Twitter 2.0 "Maybe tweeting your girlfriends' bra size isn't the greatest of ideas?"

Okay, this is my second Twitter.com blog. The first was a half-assed job and I was was just trying to get something up there. Also, I never really played with Twitter, so now after a couple of days I’m going to try this again.

First off. You really have to pay attention to what you’re tweeting. Now those of you who have talked to me for more then five minutes, know how much I like to talk about my poops. Yes I know it’s disgusting, but even at 25 years old, I still think it’s funny. I can’t really see my self becoming bored with that topic anytime soon. However, I can’t talk about that, or any other crap (pun intended) because of how accessible Twitter is. I mean, anyone and everyone can read it. And it’s there FOREVER!!!!! ( That’s supposed to have an ominous echo sound to it.) How long will it be before we hear a story about how a single Tweet, destroys a reputation, a marriage, a business partnership, even gets someone killed. The last one is extreme but recently some guy killed his wife and two neighbours because his “eggs were cold.” So really, I don’t think it’s that far of a stretch.

As for just plain getting screwed, Brandon Jennings was fined $7500 by the NBA last year for tweeting right after a game. He didn’t even say anything offensive or inappropriate. They won the game. He was happy! Didn’t matter. Zero tolerance from the NBA. Paris Hilton (Oh Paris, what would we do with out you¿?) claimed that the purse containing the dope belonged to a friend.  Well when the cops checked her Twitter account, it revealed a tweet with a link to a photo of the purse and text reading "Love My New Chanel Purse I Got Today :)"  http://bit.ly/c5rowH  Nice Paris. Nice. 

Drunk Tweeting. One day that will get me in to trouble, I can foresee it.

To help prevent “Tweeticide” I shall dub it,  Twitter needs some sort of inner conscious or, regulator or, something that say’s “I’m not publishing this till the morning,”  or “Hey,  maybe Tweeting your girlfriends' bra size isn’t the greatest of ideas.” Maybe tweeting should just be disabled on weekends? There’s a thought. The author is his/her worst enemy on Twitter. We need to be careful. We need to be vigilant. What we need is something like those breathalyzers that immobilize a vehicle if alcohol is detected. One would have to blow the Tweetalyzer before being allowed to publish anything. Peoples lives could be at stake here.  Someone with more brains than I, needs to make an app for that.  

Now the Good. And there is a lot of good. (I just started a Sentence with ‘And there’ because Chris Petty told me I could, so put that in your pipe and smoke it!) Twitter allows information to travel faster than it has ever travelled before. I mean supper fast. Wicked Fast. Stuff you didn’t even know you cared about, now you know about seconds after it happens. I never realized how much I cared about what Bob Saget does in his day to day life. Who knew? One Gets instant news, announcements, bus updates, program guests, inspiring stories and on and on....  That, and most importantly,  feedback from other followers. I mean how cool is that? Not only do you get the news instantly, but you get the publics reaction as well.

I was watching the #G20 tweets back in June and I was totally amazed at what I was reading. It was as if all the protesters, the ones with brains anyways, were connected and could avoid the violence and report what was happening right on the spot, as it was happening. Not the next day or even an hour later, but instantly. Like they had a radio channel the stretched across the whole world.   

This brings up an interesting point. How can twitter be used by the public to combat the so called “Big Brother” and keep governments and other organizations in check? I think our democratic “privileges” just got a powerful new weapon. However, I’m sure there is a novels worth of opinion and possibilities on this topic so I’m just going to leave it at that.

How about using Twitter to gauge public opinion? Marketers can instantly starting studying customer opinions literally seconds after a product has been launched and purchased.  Political/volunteer/commercial  organizations have never had access to such a wealth of data so pure and so complete. Just honest opinion. No more waiting for those pesky survey cards to come back. Just start a #hashtag and wait. 

Of course there is the fun. Can’t forget about the fun factor. The first “person” I followed on Twitter was @Sesamestreet. It’s just Fun. I follow The Daily Show, Louis C.K., TSN personalities, the Toronto Maple Leafs, a whole bunch of crap that really isn’t important in the grand scheme of things but I enjoy it. So we can‘t forget about the fun. 

Really though, the essence of Twitter is that it gives people and audience to tweet at on any number of subjects. There’s no real formality, you just need to be able to spell at a sixth grade level and have something to say.  Combine cool smartphones with an inability for people to sit there and do nothing for five minutes, and you have the start to a momentous change in communications.  

At the end of the day, people are quite willing to give their opinion on stuff they are interested in. They also like to be listened too. 

Tweet Tweet.

Poop.