Entries Tagged 'Twitter In The Media' ↓

Further evidence of Twitter’s growing power and influence emerged this week with a flurry of announcements from well known organizations.

The U.S. military, the NFL, the U.S. Open, the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal have all issued statements that attempt to control the way their employees use social media sites, including Twitter.

Loss Of Control

There’s a growing sense among these organizations that they’re losing control of the information flow that surrounds their activities. These statements are an attempt to regain some of the control that has been lost thanks to the democratization of the web. Further evidence of this trend is provided by the 20% increase in the number of firms blocking social media sites in the workplace.

The growing number of companies that have issued social media policies that explicitly proscribe certain behavior has generated a heated debate on the use of social media by employees. For example, a recent post on the Mashable website regarding the social media policy used by Associated Press has led to a range of diverse opinions.

Blurring Of The Divide

Due to the blurring of the divide between private and professional caused by social media, this is an extremely difficult issue to address.

From the viewpoint of the company, if nothing is done, there is the potential for damage to the organization’s reputation and trade secrets. On the other hand, if their social media policy is regarded as being overly intrusive, it has the potential to create a PR disaster.

Social Media Policy

As the social media policy produced by Associated Press has been described as moderate, let’s examine what it covers.

The memo begins by stating that they don’t want to prevent the use of social media “as a personal and professional tool, but expects employees to bear in mind how their actions might reflect on the AP.”

This gives a strong indication that the underlying aim of this policy is to protect the reputation of the AP brand.

The general AP social media policy requires that “Employees must identify themselves as being from the AP if they are using the networks for work in any way.”

It continues by stating that “Posting material about the AP’s internal operations is prohibited on employees’ personal pages”. This part of the policy is perfectly understandable and most people would agree with it.

However, the first part could be seen as objectionable. Don’t AP employees have the right to network online in their own time for the sake of their professional development and future employment prospects? Isn’t that a right of all employees in all industries?

But this AP policy requires employees to identify themselves as such when they use social media for the purposes of work. And once they state that they work for AP, the policy requirements become even more onerous.

Another area that the AP policy seeks to control is the information that employees allow to be posted on their social media page. The policy reads “It’s a good idea to monitor your profile page to make sure material posted by others doesn’t violate AP standards; any such material should be deleted.”

It’s one thing for AP to believe that they have the right to tell their employees what they can post on their social networking pages, but telling employees that they’re responsible for the things that other people post is a step too far.

Take Twitter for example, what does an AP employee do if someone sends them an @ reply containing content that violates AP standards?

It’s not possible to delete tweets posted by other Twitter users, so this part of the policy directly conflicts with the general aim of not preventing the use of social media.

Is AP suggesting that their employees don’t use Twitter?

By extending their policy into the realms of holding employees liable for the actions of other people, AP has shown the world that it doesn’t understand social media. And it could be argued that this does more damage to their reputation than any unsolicited comment by a faceless user of a social network.

Taking the point further, let’s assume that an AP employee has a Facebook page. On that page they mention that they work for AP. Someone else posts a message that violates AP standards.

The AP rules require that such content is removed by the employee, presumably because it could tarnish the reputation of either the employee or the company.

But compare this situation with a live networking event that an AP employee attends. A scene develops and it ends with the other person making a comment that violates the AP standards. It is overheard by most of the room (who may then subsequently spread the experience across their online social accounts).

Is AP suggesting that employees avoid live social networking events in case someone says something to them that the company doesn’t like?

In the real world, most right-thinking people will assess the comment and promptly dismiss it as having been made by a crank. Why should it be any different when the comments appear online?

The difference? Too many people still appear to hold an “it’s on the internet so it must be true” attitude. But removal suggests censorship, which suggests that they have something to hide, which lowers the reputation and integrity of both employee and company.

If AP wants to maintain the integrity of both their company and their employees, shouldn’t it also require positive, supportive posts to be removed, because equally that may not be true?

And surely it’s impossible to maintain your integrity as a journalist while being so biased when selecting which comments to allow.

One suspects that AP has conveniently overlooked this issue due to their desire to gain the enormous advantages of fast, direct communication with millions of people and all the associated promotional benefits.

Perhaps it would be better to leave all comments (which will probably be cached and available from Google before the employee has a chance to delete them), post an appropriate response and trust the rest of the internet community to apply some real-world perspective to the comments. Crank comments will be seen for what they are; lacking in any real credibility. For anything worse than a negative opinion, the existing laws of libel, slander and defamation are still available to AP.

