Is Twitter Like Speech or Like Writing? The Answer Is Yes

Is Twitter like a spoken conversation, the kind you would have with friends and/or strangers in a bar? Or is it more like a written discussion — like online forums or chat rooms used to be in the early days of the Internet? One of the things that can make Twitter hard to define, particularly for new users, is that it can be both of those things at the same time. In some cases, the “rules” of Twitter and the expectations that people have seem to be more like the etiquette of speech, and in other cases — particularly when it comes to legal concerns around libel, etc. — it is a lot more like writing or publishing. In reality, it’s a blend of both.

Sociologist and researcher Zeynep Tufekci was one of the first people I came across who looked at this dual nature of Twitter, in a recent post about how a lot of social-media tools represent a return of sorts to an earlier “oral culture.” In Tufekci’s view, the way that services like Twitter allow us to comment and respond and converse with others in real-time is a lot more like talking than it is publishing, and therefore it represents a move away from our Western print-based culture (Andy Carvin of NPR has talked about what he does in curating news via Twitter as “preserving oral history.”

Twitter: A return to oral culture?

Tufekci noted that those who are more familiar with oral cultures — users from Eastern Europe, for example, or African-American users — often seem more comfortable with the transient nature of social media, the inability to pin things down, the fact that information is constantly changing, and so on. Those are things that we are accustomed to when we speak to others; but when we type on a computer we often revert to thinking about writing as publishing, and expect things to operate the same way they do in print: namely, that we can save content somewhere, refer to it and so on (as Megan Garber discusses in her excellent piece at the Neiman Lab).

Tufekci is not alone in making this kind of connection between online behavior and oral culture: she mentions the research of Walter Ong and his concept of “secondary orality” as it applies to media, and when I mentioned Tufekci’s post on Twitter, Nancy Baym — a friend who is a sociologist and expert in online culture — noted that there has been a fair bit of work in that area (including some she did herself). Anthropologists have also started looking at how people use Facebook and applying some of the thinking related to oral cultures and groups in order to understand how they work.

From a behavioral point of view, one of the unusual things about Twitter is that it is “asymmetric,” in the sense that you can follow people (and be followed by others) without knowing them. Facebook is a very different kind of network, because you have to approve and be approved by those you become friends with. That makes Twitter much more chaotic in a sense — since you can talk to anyone you wish — and more like a conversation with a group of people in a bar or some other public place.

The other defining factor with Twitter is that there aren’t any rules. Some conventions have emerged over time, such as the @ mention — which users developed themselves and then Twitter adopted — and the retweet. But even there, confusion reigns: if you post a message that starts with the @ symbol and someone’s Twitter name, only people who follow both of you can see that message. To get around this, some users put a period at the beginning to allow everyone to see it. Unfortunately, that “breaks” the conversation mode in a lot of Twitter clients, and so people can’t click and look at previous messages in the thread.

When print expectations meet vocal behavior

That’s a perfect example of when the conventions of print — i.e. the ability to scroll back in time and see more of a person’s tweets — clash with expectations that are more rooted in conversation (such as the ability to ignore others if they are talking about something you aren’t interested in). I’ve also had people get upset when I used their tweets in a blog post, because I think they saw their comments more as conversation, and therefore not likely to show up in print. But things change when you are having a conversation that can be read by thousands of people, most of whom you don’t know.

This confusion extends to other things as well. I’ve had people complain that I retweet too many things, the implication being that I am filling up the conversational stream with too much additional “noise” (in the early days of Twitter I had debates with others about whether retweeting was appropriate at all, and now there are different kinds of re-tweets, which makes it even more confusing). In a way, retweeting doesn’t make any sense if you think of Twitter as a conversation — we wouldn’t expect someone to constantly repeat things the person beside them just finished saying — but if you see it as an information network, retweeting items of interest for others seems like a natural thing to do.

