You make money off your tweets? You mind if someone else does?

Interesting article about how twitter is going to be selling old archived tweets to marketers.

Old Tweets for sale


The paragraph I find interesting is: 


"This has unsurprisingly been a move condemned by privacy campaigners and it certainly does raise a few questions, however I will say this, once a tweet is published, that content is in the public domain and up for grabs, this is simply the nature of the internet."


So my question is, if you are a privacy campaigner, why would you even tweet?  Do you think this change by Twitter is another example of a companies technology that has surpassed the ability of legislation to keep up or is Twitter a giant editorial column and as such, one shouldn't have to worry about the change?

Internet Changes Our Lives

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

I have read this book, and I think It is very interesting.  Carr describes what the Internet is doing to our brains. As we know, Internet has become the Universal source of information for millions of people, at home, at school, and at work.

  There are three key points that I have found  in Chapter of The Juggler’s Brain. click here

       The first key point is that the internet control our minds. We actually are on the internet and technology at large, not only for our news and celebrity gossip, but more importantly for the ability to work, communicate and connect with people personally and professionally.  The challenge is controlling our feelings. It changes our feelings and our attitudes. Our minds now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes them.

            Another point is that Internet changes our daily lives. We need to remember life before the Internet . Our lives were simple. However, today's kids and young people have never known. Our everyday lives are changing as the Internet grows. There are many new tools for users. We interact with one another and the world around us. Whatever we are looking for, we will find it. We have to accept that the Net is a part of our daily lives.

          The last key point is that Internet changes our brains. The online world is changing the way our brains work. The Internet is a vast and complex network of interconnected computers. We can describe internet as knowledge work.  The rapid growth of the huge data, images, and documents from the web has been a major factor to alter our brains. When we search information from online, there are too many links to other links. We surf the Net with a lot of drag and drop functions.  The Internet may be getting too big. Information overload? More a situation where digital technology is changing the very way we think. We gain new skills and perspectives but lose old ones.

Carr states, “You would probably end up designing something that looks and works a lot like the Internet. It is not just that we tend to use the Net regularly, even obsessively. It is that the Net delivers precisely the kind of sensory and cognitive stimuli—repetitive, intensive, interactive, addictive—that have been shown to result in strong and rapid alterations in brain circuits and functions."
This passage I think they are very useful for users. There is a big influence of technique on our daily life. We control the technology or whether we allow it to control us. We have to adjust ourselves and add more self-control to use it. Internet addiction disturbs the brain and damages. It likes drugs. There are some teenagers or other users who sufferers spend unhealthy amounts of time online to the extent that it impairs their quality of life. 

 

          My own experiences with the second point that is exactly true. Internet changes my behavior. I know that my life is not the same. My life is totally connected to the world. However, it is better than in the past.  


There are two steps in my life when I use Internet. 

• First, the new technology used me in last two years. I didn’t know how to stop to use it. I found myself wasting a lot of time to unwanted information.   
• Second, I adjust myself. I can control Internet with my mind, I am ready to use it.  

My main goal at this time, is to use my skills in social media to gain my knowledge. 

read more review click here

 

My money come in lumps, my pockets got the mumps

So the above lyrics are from the song Poor Little Rich written by the rapper known as 50 Cent.  These lyrics and more are something that most of us would seem to expect from this individual whose reputation seems to emulate those same lyrics and more.

So when we see the following statement "All companies should create a social model at inception," most individuals would find it hard to believe that those same words could also be attributed to 50 Cent,  but remarkably, that is the case.

Based on what we read this week from Mainwaring, this article was the last person I expected to see expound about the benefits of We First. In an interview with Forbes, a side of 50 Cent is revealed that one won't see on TMZ or in the trashy tabloids at the supermarket.

His inspiration?  Tom's Shoes.  The company that gives away a pair of shoes for every pair you buy.  50 Cent's reasoning?  More kids are hungry then need shoes and now between Street King, his energy drink company and his new audio headset company SMS Audio, it is estimated that he has already donated around 4.5 million meals.  That's right. 4.5 million.

While he will forever be known as the street rapping gangsta who works with Eminem and Dr. Dre, the legacy he wants to leave is that his companies continue to feed the world.

In case you didn't feel bad enough about Apple

This topic has come up quite a few times in our classroom discussions and I thought I'd take the opportunity to post a link to the transcript and audio broadcast from This American Life.

This American Life - 454 - Shenzhen and Foxconn Transcript

This American Life - 454 - Shenzhen and Foxconn Audio

I had a customer walk in to my place of work with an iPhone 4s a couple days ago and took the opportunity to test out Siri.  I asked Siri where it was manufactured.  "That is classified information, is there anything else I can help you with?" was Siri's response.  Which is understandable when you find out a little bit more about Foxconn and how these things are built.  But why didn't Siri just say China?  The back side of the phone says it.  It's almost like Siri is begging someone to go and poke around.

Social Media Datum 2

I've been sitting on this bit of information as well as the one I posted earlier; they're starting to back up, so I'll feed them to you slowly in hope they don't become overwhelming or boring.

I ran across some more info porn regarding twitter posts--tweets.  Although I've had a twitter account for some time, I hardly ever use it since I can't figure out what I feel is tweet-able.  According to a recent study that was posted on the Society Pages, my hesitation is well founded.  Kurt Luther, a Georgia Tech Ph.D. candidate, compiled thousands of ratings of tweets and suggests that the mundane, "guess what I just ate" tweets aren't worth reading, while we crave meaningful questions and brief comments with little mark-up.

His findings don't seem too surprising to me, but I seem to notice most of the tweets from my subscription list fill the former category.  Is this just like us not being able to sit with an uncomfortable silence and instead choose to fill the air with navel gazing and pointless blather? (Oh, believe me, I know I'm guilty.)  I think what we're really starting to dig into in our class is creating content that shifts thoughts, behavior, culture.  This I like; this is something that I know I can share with my friends and subscribers easily and will probably lead them to repost or rethink and share with their friends.

Oh yeah: if you're really interested in his study, there is a link to the full paper he published with his colleagues.

Social Media Datum

A friend of mine told me about a recently released study regarding the effectiveness of Facebook posts; I searched and easily found the study in several articles (look here), and while the results are interesting they're probably not shocking: your actively shared links and posts only reach 16% of your friends.  So all that posting of your status and what you just ate and your ire over some retail transaction and even that really brilliant insight you just had usually falls on deaf ears.  Sorry...

Minnesota normal?

I have not been to work the last couple of days because I have had a miserable flu-like virus.  Even though my illness warranted me staying home from work, I still had a feeling of regret and dare I say shame when calling in sick to work.  Yesterday morning on my way to the local CVS to pick up my Gatorade and anti-flu medicine, there was a report on the radio that Minnesotans are rated in the top five for loyalty in the workplace.  The reporter mentioned that Minnesotans were up to six times less likely to call in sick to work.  Even though I felt like complete hell, I laughed at the little coincidence that I was hearing.

I have lived outside Minnesota for roughly four years while I was in the Army.  During this time I have noticed that people from different parts of the country are quite different in everyday social norms than Minnesotans are.  Through our class discussions, I know that several of my classmates have also lived outside Minnesota.  I'm interested in hearing about similar comparisons and the outsider's look on Minnesotans weird mannerisms.