Do you agree with the Associated Press policy on the use of social media by employees? How far do you think these policies should extend? Should employers have the right to control the way that their employees use social media? Let us know what you think below.

Recently, you may have noticed that Twitter has undergone a subtle shift in emphasis. The homepage has been altered and now displays the latest trending topics. Instead of focusing on what people are doing, it encourages you to “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.” and “join the conversation”.

This may be a long-term strategic plan by Twitter to shift towards a real-time source of world news by millions of citizen journalists. But whatever the ultimate intention behind these changes, it got us thinking about the reason why people use Twitter.

Then we found the recent Pear Analytics Twitter study, which studied 2,000 tweets to identify how people are using Twitter.

The Test

Over the course of two weeks, during the hours of 11am and 5pm, 2,000 tweets were taken from the main Twitter timeline and divided into one of six categories. The results were then collated to reveal the most popular use of Twitter.

The Factors

a. Sample Size - Based on an estimated 3 million tweets per day in the U.S., the sample size of 2,000 tweets was deemed to be sufficient to provide the potential for statistically meaningful results.

b. Categories - Tweets were categorized into one of these groups;

• News - Mainstream news of the type you might find on the major news stations, not including tech news or social media news
• Spam - For example, “See how I got 2,000 followers overnight”
• Self-Promotion - Tweets that specifically try to sell a product or service
• Pointless Babble - I’m eating a sandwich, My cat has just… etc Tweets with no “@”, “RT”, “Via” or Short URL which did not appear to be useful to more than 50% of that person’s followers
• Conversational - Back and forth tweets between people and tweets designed to engage conversation such as questions and polls
• Pass-Along Value - Tweets that include the letters RT

Of the few tweets that could be included in more than one category, they were classified as conversation if they included an @ symbol.

c. Public Timeline - The tweets were sampled from the main public timeline every 30 minutes from 11:00am till 5:00pm over the course of 10 week days.

The Results

Of the 2,000 tweets studied, the results were as follows;

• News - 72 Tweets - 3.6%
• Spam - 75 Tweets - 3.75%
• Self Promotion - 117 - 5.85%
• Pointless Babble - 811 - 40.55%
• Conversational - 751 - 37.55%
• Pass Along Value - 174 - 8.70%

Delving deeper into the results there are several points worth noting;

a. The most popular time for pass along value tweets was at 11:30am CST every morning with another mini spike between 4:00pm and 4:30pm CST every afternoon. For maximum impact, Monday exhibited a higher proportion of these pass along tweets than any other day of the week, which makes this a good time to post information if you want it re-tweeted for maximum coverage.

b. News based tweets were most common at 2:00pm CST on Tuesday.

c. Conversational tweets peaked between 2:00pm and 4:00pm CST every day, with the heaviest flow on Tuesday.

d. Spam continued to appear at the same broad rate all day, every day.

e. Despite appearances to the contrary, the overall level of self-promotion (5.85%) and spam (3.75%) was much lower than many people expected.

Although in the case of spam, people have widely varying definitions of what constitutes spam. One person’s meat is another person’s spam.

And as far as self-promotion is concerned, it would be almost impossible for their study to include people who promote their own websites, so the actual figure for this category is likely to be much higher.

However, the general perception that self-promotion is more prevalent than it actually is, indicates that many people are disproportionately annoyed by it. This tends to indicate that Twitter is best used as a way of building relationships with potential customers rather than blatant selling.

The Criticisms

Several people have criticized the contents of this report. Many people have claimed that the categories could be more relevant, while others have pointed out that taking the sample of tweets from the public timeline is not an accurate representation of the kind of tweets any user would elect to receive.

Obviously the composition of tweets that any one user receives is dictated by the Twitter users that they follow. For example, if you follow the Twitter accounts managed by all the main news channels, you would receive a higher proportion of news tweets etc.

But that wouldn’t show how people were using Twitter in general, just how the selected users have chosen to use their account.

The Conclusion

As a result of the coverage achieved by this report a vigorous debate developed about the real meaning of Twitter. Many people claim that they don’t use it because of all the pointless chatter, while others complain about the developing commercialization of the network.

One of the top Twitter users Stephen Fry even weighed into the debate in his usual eloquent style, claiming that Twitter was never promoted as anything other than a communication tool and that he was disappointed in the 60% of tweets that weren’t irrelevant chatter.

