Soundbite Nation: Tweet First, Think Later

Smart people won't be doing this forever

(NEWSER) - Ever sent a tweet to tech support? It beats the heck out of calling, Simon Dumenco discovered recently, when a whining appeal to @sprintcare yielded a prompt, personal, pitch-perfect response. Sounds great, right? Well, don’t expect it to last long, Dumenco writes for Advertising Age , because the current corporate marketer fetish for social media—which is “increasingly overbearing and annoying—is about to turn into a pumpkin." More»

New social media still fixated on the original

(NEWSER) - Everybody's eager to talk about the social media "revolution." But you know what the social media conversation mostly focuses on? Old media, particularly TV. Just ask Simon Dumenco, who analyzes Twitter data every week for Advertising Age . “Old media still rules our lives,” he writes. “Pay attention to what's really being talked about en masse on Twitter and chances are pretty good it relates to what's on TV.” More»

... But that immediacy sure can be addictive

(NEWSER) - Twitter’s appeal is predicated on our need to know things right now. As 2009, the year of Twitter, draws to a close, Simon Dumenco of Advertising Age examines what he’s learned about that:

• We don’t usually need to know right now. Unless you’re a surgeon waiting for a tweet about a heart transplant, it can usually wait until later.
• But we really like to know stuff right now. Even completely worthless stuff; it makes us feel in the loop. It can give us an adrenaline rush, and it’s pretty addictive.

Dissidents fear losing free-speech tool

(NEWSER) - Twitter's controversial decision to allow censorship of tweets on a country-by-country basis has won praise from two of the countries with the busiest censors. In Thailand—ranked 153rd in the world for press freedom because of its strict laws against offending the monarchy—the country's information minister called the move a "welcome development," adding that the government has already received "good co-operation" from Google and Facebook. Thais can be jailed just for clicking "like" on a page deemed offensive to the monarchy, the Guardian notes. More»

Letting terror groups tweet is illegal, law center says

(NEWSER) - Terrorist organizations banned in the US should also be banned from Twitter, says an Israeli legal group threatening to sue the San Francisco-based company. Shurat HaDin—which says its mission is "bankrupting terrorism, one lawsuit at a time"—warns that allowing groups like Hezbollah and al-Shabab to use its service exposes Twitter to lawsuits from victims of terrorist actions carried out by those groups, MSNBC reports. More»