To take another example, my colleague Stacey Higginbotham recently asked whether a retweet meant that someone endorsed the idea or statement they were retweeting. My answer was “it depends.” And when Stacey asked her followers on Twitter the same question, she got a variety of answers — some people retweet simply as a way of passing on something interesting, while others only retweet if they agree. Some like to add their own comments at the end, others at the beginning. I’ve seen the emergence of the term “MT” meaning “modified tweet,” to indicate that someone edited the original, which some users seem to think is fine and others criticize as verboten.

In the end, Twitter is unlike either speech or writing because it is a fusion of both. We are speaking, but with computer keyboards — and we are talking to thousands of people, some of whom we have never met, which simply wasn’t possible before the Internet came along. So in a very real sense, we are making the rules up as we go. Which tends to make things a lot less predictable, but also a lot more interesting.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Groupon

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• Players and Strategies for Real-Time In-Stream Advertising
• Finding the Value in Social Media Data
• Integrating Social Media and Traditional Entertainment

Article source: http://gigaom.com/2011/06/04/is-twitter-like-speech-or-like-writing-the-answer-is-yes/

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Alec Baldwin: ‘Americans Seem to Only Care About Sex and Taxes’

Alec Baldwin is putting his new Twitter account to use, commenting on everything from Russell Brand to politics in a spurt of activity Friday night.

Of his Rock of Ages co-star Brand, Baldwin tweeted, “Russell Brand is beyond funny. I cannot keep a straight face working with him.”

PHOTO: Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand on ‘Rock of Ages’ Set

Baldwin then dissected potential Republican presidential candidates and the state of the union in general.

Of the GOP field: “Unwarranted fear/loathing of Obama is sad, but real.” “Romney has that Plymouth Rock last name” “and Ken doll appeal that a lot of right-wingers go for.” “Who then? Newt? Huckabee? Christie? Obama would slice and dice them.” “Romney has the best chance. But that’s not saying much.”

On the U.S.’ needs: “America needs strong defense spending, but wise as well.” “We need infrastructure.” “Hundreds of billions for an Apollo-type investment in renewable energy.” “We need higher tolls, fees on single occupancy commuters.” “The economy will tell the tale, as always, come next Fall.”

STORY: Alec Baldwin Joins Twitter; Which 10 People is He Following?

On Americans: “Miot [sic] Americans have already forgotten the BP spill, Fukushima.” “Americans, too many of them, seem to only care about sex and taxes.”

The 30 Rock star has nearly 68,000 followers on his account, up from 11,000 after launching it last week.

Article source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/alec-baldwin-americans-seem-care-194894

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Fox News Watch Panel: Maybe Rep. Weiner Is Enjoying His Twitter Scandal

7 comments

Well, this is an interesting theory: On Fox News Watch today, the round table panel got to take their first shot of making sense of “Weinergate,” the bizarre mystery surrounding a lascivious photo that appeared on Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Twitter account. The strangest part of the whole affair has been the aggressive and confusing way Rep. Weiner has approached the media, and it led panelist Jim Pinkerton to conclude today that “Weiner is actually enjoying this.”

Host Jon Scott introduced the segment with a recap of this week’s Weiner highlights, calling his interview behavior “evasive” and wondering how this could benefit Rep. Weiner. Judith Miller agreed: “he is being his own worst PR person,” he noted, suggesting that being honest and non-combative would probably be a better approach.

In an attempt to explain why he is behaving the way he is, Pinkerton argued that it’s possible he is enjoying the attention.  “He told Paul Ryan… ‘I’ve got more Twitter followers than you do,’” Pinkerton noted, arguing that the bragging was a sign that the type of publicity he is getting doesn’t “make any difference to him anymore.” Fellow panelist Kirsten Powers disagreed as to the enjoyment part of the argument, though did allow that Rep. Weiner was likely “making lemonade out of lemons.” “He has made a lot of lemonade this week,” Andrea Tantaros responded, noting that he is particularly getting hurt by his attitude towards the media– “you can’t lawyer the media.”

