Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Remember Who Your Followers Are

Last week Jodan Burnham visited our school. I tweeted about it...a reporter who follows me saw my tweet and then wrote a story about it. A few days earlier, a colleague of mine was referenced in a Tweet, only it wasn't really about him, it was a mis-tweet and I am wondering who looked him up and got as confused as I did about what he had said that promoted the tweet.

Interesting times we live in, just a reminder to think before you tweet and make sure you know who may be reading.

1 comment:

CII Council said...

Dr. K:

As the reporter who quoted your Tweet on Burnham, I wanted to follow up on your blog post and offer congratulations on what I think is the sage advice you've provided.

While there currently is a raging debate among journalists over the validity of quoting from Tweets, or even using them as source references, I suggest it will become an increasingly common practice. That isn't to say it will be good, or problem-free, just more frequent. And it isn't limited to Twitter. Posts on Facebook, MySpace, the Linked-In forums, the broader ranging discussions on Plurk, all are very public. So the rules our parents taught us when we were kids are more important now than ever, particularly if we don't want what we post to come back and haunt us.

Remember Mom's warning: "If you can't say something nice ..."

Thanks for your time.

Joe Zlomek, Managing Editor
The Sanatoga Post