Niedzviecki refers to this phenomenon as “Peep Culture,” suggesting that we’re witnessing the tabloidization of everyday life.

Perhaps the logical progression of our paparazzi-fuelled, celebrity-obsessed culture is to have us believing that revelations of a wincingly personal nature are everyone’s business.

There again, we’re not taking out one page ads in the Times or employing a town crier to announce our break-ups or our shitty days at work. This behaviour is only occurring online.

I’d argue that it’s due to a combination of factors:

1) the false sense that these online spaces aren’t ’serious’ and don’t have real life impact: the value of communication online is somehow seen as less than offline interaction

2) the ease, speed and accessibility with which one can post anything from anywhere. An emotion that probably would have dissipated by the time you’d put pen to paper and started looking for a stamp is shared, out there and un-retractable in three seconds flat.

3) an erroneous belief that these spaces are somehow lawless, frontier territory where all bets are off, crimes go unpunished and an outlaw-esque anonymity can be preserved

A post on the Social Media Law Student blog makes the point that

People will express themselves, albeit to their own detriment, through numerous mediums whether by electronic communication, acts of aggression, verbal comments, physical actions, written letters, and more. Social media networks such as Facebook and MySpace are not to blame for sheer stupidity…

…but they do make stupid actions harder to retract and easier to prove.

Our actions have implications, consequences; the spaces may be virtual, but this is very real.

Thirty-five percent of employers reported finding content on social networking sites that caused them not to hire the candidate; Facebook evidence was used to convict gang members in Britain who posted photos of themselves posing with guns; Australian courts allow legal documents to be served via Facebook; lawyers have begun to use social profiles in divorce cases. Four Awkward Moments on Facebook is hilarious, unless you’re one of the people involved: I can only imagine the lacerating sense of shame and hurt they must have experienced.

Part Two: Imagining the future ( a proto-post)

I’m confident that the next generation will view our bumbling online interactions with humour and, I hope, some pity, much in the way that I view photographs of my parents in their heyday; fondly and with affectionate mockery. I can’t predict what these new models of behaviour will look like but I wonder whether our notions of public and private space will be fundamentally redefined; will a new set of boundaries be created or will these constructs simply have drifted into irrelevance?

Will the citizens of the future live in digital glass houses?
When everything is on display and there’s no separation between your inside voice and outside voice, will people’s personal (increasingly public lives) cease to have any interest or relevance – is the sense of intimacy we use to build social cohesion in part derived from the sense one is holding privileged information? In this landscape, our perceptions of each other would be based on new criteria and new values not related to how much we earn or who we’re screwing. Although I find this a faintly terrifying prospect, I can’t help but feel this re-imagining of our future is the most exciting, the most radical (and the least likely to occur).

Alternatively, will this new generation, kids who’ll take in the digital space with their mother’s milk become the New New Puritans? There is surely a possibility they will enact a backlash against the over-availability and over-sharing of information, images and personal data. With public figures as influential as Obama warning schoolkids to think about the long term consequences of the stuff they share on Facebook, will we see a generation of locked down profiles, gated social spaces and private Twitter streams. Will we become paranoiac data-hoarders, carefully considering every piece of information dispersed through the web?

Or – returning to Planet Reality – will we just have to grow up, embrace the new and reign in some of the worst excesses of overly disclosive behaviour in favour of a more reasoned approach? Being a teenager is fun, but we can’t remain in a virtual NeverNeverland forever.
It may be more staid and a little less compelling than the ambulance-chasing, Schadenfreudian thrill of watching someone crash and burn online, but perhaps fewer hearts and reputations damaged beyond repair is worth losing out on a little second-hand salaciousness for….

Written by acatinatree

September 29, 2009 at 6:43 pm

Posted in digital, future, netiquette, ranting, rules of engagement

Tagged with facebook, linkedin, netiquette, online identities, social, twitter

taming the twitterstream: online etiquette

with 21 comments

Last night was the fourth Social Media Club Sydney event; excellent presentations by David Meerman Scott and Steven Noble on understanding social personas were followed by a lively debate touching on the topical issues of fake personas, public relations versus media relations and that hoary old chestnut, authenticity.

I think it was certainly the best event yet, but one issue that arose – and has been cited time and again in conferences, panel discussions and social media events – is the practice and etiquette around using and displaying the Twitter backchannel.

The ability to post ‘as it happens’ reportage is one of the main reasons Twitter is so wonderful; it gives people who aren’t present at a conference insight into the discussion, content and a sense of the room, and adds a conversational dimension to a space which, if well managed, can only enrich it.

Fixing the Twittersteam for conferencing is not the knotty problem that some people seem to think – here are my thoughts on how to solve it simply and without bloodshed…

First, block the spammers. Any trending topic is immediately leapt upon by the army of bots who seize upon the hashtag in question with alacrity in the (surely) forlorn hope that someone will accidentally click their link. It’s annoying, it’s disruptive and drowns out event coverage from humans. Use Tweetdeck to create a group that registrants must apply to join in advance – this immediately cuts out the spamtards and potentially adds a sense of responsibility, diminishing the ability of people to lurk and post anonymously. Then assign all API calls to that group to enable real time streaming.

Preventing people giving real time feedback and thoughts on a debate as it unfolds is not the answer, but rather, simply creating a better set-up: having a Twitterstream displayed behind a panel would not be a problem, were the panel also involved in what’s going on.

Having tweets unfurl across a screen behind the subjects of those tweets is a little akin to slapping a ‘kick me’ sign on someone’s back; it encourages irreverence and perhaps a lack of respect, resulting in a schoolyard dynamic. Placing a monitor in front of the panelists neatly removes the ‘us and them’ barrier, becomes conversational, informative and engaging, giving panelists a barometer for the room’s atmosphere to potentially shape the direction of the debate. It’s ok to make jokes; it’s acceptable to engage in banter – we’re social creatures in a social space after all – but spraying a kind of disrespectful virtual graffiti at the expense of people who aren’t able to respond is obviously poor form.

The other issue, of course, is that if you can’t rely on your wifi connection to provide real time tweets, then perhaps you shouldn’t use it at all – scrolling tweets that refer to events that occurred even minutes ago is disruptive, irrelevant and creates a disconnect between audience and panel.

It’s not the medium, it’s the mode.

Steven Noble, David Meerman Scott and Tim Burrowes onstage at SMCSyd IV in front of the offending screen

Written by acatinatree

September 1, 2009 at 2:51 am

Posted in Social Media, ranting, rules of engagement, twitter

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