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.

We only actually like 36% of what shows up in our stream: study

(NEWSER) - A new study in the Harvard Business Review confirms what you probably already know if you've spent any time on Twitter: Just 36% of tweets are actually worth reading. Another 39% are "just OK," and a full quarter aren't worth your time. That's according to 1,443 users, who evaluated 43,738 tweets. The tweets that scored the best were funny or exciting thoughts, tweets that shared information or asked questions, and even self-promoting tweets—particularly those that included links. More»

Maryland may ban practice

(NEWSER) - Some employers and colleges have found an ingenious way around Facebook's pesky privacy settings: Simply demand that applicants or students friend you, give you a tour of their account, or even divulge their usernames and passwords. MSNBC reports on a number of places instituting the troubling practices:

• At Maryland's Department of Corrections, job applicants are asked to log in to their account and allow an interviewer to watch as they click through their photos and posts. The Department of Corrections used to ask for username and password outright, but stopped after an ACLU complaint last year.
• Colleges are requiring student athletes to "friend" a coach or school official so that their Facebook posts can be monitored. If they refuse, they don't play. "Each team must identify at least one coach or administrator who is responsible for having access to and regularly monitoring the content of team members’ social networking sites and postings," reads the University of North Carolina handbook.
• Though social media monitoring seems to take place mostly with student athletes, non-athlete college applicants have reported to one lawyer that they were asked for their login information during interviews.