“The clue’s in the name of the service: Twitter. It’s not called Roar, Assert, Debate or Reason, it’s called Twitter. As in the chirruping of birds.”

Ultimately, there’s no right or wrong way to use Twitter. Twitter is a communication tool, but beyond that it’s up to the individual to decide what they think it should be used for.

And one of the best ways to keep control of the tweets that appear in your main timeline (beyond careful selection of the people that you follow) is to use Philtro. Through a process of giving messages in your Twitter stream thumbs up or down, this clever service learns the type of tweets that you want to read and filters the rest. So if you follow people who post interesting tweets some of the time and irrelevant rubbish the rest, you can keep the good stuff without having to unfollow them.

Within the last few days Twitter has announced plans to roll out Location-Based Tweeting as part of their service. According to the owners of the microblogging site, Twitter is going to become “location aware”.

The basic idea is nothing new as several Twitter platform developers (apps such as Ubertwitter) have been experimenting with location based Tweets for some time, despite the limited amount of support from the existing Twitter API. Most of these experiments have been based on the information that Twitter users can enter in the location field of their profile, so it’s hardly accurate or reliable.

When this feature is launched (date still to be announced), the new enhanced Twitter API will give users the option to automatically add latitude and longitude location to their tweets.

The Big Question

Which raises the big question - Do you really want people to know where you’re tweeting from?

To allay the legitimate privacy-related fears of many Twitter users, the new geo-location system will be off by default and will have to be activated on a tweet by tweet basis.

Additionally, the exact location data won’t be stored for an extended period of time, presumably to prevent other people building up a detailed profile as you move from location to location. However, this won’t stop unscrupulous people mining, storing and compiling your location data over time.

It’s possible to see how people who use this system and tweet dozens of times per day could have their security compromised by allowing people to forecast where they’re likely to be at any given time.

Rather than using the exact long-lat references, some people have suggested using a more human-friendly alternative, that allows you to tag each tweet with a location relative to the context of your life, such as “Office”, “Home”, “Car”, “Starbucks” etc.

This would give people who know you all the information they need and provide everyone else with some context of the location from where you’re tweeting without threatening your safety.

Other Issues

First, it’s estimated that 65% of tweets are still posted from the web. This will cause many misleading tweet locations to be posted. For example, the location of my ISP would register as being almost 500 miles from the location of my computer.

However, given the growth of the mobile web, this situation will become less of an issue at the months and years pass.

Second, even when mobile devices are used, many people have claimed that geo-targeting is less than accurate.

Potential Benefits

These issues aside, it’s possible to see the benefits of location based Tweets in certain circumstances.

In addition to reading the tweets of people you follow, you will also be able read tweets based on a specific location, which will make it easier to follow local news stories including earthquakes, accidents, concerts, tweetups, conferences etc without the need to resort to the use of hashtags.

Various street sellers like the Waffle Truck who tweet their location at various times throughout the day will find this feature invaluable.

It’s even possible to imagine the development of a powerful traffic status service that uses a combination of location based tweets and Google street view to provide people with real-time street based traffic reports.

At present Twitter plan to release the geolocation details to developers before the official launch, giving the programmers time to update their apps and platforms to include support for the new features. So by the time Twitter becomes location aware, your favorite Twitter platform should be able to cope with this new feature.

What do you think of this development? Do you like the idea of people knowing where you tweet from, or do you find the idea creepy?

How do you think this additional API data will be used? What innovative new geo-location ideas will appear?

Do you think this new feature will become popular, or does it signal the beginning of Twitter moving away from the simplicity that made it so popular?

As always, we’d like to hear what you think using the comments below.

By now you should have heard about the latest phishing attack to hit Twitter.

On the 3rd Jan I received 2 suspicious direct messages through Twitter. On the 4th Jan I received at least 8 bogus direct messages and a couple of them were from accounts that I know are owned by genuine users of Twitter.

So this post is part of our contibution to stamping out this attack before the viral nature of this scam spreads through Twitter like a disease.

The Problem

You receive a direct message from someone that you follow on Twitter. It says something rather innocent and intriguing such as;

“Check out this blog type website. you need to see it..” and

“hey look at this funny blog”

There may be other variants, but you get the idea. I have removed the links, but anything on the access-logins.com domain should be avoided.

When you click the link you arrive at what looks like the main Twitter login page. Only it’s not genuine, it’s a cloned site. And if you use this cloned site to enter your login details, your username and password will be recorded and used to access your account.

