Some things I've learned about Twitter (Part 2)

Ok, we covered some of the Twitter basics last week, now I want to talk a little about some of the more "advanced" features of Twitter. The beauty of Twitter is that it provides a wealth of information, but that's also it's curse. Without ways to narrow the stream of information to derive meaningful information you will end up wasting a lot of time. 

Trending Topics

Twitter tracks it's own "trending topics" which is a fancy way of saying these are the most popular topics being discussed on Twitter. There's probably a confusing algorithm somewhere that figures these things out, but for the purposes of this post, it's enough to say that this is the insta-buzz of what is happening in the world. A web-tool that I like to look at in conjunction with Trending Topics is What the Trend. This website attempts to briefly explain why a topic is trending and provides other useful information regarding trending topics. 

Recently, Twitter has taken steps to make this more relevant with the release of location-specific Trending Topics. Not every city is represented yet, however, you can at least specify a country if your city isn't listed. Going forward, this will be valuable tool for tracking what is going on in your own hometown without having to monitor thousands of twitter accounts and filtering international results that may not be relevant to you.

#Hashtags

Hashtags can be one of the more confusing pieces of Twitter. Many times, you'll read a Tweet and you'll see a hashtag embedded in the post.  A hashtag begins with the pound sign (#) and includes the word immediately following. For example - #learning #Twitter #TGIF and so on. So, why are they important? The most important reason I've found for using a hashtag is an attempt to organize Tweets from different sources around a topic or an event. For example, #sxsw is a tag to identifies a post relating to the annual South By Southwest conference. If you attended the conference, chances are you saw people pounding out Tweets on their handheld gadgets and one of the easiest ways to follow the conference was to setup a search for the #sxsw hashtag.  Otherwise, you would be looking for specific speakers, topics, location, etc., if you wanted to stay on top of the happenings down in Austin.

One of the major problems is figuring out what the hashtag even means. In a world where you have to communicate your message in 140 characters or less each character has to convey the maximum amount of information in the minimum amount of space. Let's just say that acronyms abound in this world. So how do you get the most out of this feature?

• Don't go overboard - not every Tweet needs a hashtag. 
• Give them some context - especially if you are using an acronym. (e.g., Can't wait for the Social Media Conference next week #SMC2010)
• Be sure the hashtag adds value to your Tweet - both to yourself and those who will read your Tweet.

In our business at WieseLaw, we are constantly on the lookout for trending topics and hashtags relating to Contracts, Negotiation, Mediation, Attorneys, Lawyers, etc. Utilizing trending topics and hashtags is a great way to manage and search the information coming in from all corners of the world in order to derive some meaningful connections.

There are literally thousands of tools, apps, widgets, etc. out there to take advantage of Twitter and to help you make sense of what's being said. I hope these two blog entries have given you a jumping off point for becoming part of the conversation. Good luck!

Social Objects

I ran across a website that I thought was just going to fun and fluffy, but it turns out Hugh MacLeod has a lot more going on at GapingVoid than just cartoons drawn on the back of business cards.

Showing that he was way, way ahead of us here at WieseLaw on the Social Media curve, he has a post about Social Objects and how social networks grow up around Social Objects. I don't know why, but that really opened my eyes. If I didn't have pictures, ideas, links, thoughts, etc., that I wanted to share with other people, I wouldn't have a need for a social network in the first place.

But it goes even further, as Hugh says "The interesting thing about the Social Object is the not the object itself, but the conversations that happen around them." I think a lot of people misapprehend the point of sharing things. What you have to offer others has to go beyond mere information - it has to spark a conversation, ideas and innovation.

Social Media and Legal Ethics

I recently ran into this article on LegalBlogWatch which highlights what I can only assume will be a growing trend in the world of Legal Ethics: namely, whether and to what extent your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc., will be subject to discovery requests and what rules will surround attempts by attorneys and other parties to gain access to such information.

In yet another LegalBlogWatch article (here), there is a great breakdown of a Canadian decision relating to discovery requests and Facebook specifically. Judge Brown states that while your Facebook profile is not presumptively relevant to a suit,

A party who maintains a private or limited access Facebook profile stands in no different position than one who sets up a publicly available profile. Both are obliged to identify and produce any postings that relate to any matter in issue in an action.

I'm not sure I 100% agree with this statement. For example, recently, a friend of mine on Facebook attended a wedding and wanted to share the pictures that were taken and posted by a third person. This third party has complete lockdown on their Facebook profile and pictures. Even though my friend was "tagged" in the photos, I couldn't see the photos. My friend tried to share the photo album with me, but was thwarted there as well. At this point, there were only 2 ways we could think of to view the pictures: Either I had to become friends with this 3rd party and request access to the photo album (you can still block your friends from seeing certain photos or albums) or my friend could individually download the photos she could see and give them to me.

Clearly, you can't get around your ethical obligations by sending in a third party to do your dirty work for you (and lets not forget telling your clients to just assume that their Facebook, Twitter, etc., will be discoverable, so don't do anything dumb there either). However, I think Judge Brown's comments are indicative of a person who probably doesn't spend a lot of time on Facebook and/or does not understand how it works and what steps a person might take to ensure their privacy or expectation of privacy online.

Like I said, I only see this area of law growing in the coming years. It will be interesting to see how it shakes down.