Twitter, injunctions and the fine art of misdirection

 

 

 

So, by now, we all know the name of the footballer who allegedly had an affair with a model. Right? Proof positive that injunctions are now useless, the story is now in the public domain and that Twitter rules. Hurray, it’s the dawn of a new era!

Except it’s not quite that simple. Yes, the papers now feel confident in printing that he took out an injunction against the story being published, but they still can’t print the story they want to – otherwise The Sun would have a lot more to say than “It’s Ryan Giggs” today.

Automating Twitter: Beware of the Dangers – A guest post by Paul Green

Being a bit of a geek, I thought it would be great to use technology to help generate tweets to my followers. So, having checked out the likes of SocialOomph and Futuretweets – I thought great, this is right up my street to manage a 3 month campaign to automate various tweets on articles, case studies, newsletters, blogs and various other business related links. (Hmm – note to self, it’s sounding ‘spammy’ as I’m writing this).

So being fairly new to the use of social media for business, here’s me thinking I would become a trending phenomenon over night. Err…unfortunately not the case.

How Far Should You Trust Twitter?

In Nothing We Trust

Image via Wikipedia

By Stephen Bray

It seems like years since I wrote about Professor Scott Lucas using Twitter to collect and disseminate information about the world of international relations using Twitter. It was January.

The reason it seems so far back, no doubt, is that since posting the article the areas to which Lucas focuses most of his energy have been plunged into turmoil with Twitter now playing the part of a weapon of revolutionary force.

People in Egypt, Libya and Syria, for example have used both Facebook and Twitter to organise demonstrations and in the case of Libya this has escalated into a civil war.

Twittle Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood

Image by lllllT via Flickr

(With apologies to the real owners of these usernames)

Mum
@ LittleRedRidingHood Pls would you take this basket of food and deliver it to @ Grandma?

LittleRedRidingHood
@ Mum OK, although I’m a bit scared going through the forest on my own

Mum
@ LittleRedRidingHood Just be careful and don’t talk to any strangers

LittleRedRidingHood
Just checked in to ‘The Forest’ on FourSquare

BigBadWolf
@ LittleRedRidingHood Where are you going, little girl?

LittleRedRidingHood
RT @Mum Just be careful and don’t talk to any strangers // That means YOU!

Compers: Twitter friend or foe?

Up until a couple of years ago, the term ‘compers’ conjured up images of individuals, or sometimes even couples or entire families, spending hours cutting out and filling in competitions from magazines, newspapers and newsletters. I blame this knowledge entirely on half a dozen Channel 4 documentaries.

Nowadays, compers are digital. They spend a large part of their day on Twitter, retweeting and replying to competitions run directly by big and small brands. And being digital means they can enter hundreds of competitions every week, with a simple click.

Twitter: Can You Stay True To Yourself? [Beckerman’s Dilemma]

Tweeting bird, derived from the initial 't' of...

Image via Wikipedia


Unless you’re heavily into photography you probably won’t have heard of Beckerman, but amongst street photography buffs he has a reputation for making strong black and white pictures in New York.

There are many such people today attempting to make a living by selling their images on-line but Beckerman was one of the first to set up an on-line photography store, later adding a popular blog, more than a decade ago.

Surprisingly he has only just gone onto Twitter. He probably wouldn’t have done so at all were if it not for his cousin Ray, who began tweeting links to Beckerman’s blog a few months back. This started to bring more visitors to Beckerman’s blog, and from there his store.

International Women’s Day – 8 Women to follow on Twitter

International Womens Day

Image by JIGGS IMAGES via Flickr

As if you didn’t know it already, today is International Women’s Day, billed as “a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future.”

At NikkiPilkington.com, we’re celebrating some of the fab women we follow on Twitter and hope you will too!

First we have the fantastic @helenstothard – Helen is our UK VA and handles our admin, accounts and most importantly debt collection. She also organises Nikki’s schedule and reminds her where she should be and what she should be doing. On top of that and her other clients, she is part of a fantastic network of VAs so if you’re a Virtual Assistant, or would like to be one, follow her right away!

So I’ve set up my Twitter account: now what? Netiquette and tips for Twitter

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

By Tabitha Potts

In my last post I looked at some of the first things you should do when setting up your Twitter account for business or branding reasons: whether you’re a life coach, a handyman, a mummy blogger, a PR or an accountant there are so many reasons why Twitter can be useful for you that it constantly amazes me when people say they aren’t going to try it out. It’s great you’ve made that jump! Once you have set up your account, found some good people to follow and written your profile you will probably then be wondering – what do I tweet about?

How Quora used Twitter to succeed

Quora on FlipBoard

Twitter has long been the breeding ground for launching potential viral content. The ability to retweet links easily and quickly means trending topics often receive millions of page visits. Justin Bieber would probably vouch for that. But one of the best examples of the influence Twitter can have on a business is the recent explosion of Quora.

I'm happy to use Increase Sociability.