This could be devastating for both the Twitter network and legitimate users, especially if you use Twitter for business or professional purposes. It can take months or even years to build a good reputation online. If people have access to your Twitter account and start posting unauthorized messages, your reputation can be severely damaged within minutes.

To make sure that you don’t get caught by this trap or others, the best policy is to make sure that you don’t login to Twitter when you arrive at the site through a link. Open a new browser and type in the address http://twitter.com

The Reason

Why is this happening? Who knows! It could be people who are bored, jealous of Twitter’s success or even training for a career in cyber crime. But the most likely explanation is money. Phishers do what they do to make money. So how can they possibly hope to make money from a series of stolen Twitter accounts?

Off the top of my head, I can think of four potential methods;

a. Twitter Spam

They plan to build up as many compromised accounts as possible, then flood them with spam (either promoting affiliate products/services or selling the spam potential to a third party) to make a quick buck.

In this case, established Twitter accounts are far more valuable than recently created accounts as they are far less likely to trigger the anti-spam techniques that Twitter are likely to be using.

b. Twitter Account Ransom

They plan to demand ranson from legitimate account holders who have built up a fair bit of social value and reputation using their Twitter account. Let’s face it, some legitimate account holders could find it difficult and/or time consuming to prove that they are the real owner of their Twitter account. Could you prove that you own your Twitter account?

c. Selling Twitter Accounts

They plan to sell some of the hijacked accounts, especially the well established accounts with generic names. So if you’re offered a Twitter account with 3000 followers for $50, don’t have anything to do with it. Better still, take the details and pass them on to the team at Twitter.

d. The Long Game

They plan to use the reputation and integrity of Twitter to launch an even bigger assault on the social networking community. So take extra care of the way that you use your other social accounts and keep an eye out for news of the latest scams.

The Danger

The great danger is the speed at which this attack could spread. Every account that is hacked provides the phishers with more power to distribute their messages containing links to the cloned Twitter site.

Unfortunately, that’s the negative side of viral marketing.

The danger gets even greater if some people have used the same name and password when they signed up for other Twitter related services.

After hacking someone’s Twitter account, the phishers could have speculatively tried a whole range of third party services (such as the services which provide automated or scheduled direct messages) and used them to perpetuate the attack.

So your main Twitter account might look okay, but your automated direct messages will continue going out to your new followers, spreading the dangerous links, without you knowing anything about it.

The Solution

1. Check Your Twitter Account

If you can still login, change your password. It’s good practice to change your Twitter password on a regular basis

If you can’t access your Twitter account, try resetting your password. This will send an email to the address associated with your account, allowing you to set a new password. If you don’t receive this email, check your spam or junk folder. And finally, if you still haven’t received this email, contact the Twitter support team, providing them with as much information about your account as possible.

2. Use Different Passwords For All Your Twitter Related Accounts

If you use any Twitter related third party service that allows you to set your own username and password, make sure that you don’t use the same details as for your main Twitter account.

If you have been using the same login details for other accounts, make sure you change the passwords to something different as soon as possible. And if the service in question was for sending scheduled or automated Twitter messages, make sure that nothing has been altered in your account.

3. Keep your Twitter Password Private

This might sound obvious, but due to the number of third party Twitter services that have developed, there’s a great temptation to use your Twitter username and password “just to see what the service does”.

Blogger Chris Pirillo, who was one of the first people to write about this Twitter Phishing incident has suggested that the only way to avoid being a victim is to make sure that you don’t login to your Twitter account using any other site apart from Twitter.com

This is good advice which will further amplify calls for an official verification system (so that you know you’re giving your login details to the right people) to be developed for services using the Twitter API.

4. Make Regular Backups Of Your Twitter Account

If you use Twitter regularly and have invested a lot of time building up your account, it’s important to backup your data.

But following the advice from number 3, don’t use any of the 3rd party services (at least until a system of account verification has been developed).

There is a way that you can use the Twitter API to backup your lists (both followers and the people that you follow) that I’ll cover in a future post.

These backups will help to protect your information if Twitter has a major loss of data. The big fail whale has happened before as far as I’m aware.

A record of your lists will also help you to rebuild a new Twitter account in the unlikely event that your account is hacked and you can’t convince Twitter that you are the original and rightful owner.

5. Let Your Followers Know About This Problem

Education can help to put a stop to this. And Twitter is the perfect platform to spread the word about this threat. So once you’ve made sure that your account is secure, send a short tweet out to your followers.

Safe Tweeting!