Twitter 2.0: Is the World Ready?

In any event, with these new features comes great responsibility, and I’ve got to wonder, are we ready for all of that? As the New York Times pointed out in a fine piece on 7 October, sports teams, celebrities and corporations are all struggling with Twitter, or at the least the ramifications of what happens when we say possibly defamatory or libelous things on the web service.

Actually, it doesn’t look as though we can technically defame or libel people on Twitter, since it’s opinion in the mode of free speech, but common sense is clearly not prevailing on Twitter for the halfwits among the celebrity moronati. See my nod to Steve Lyons about Twitter being the dumbest web service ever to warrant a whopping, $1 billion valuation.

While Twitter is juggling geolocation, sharable lists and data mining deals with Internet giants, we’ve got users who need to be reined for tweets that make them look less than professional. Organisations that employ or manage them are cracking down and taking precautionary measures.

Publications like ESPN the Washington Post are defining acceptable social media use. North American sports leagues like the NFL, NBA and NHL are ordering that players not use their smart phones for tweeting 30 minutes before and after games, practices, meetings and media access periods.

Fortunately, there are enough businesses such as Dell, Pepsi, etc, that do use Twitter appropriately. Let’s hope those are the targets Twitter focuses on catering to, and perhaps they will end up separating the wheat from the chaff.