The segment via Fox News below:

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Andrea Tantaros, Anthony Weiner, fox news, Fox News Watch, Jim Pinkerton, Jon Scott, Judith Miller, Kirsten Powers, New York, twitter, WeinerGate

7 comments

• Barack Must Go says:

  3 1

  Kirsten Powers stated, Weiner’s wife is perfectly OK with this and is standing by him.

  That’s news to me and the rest of ” real ” America, as I have never seen her next to him….ever.

  In fact I don’t know anyone that’s actually ever seen her. She could be dead for all we know.

• TweetOnIt says:

  0 0

  Osama Obama Biden Bin Laden
  One coincidence? Two coincidences?
  NO COINCIDENCE

  http://illuminaticonspiracy.blogspot.com

• Big Eddie says:

  1 0

  Wiener Watch Day 8 .

  Dem leaders after Wiener to clean up his mess , but he can’t without dooming himself . As if he was not already .

  “Washington (CNN) – Members of the House Democratic leadership have talked repeatedly to Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-New York, to try to get him to end what several Democrats call an unwelcome political distraction, a member of the party’s leadership tells CNN.

  “It’s frustrating because we’ll talk to him, and say clean it up, and then he goes out and does stuff,” said the member of the House Democratic leadership, who declined to speak for the record about private discussions with Weiner.

  “He’s got to put the period at the end of the sentence,” said the Democratic source, “it’s painful.”

  On Thursday, Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, the number two Democrat in the House, was less blunt, but told CNN he had spoken to Weiner.

  “I told him that he needs to handle this and he needed to give the facts accurately to the public,” Hoyer said. ”

  http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/03/house-democratic-leadership-privately-push-weiner/#more-162062

• 0 0

  There’s this funny vid on YouTube where this dude talks about our favorite congressman! Check it out!
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-CiKVtzMug

• Big Eddie says:

  0 0

  Just like to be in the room when Weiner tries to explain Tweeting to Pelosi and Hoyer . And what he did .

• Moderate says:

  0 0

  “Weiner is actually enjoying this.”

  He is a media hound and a Youtube sensation. I would say he is possibly enjoying the attention.

• notsofast says:

  0 0

  Dick Weiner before he dicks YOU!

  Weiners wife has not said word one about this so how does anyone know how she feels?

Article source: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-news-watch-panel-maybe-rep-weiner-is-enjoying-his-twitter-scandal/

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Dog Found Thanks To Facebook And Craigslist (VIDEO)

Facebook has been blamed for many hours of procrastination and stalking, but what about finding a lost dog?

The Associated Press reports that Lucy, a golden retriever, went missing in Minnesota. A truck driver found the dog on the side of the road, and picked her up. Nobody knew who she belonged to, and so the truck driver took her along as a travel companion, ending up in Indiana.

Amber Yaw, the owner of Lucy, posted a lost ad on Facebook. At the same time, the man who found the dog posted an ad on Craigslist. A connection was made, and the owners traveled to Indiana and retrieved their lost dog.

As Patti Yaw, the owner’s mother says, “Had we not had the internet, had Amber not done what she did, had the person who took her not put it on Craigslist… all of these different things had to work together.”

While this story has a happy ending, thousands of other dogs are currently abandoned and living on the streets. There are many opportunities to adopt a pet, including through another dog-saving website, Petfinder.com.

WATCH:

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Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/03/dog-found-facebook-craigslist_n_871224.html

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Facebook spreads emotions among friends

Next time you feel like broadcasting some gloomy tale of woe on Facebook, you might want to think twice. Your friends could catch your feelings.

Psychologists have long known that emotions, just like germs, are contagious. People exposed to a person experiencing strong emotions may experience similar feelings, catching them through facial expressions, tones of voice or some other means. But now there is a new means of transmission — social media.

