There’s nowhere to hide if your name trends on Twitter. Is there, Trafigura?
uk.techcrunch.com
uk.techcrunch.com
It's good that such an issue is brought into the limelight but the fact is on twitter with just 140 characters there's such a detachment to the realities of a serious issue that it all becomes trivial.
Normally yes, but in this case it nudged other news outlets such as the BBC to report on the story and prompted a debate in Parliament on if these gag orders are too easy to abuse. I would say that's some positive outcome, even if it does little to help those who were affected by the toxic waste.
The BBC reported about the Trafigura case in depth on Newsnight* many weeks ago. Inevitably journalists would have had to mention it as it's something affecting their profession.
*One of the few good news programmes around in my opinion along with World Service news.
Of course now everyone, law firms, governments, corporations monitor twitter all day, and base policies and legal precedents on what is trending and what isn't.
It's only a matter of time until we do away with the outdated elections and vote using hashtags.
In other words, once the novelty wears off, then what?
http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/twitter-is-overhypedwhich-is...
No-one's saying that. Twitter has increased the extent and intensity of that communication. And that is incredibly important, especially when you're dealing with PR (and i'm sure that's no the only area).
I just hope that eventually people stop being so excitable...
Here's the thing people like us tend to forget - the power of Twitter is mobility. Yes, blogs and wikis are powerful publishing platforms for people viewing them on computers.
Twitter is viewable on the most common device in the world, mobile phones. There are very few mobile phones in the world incapable of getting access to Twitter, making it potentially the most widely available social network on the planet.
No computer required.
Add in all that other media democratization stuff, and that's why you get a lot of the hoopla around it you never saw with Wikis and blogs.
And even if it were true, I don't think mob rule is something to be encouraged.
The trending tags on twitter just mean lots of people re-tweeted something. It's the equivalent of emails that say you should forward it to 100 friends to get good luck. In this case it was "You should be outraged by this, re-tweet it!". But the effect is the same.
Or it could just be twitter bots doing the retweeting.
That's a very good comparison in fact.
Live and realtime is instant, as in less than a second or two and at most a minute (in certain contexts).
Friendfeed, for instance, is a live search engine. Update your GChat status or share something on Google Reader. The time to update and be indexed by the main search engine on Friendfeed is seconds.
Twitter is not going to change the world. You have to take action.
Talking about action is not the same thing as action, but it often precipitates or supports action.
If someone could be so kind as to answer the following questions:
Why was this in Parliament?
What was the question about this in Parliament?
Who requested the gag order?
Under what precedent was the gag order issued?
Would the courts likely have upheld the gag after an initial hearing?
2. See here http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/13/trafigura-carter...
3. Carter-Ruck, on behalf of Trafigura
4. An injunction prevents publication on any number of grounds, usually pending ongoing legal cases
5. An appeal -- the Guardian were set to appeal this afternoon until Carter-Ruck pulled out -- would almost certainly have gone in the Guardian's favour. But had the Guardian published before the injunction was lifted, the courts would definitely have upheld a prosecution against them, however.