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How to Twitter: Can Twitter change the World one Tweet at a time?

Updated on September 16, 2013

Twitter

Twitter- has quickly grown to probably the most popular form of communication other than Text I for one use Twitter now instead of Face book and spend more time Tweeting than any other on line activity. Sure I keep a Face book account but most of my daily interactions are on Twitter for the rich source of information that Tweets are linked to. I joined Twitter three years ago but at first glance I found the concept so bewildering at first I left it alone. I think I had a hand full of people I followed until about six month's ago when I discovered many of the students at my Law School were using it on a daily basis to keep in touch with each other instead of texting, which was until then the usual way they exchanged their status and whereabouts. Since then my use of Twitter has been very useful rich source of quick and relevant information. The reason I choose who to follow and as such I can tailor the information relevant to me and my life.

The influence of Twitter now means that one needs to be careful about the use of it. Famous and popular Australian Gold Medal Swimmer Stephanie Rice made a short comment recently on Twitter about faggots following a South African Rugby Game after Australia beat the South Africans at Rugby Union. Although she deleted it fairly swiftly after realising her mistake a principle sponsor of her Jaguar Motor cars cancelled the contract she had with them. I for one believe it was a complete overreaction by her sponsor. Interestingly her fan base on Twitter has increased by 3,000 since the incident a couple of weeks ago. Another use which horrified me was that Utah GovernorHerbert indicated on Twitter live that he had given the signal to execute inmate Ronald Lee Gardner. I believed that it would be a breach of Twitter terms and conditions. However after extensive email exchanges the folks at Twitter disagreed with me. I still use twitter for at least an hour a day to communicate and collect ideas and informed from other Twitterer's.

Nearing the end of the last Australian Federal Parliament a Twitter user and Journalist were first to report a coup of sorts in Parliament House live which relayed moves against the Former PM Kevin Rudd by his own party. Similarly we heard first the conversation's and announcements on the elections buses of both parties Labor and the Coalition during the Election Campaign

In addition to communicating between your friends and promoting your own hubs or blogs on a micro-level you can also engage in Macro-level with worldwide causes such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

TedXChange has become a useful online conference forum for people with good ideas. Some of the ideas when explained are so obvious one wonders why current world leaders haven't got the. Perhaps they get so caught up in the political process of their job and or party that they either miss or pass up great ideas. Many of these ideas are being developed into real action developed by visionaries around the world. Often ideas people naturally get frustrated dealing with the conventional political process. However some great and often unheard of practical ideas, for solving the world's big issues are heard about for the first time as these TedXChange forums. Twitter has been a very useful communication tool in getting out the message of these forums; Using Twitter to link up these events with much less effort and resources of traditional methods. Already the signs prove more than promising. for instance I can link up with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation together with the huge human resources which they attract from which comes endless possibilities. The question remains can we change the world for the better one click or tweet at a time. Some say we yes we can others say it is worth the try.

In Canberra, Australia National Capital (ACT)l, the Territory Government has experiment with Twitter for community consultation. It is probably the first Government in the World to embrace Twitter for community consultation.

The ACT Government decided to conduct a virtual Cabinet meeting, using the medium of Twitter. They have now conducted three of these hour-long Twitter Cabinets, experimenting with the timing, to capture different groups, and I think that with each one, we learn how to do it better.

The basic idea is that Ministers gather in the Cabinet room and collectively engage with tweets sent to the #ACTVCC hash-tag. The events are advertised in the conventional media, with posters and postcards distributed in Government shopfronts, bars and cafes, and online through Twitter. The experiment so far appear fruitful and give members of the community an easy way to have their say.



Twitter influence

As I said earlier the influence of Twitter now means that one needs to be careful about the use of it. We are told that it is a public broadcast and as such there are probably rules and regulations in the jurisdiction we physically live that we probably do not know about. Remember the irrebuttable presumption at law is that we have a kind of duty to know our own laws. There is a case currently in the UK Courts which is progressively becoming more and more famous.

Twitter has rallied around in support of the unfortunate tweeter[,Paul Chambers] ,who has reportedly lost two jobs and been given a criminal record for tweeting "****! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your s*** together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high ". We take a look at the #twitterjoketrial hash-tag used by those following the case on the popular micro-blogging site.


Chambers isn't the first victim of a general sense of humour failure .

Examples

A famous and popular Australian Gold Medal Swimmer Stephanie Rice made a short seemingly innocuous comment recently on Twitter about faggots following a South African Rugby Game after Australia beat the South Africans at Rugby Union. Although Steph deleted it fairly swiftly after realising her mistake a principle sponsor of her Jaguar Motor cars cancelled the contract she had with them. I for one believe it was a complete overreaction by her sponsor. Interestingly her fan base on Twitter has increased by 3,000 from 7000 to over 10,000 followers since the incident a couple of weeks ago.

More

Twitter is a website, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., which offers a social networking and microblogging service which enables its users to send and read other users' messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the user's profile page. Tweets are publicly visible by default, however senders can restrict message delivery to their friends list.

The original project code name for the service was twttr, inspired by Flickr and the five character length of American SMS short codes. The developers initially considered "10958" as a short code, but later changed it to "40404" for "ease of use and memorability

Pitfalls

In recent days news that Wendi Deng had joined her husband Rupert Murdoch on Twitter went viral. And promptly engaged in flirtatious banter with the likes of Ricky Gervais seemed too good to be true, that's because it was.

An official verified "tick" badge from the social networking service – now rescinded – a News International spokeswoman in London confirmed on Tuesday that the @Wendi_Deng Twitter account was fake, although the @rupertmurdoch account is genuine.

Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, joined Twitter on 31 December, with the fake Deng account launching the following day.

Should the Murdoch's Sue?

There has been a number of these kinds of incidents. This one being the most high profle given the News of the World scandle recently.

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