Facebook data scientist Adam D.I. Kramer analyzed postings by about 1 million English speakers and their roughly 150 million friends in multiple countries on the social network to show that the words people use in their status updates drive the emotions of their online friends, even days later. Kramer found people who used emotionally loaded words like “happy,” “hug,” “sick,” and “vile” in their status updates sparked similar emotions in later Facebook postings by their friends.

“Up to three days later, for people who use more negative words, their friends will also use more negative words,” Kramer said. “If people are using more positive words, not only are their friends using more positive words, their friends also will use fewer negative words.”

Kramer’s analysis is not just an academic study of the vast amounts of data that underlie Facebook’s social web. His work is related to Facebook’s fast-growing social products and the

advertising that powers them.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg studied psychology at Harvard and often talks about the psychological underpinnings of Facebook’s business model, saying, for example, its photo-sharing service became tops on the Internet not because of software wizardry, but because Facebook filled a basic human need by allowing people to “tag” photos of their friends and share them. To build on that, Facebook has assembled a data science team that mines the vast amount of information contained in the relationships and profiles of the social network’s more than 600 million users.

Facebook, based in Palo Alto, is using the data to refine the user and advertising products that are at the center of its business. “But as an aside, we tend to stumble on some really interesting findings along the way, and we feel we should make those available to a wide audience,” said Cameron Marlow, the chief data scientist at Facebook.

Psychologists have long tried to pinpoint exactly how emotions are “contagious,” passing from people to their co-workers, friends, relatives and significant others. Voice tones, choice of words and body posture are all means to transmit emotions. Scholars assume facial expressions are the most important, said Elaine Hatfield, a psychology professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who studies how emotions are transmitted from one person to another, “but we don’t really know.”

Kramer’s study on emotional “contagion,” which he presented at the 2011 annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, is an example of how people’s online social interactions are increasingly important sources and tools for social research.

Other companies are pouring through data, too. Yahoo (YHOO), for example, has been using social sites like Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk, an online marketplace that matches freelance jobs with people looking for work, to study questions such as whether better paid people produce better quality work.

Facebook now tracks the emotional states not just of people, but of nations. Kramer also developed Facebook’s “Gross National Happiness” index, based on a computer analysis of emotion-laden words used by more than 400 million Facebook users since 2007. The ongoing fluctuations in that multinational index, following events like the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, hint at the social bonds between societies.

“During the earthquake in Japan, many Asian countries showed a dip in their overall happiness,” Kramer said, “whereas many Western countries were unaffected — except for Chile, which just had a catastrophic earthquake” last year.

Kramer, 30, stands out as brainy even by Facebook standards. After growing up in a small town in western Massachusetts, he studied computer science as an undergrad and graduate student before getting a doctorate in social and personality psychology. His thesis was on “decisional procrastination,” or why it can sometimes be good to put off decisions.

Psychologists still don’t know, Kramer said, whether a person who feels sad upon hearing their friend Joe say his dog has died feels sad for Joe, sad for the dog, or is just mirroring Joe’s feelings. But Kramer said emotion transmitted through status updates could not be mirroring, because that requires one-to-one communication.

The study found that for every negative word such as “sick,” “petty” or “lame” Facebook members used in a status update, their friends used 28 percent more negative words on the following day than would be expected, based on their pattern of speech at other times.

One key finding, Kramer said, is that emotional states are not mutually exclusive opposites.

“You’re not either sad, or you’re happy,” he said, of the mixed emotions people feel at any moment. “There are bittersweet emotions.”

Contact Mike Swift at 408-271-3648.

How emotion
is catching online

Facebook data scientists used an anonymous computer program to scan the status updates of about 1 million English speakers, searching for positive words including “thanks,” “wonderful,” “cute” and “sunshine”; and negative words including “angry,” “worst” and “sucks.” They then scanned the status updates of those people’s roughly 150 million friends, to see whether the emotions were echoed by others, and discovered a pattern where negative and positive feelings were transmitted to friends for the following three days. Facebook’s Gross National Happiness index is at apps.facebook.com/gnh_index. Other academic papers by the Facebook data team are at: www.facebook.com/data?sk=app_4949752878.

