In the social media age, in what seems like ancient history, it is hard to believe that Twitter originated as a way to “Mass-text” your friends.
At Twitter’s outset, instead of having to send ten text messages to ten friends to get them to meet at a certain location that night, one tweet of the plan would get the word out to all of them.
That original plan sure did change.
The use of Twitter accelerated exponentially when the technology was embraced by news organizations, celebrities, public figures and companies.
The 2008 presidential campaign of then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama realized Twitter allowed candidates to deliver real time communication in a virtual public square, reacting and issuing short statements as events happened.
Unfortunately nothing in life is ever all upside — there is a downside to Twitter. As easily as it can help get important, if abbreviated, 140 character messages out in real time, it also allows users to make major missteps in an instant — mistakes that are hard to ever reverse. Also, because people get news updates from Twitter, mistakes made by the media often allow dangerous misinformation to take root in the public mind.
Individually, people can say things and post pictures that perhaps they may wish they had vetted a little more. One back-up freshman Ohio State quarterback tweeted something about not enjoying his class schedule. Sure enough two years later when he got his chance to start that tweet was resurrected to paint him in a negative light.
It happens to people across the spectrum.
In 2010 I ran into ESPN’s Lee Corso at a Daytona NASCAR Race. He told me that ESPN’s Gameday would be at the Penn State-Alabama game that fall. Not knowing the information hadn’t been released, I tweeted it out before getting the word to take it down.
Everyone from journalists to government officials gets things wrong. In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing you would find it nearly impossible to catalog all the things that were misreported on social media.
Recently Penn State also had some social media missteps. The Athletic Director apologized for using twitter to comment on stickers that hockey players put on their helmets. Right or wrong the tweet sparked a big reaction creating a multi-day news cycle. A football coach posed for and posted a picture at a basketball game with a rapper/reality television personality before anyone realized he’d pled guilty to multiple domestic violence charges; one as recently as ten months ago.
Vetting and fact-checking are tough enough in the mainstream media, but on social media it is a world of instantaneous and ongoing action. For better or worse (mostly worse) that is just social media reality.
Social media has grown so big that surrounding every major event or news story are mainstream media stories about social media as it relates to that story. As the blizzard approached the east coast there were stories on how social media was reacting to the storm.
Even on Wall Street, they gauge social media. Social media is followed and tracked instantly by companies using technology to calculate positive and negative mentions of certain stocks and companies. The data is collected, analyzed and shared in real time with investment firms.
But mistakes have real consequences. The screen captures of those tweets, no matter how quickly one takes the original tweet down, live on as long as someone has them. Posting comments on any controversy is like playing Russian roulette. There is at least one loaded bullet in the chamber when you press that button to post your tweet or picture. You may get by, but if you guess wrong, look out.
We can always learn from great figures in history, even on a topic as current as social media. As a man of sparse and carefully considered words, Abraham Lincoln would’ve steered clear of trouble in the social media age. In fact Abraham Lincoln once spoke sage words about the use of social media. Okay, he didn’t mean this for social media but it fits: “It is better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.”
The Lincoln routine that is most helpful for social media usage was how he dealt with anger. If someone had done something to raise his ire, he wrote them a letter. Then he put the letter in a drawer overnight to re-read the next day. If his letter still rang true he sent it. Most often he tore up the letter. While Lincoln’s patience may not have been the best way to get his tweets “favorited” or “re-tweeted”, it certainly would have kept him from creating news cycles on Twitter.
It goes to show you, that while the world has changed dramatically, human nature remains a near-constant. Despite the great technological changes across centuries some of Abraham Lincoln’s sage wisdom still rings true a century and a half later.
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