Article source: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_18183052

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Don’t Believe Facebook; You Only Have 150 Friends

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According to “Dunbar’s Number,” human beings can maintain a network of only about 150 close friends.

istockphoto.com

According to “Dunbar’s Number,” human beings can maintain a network of only about 150 close friends.

GORE-TEX, the company that makes wetsuits, hiking boots and ponchos, is the subject of a famous anecdote in the world of sociology. It centers on the guy who founded the company, Bill Gore.

“When Bill Gore set the company up, he set it up in his backyard,” Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at the University of Oxford, tells NPR’s Rachel Martin.

From its modest beginnings, GORE-TEX grew and grew, Dunbar says, until Gore opened up a large factory. That, too, continued to grow.

Then one day, Dunbar says, Gore walked into his factory.

“And he simply didn’t know who everybody was.”

Gore wondered why this was. “It was his gut instinct,” Dunbar says, “that the bigger a company got, people working for the company were much less likely to work hard and help each other out.”

Gore did some counting, and realized that after putting about 150 people in the same building, things at GORE-TEX just did not run smoothly. People couldn’t keep track of each other. Any sense of community was gone.

So Gore made the decision to cap his factories at 150 employees.

“Whenever they needed to expand the company,” Dunbar says, “he would just build a new factory. Sometimes right on the parking lot next door.”

Things ran better this way, Gore realized. In smaller factories, Dunbar says, “everybody knew who was who. Who was the manager, who was the accountant, who made the sandwiches for lunch.”

Business was never better. One-hundred fifty, it seemed, was a magic number.

The Truth About Your Facebook Friends

Most of Dunbar’s research has focused on why the GORE-TEX model was a success. That model is based on the idea that human beings can hold only about 150 meaningful relationships in their heads. Dunbar has researched the idea so deeply, the number 150 has been dubbed “Dunbar’s Number.”

Ironically, the term was coined on Facebook, where 150 friends may seem like precious few.

“There was a discussion by people saying ‘I’ve got too many friends — I don’t know who half these people are,’” Dunbar says. “Somebody apparently said, ‘Look, there’s this guy in England who says you can’t have more than 150.’”

Dunbar has found 150 to be the sweet spot for hunter-gatherer societies all over the world. From the Bushmen of Southern Africa to Native American tribes, a typical community is about 150 people. Amish and Hutterite communities — even most military companies around the world — seem to follow the same rule.

The reason 150 is the optimal number for a community comes from our primate ancestors, Dunbar says. In smaller groups, primates could work together to solve problems and evade predators. Today, 150 seems to be the number at which our brains just max out on memory.

But what does this all mean if you’re not Amish — or the CEO of GORE-TEX?

A Friendly Network Stretched Thin

“We developed this 150 limit at a time when most of those people lived geographically close to you,” says David Dobbs, who blogs for Wired magazine. His own network of relationships is an example of how Dunbar’s Number is facing modern-day complications.

Dobbs has a father in Texas, a sister in California and close friends in New Hampshire and Illinois. Plus, he’s got business contacts all over the world.

It all adds up, Dunbar says, to a very fragmented 150-member network.

“You grow up somewhere, you go to school on the other side of the country, you get a job, you go to Europe for a bit — it’s much harder for us to keep those relationships working and good when they’re that distributed,” Dunbar says.

Dobbs offers another modern challenge: What happens when your work relationships have elements of social relationships as well? Who has the time for both?

For workers in smaller companies, Dunbar says, that problem is often solved for them. In companies smaller than 500 people, his research has shown, “there’s a very strong tendency for colleagues also to be your friends.”

How about if you’re employed by a larger corporation, upwards of several thousand people? You’re more likely to venture outside your vocational network in your social life.

Community Over ‘Friends’

Dunbar says there are some neurological mechanisms in place to help us cope with the ever-growing amount of social connections life seems to require. Humans have the ability, for example, to facially recognize about 1,500 people. Now that would be an impressive number of Facebook friends.

Yet the problem with such a large number of “friends,” Dunbar says, is that “relationships involved across very big units then become very casual — and don’t have that deep meaning and sense of obligation and reciprocity that you have with your close friends.”

One solution to that problem, he adds, can be seen in the modern military. Even as they create “supergroups” — battalions, regiments, divisions — most militaries are nonetheless able to maintain the sense of community felt at the 150-person company level.

“The answer has to come out of that,” Dunbar says, “trying to create a greater sense of community.

“In a way, Americans are lucky in that respect,” he adds. “There’s this long tradition of commitment to ideals that binds Americans together. That isn’t always true elsewhere.”

While modern society does make it hard to hang on to friends who aren’t geographically close, Dunbar says, his research shows family is different.

“Friends, if you don’t see them, will gradually cease to be interested in you,” he says. “Family relationships seem to be very stable. No matter how far away you go, they love you when you come back.”

Article source: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/04/136723316/dont-believe-facebook-you-only-have-150-friends

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Shaquille O’Neal calls it quits via Twitter after 19 seasons in the NBA

It has been 19 years since the Orlando Magic drafted promising young center Shaquille O’Neal with the first pick in the 1992 NBA Draft, but since then the man with unlimited nicknames has become an NBA legend and a four-time NBA champion.

Even though Shaq has played for six different NBA franchises during his time in the league, the Big Aristotle has had an impact on all six teams. There is no doubt that Shaq’s skills have declined with every team he played for after the Miami Heat, but he still had the reputation for being an unstoppable force in the paint when he wanted to be.

With 15 All-Star appearances, one NBA MVP award, three All-Star Game MVPs, three NBA Finals MVPs and four NBA titles, Shaq has cemented himself as one of the most successful big man of all-time. Obviously, Shaq never scored as many points as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or was as dominant as Wilt Chamberlain in his prime, but he could easily be compared with the likes of these great NBA centers and Los Angeles Lakers legends.

There is no question that Shaquille O’Neal’s legacy began with the Los Angeles Lakers. Yes, Shaq did lead the Orlando Magic to the NBA Finals only to lose to Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets, but it wasn’t until he signed with the Los Angeles Lakers that he really started to make an impact on the league.

With Shaq paired up with Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, there was no stopping the Lakers as they went on to appear in four straight NBA Finals and win three straight NBA titles. A dynasty and legend was born as Shaq became the best big man in the league.

On June 3, 2011, Shaquille O’Neal called it quits after 19 seasons in the NBA. A future as an NBA analyst is the horizon with ESPN or another network.

Related News

• Boston Celtics sign Shaq to upgrade frontcourt
• Boston Celtics Injury Update: Shaquille O’Neal out indefinitely
• Shaq could return to the Cleveland Cavaliers before end of NBA regular season
• Will Shaq sign with the Hawks or the Celtics?
• Rondo and Wallace still battling injuries

Article source: http://www.onlinesportsbookpro.com/nba/shaquille-o%E2%80%99neal-calls-it-quits-via-twitter-after-19-seasons-in-the-nba/

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In The Tweet Of The Night

I don’t know how many teenage girls I am following on Twitter, mostly because Twitter doesn’t have bouncers who card people before they can get in. Now there is one woman I followed initially because of the bounteous amount of cleavage always displayed on her avatar, but she has turned out to be a pretty smart tweeter with a rapier wit. You can click the “follow” button on a person’s account for any reason you choose—how they look, their screen name, or the content of one of their tweets. None of this really matters, though, since I am not running for Congress.

There is no little irony in the juxtaposition of Representative Anthony Weiner’s picture and photos of former senator and former presidential candidate John Edwards on several political sites yesterday. Edwards has been indicted for conspiracy, illegal campaign contributions, and the ubiquitous charge of making false statements. It is the threat of the false statements charge that has the power to reduce Weiner, one of the brashest, most direct members of the House, to conceding that he cannot say “with certitude” that a lewd picture purportedly tweeted to another Twitter user is not a picture of him.

This is one of the stories you cannot avoid if you spend any time at all in the political blogosphere. So many Twitter users and bloggers have been conducting their own investigations into the ease with which practically any savvy internet user could post a picture to someone else’s yfrog account that yfrog suspended its users ability to use email to upload pictures.  Independent cell phone photo experts have examined the metadata accompanying the lewd picture and determined that it was not taken by a Blackberry, the brand of phone Congressman Weiner has used for all of the other photos he has transmitted via his Twitter account. Internet bounty hunters have dissected entire Twitter timelines on a tweet by tweet basis to track down clues about the real life identities of @goatsred and @patriotusa76, hauling in mug shots of one of them and interviewing the other via—what else?—the internet.

Meanwhile, the cable news network shows, who will blame their lack of staff or lack of budget—everything but a lack of journalistic integrity—for the lack of information in their broadcasts have all clamored to interview the disreputable Andrew Brietbart, owner of the very same Big Government website that is notorious for repeatedly publishing manipulated videos, often obtained from dubious sources, as if his websites are legitimate sources of verifiable news. The first thing I did when hearing Brietbart was involved was type www.Quantcast.com into the address bar of my browser to see what kind of traffic he’s had lately. Sure enough, the Quantcast estimates for BigGovernment.com show a steady decline in traffic the past few months. It looks like Breitbart’s lack of TV facetime since the Shirley Sherrod case has hurt him more than he is willing to admit.  

Many members of the public are willing to conclude, after hearing the kind of vague answers Weiner has been giving the last few days, that his inability to provide direct yes or no answers to questions about his internet activities are a sure sign of guilt. But in a modern world, the applicable corollary is not “the truth will set you free” (see Arnold Schwarzeneggar), but rather “legally defensible statements keep you from serving time” (see John Edwards). Right now, the worst case scenario for the situation Rep. Weiner finds himself in would reveal that Weiner did indeed intend to send a picture to Gennette Cordova, and the person in the picture is him. An embarrassing situation to be sure, but it would be one between adults that breaks no laws, the kind of thing that happens all the time in the tweet of the night.

Article source: http://bigthink.com/ideas/38730

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Can Groupon withstand competition from players like Google and Facebook?

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French Ban Words ‘Twitter’ And ‘Facebook’ From TV, Radio

How do you say Twitter and Facebook in French? You don’t say them at all.

France has banned the names of both social networking sites from being spoken on radio or television, unless they are part of a news story.

The reason for the ban goes back to a 1992 decree that says mentioning such services by name is an act of advertising. Therefore, using the terms “Twitter” and “Facebook” constitutes preferential treatment.

Christine Kelly, a spokesperson for France’s Conseil Superieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA), explained the ban.

“Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition,” she told L’Express. “This would be a distortion of competition. If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pandora’s Box– other social networks will complain to us saying, ‘why not us?’”

But critics highlight the absurdity of such an edict. TechCrunch writes:

Instead of referring to specific social networking pages, like saying “Find us at Facebook.com/Audi” or follow us on “Twitter.com/Pepsi” brands will have to skirt around the issue, saying things like “Find us on social networking sites!,” or directing viewers to their community pages and hoping that viewers will just pick up on where to go.

Ex-pat blogger Matthew Fraser attributed the new restrictions to traditional French protectionism when it comes to the spread of American culture.

“Facebook and Twitter are, of course, American social networks,” he wrote. “In France, they are regarded — at least implicitly — as symbols of Anglo-Saxon global dominance — along with Apple, MTV, McDonald’s, Hollywood, Disneyland, and other cultural juggernauts. That there is a deeply-rooted animosity in the French psyche towards Anglo-Saxon cultural domination cannot be disputed.”

Back in 2003, the French banned the use of the word “email” in all government communications and publications.

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Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/03/french-ban-twitter-facebook_n_871153.html

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