OUGD403 (Studio Brief 4) Research

Twitter
This article has given me the idea to go off on a tangent and research further into twitter, and twitter related issues. 
I started to research certain issues that twitter has caused over the past, and I started looking into the idea of how once a tweet has been sent, it goes viral.
Below is an example of an article highlighting this issue, and how it effected the company. 

Be Careful What You Say: The FedEx Story

"Everything you tweet is searchable on the web. This can be good and bad. Good if you're strategically using key words for which you want to be found; and bad if you aren't mindful that if you're not nice, it can come back to bite you!" said blogging expert Denise Wakeman. And that bite came back hard recently for PR agency Ketchum.

An employee working for the firm landed in Memphis to deliver a presentation to more than 150 people at FedEx. On arrival, he wrote the following on Twitter, "True confession, but I'm in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say, 'I would die if I had to live here!'"

It just so happened that a FedEx staffer saw the message and forwarded it to numerous company executives. FedEx drafted a response to the Ketchum employee. The last line of the letter says it all, "True confession: many of my peers and I don't see much relevance between your presentation this morning and the work we do." The story rapidly quickly spread across Twitter and the Internet.

This hard lesson is also a wake-up call for many businesses. Twitter is a public communication medium. Everything said is permanently etched in Twitter's digital fabric.

"While Twitter can be effective as a marketing tool, if you are not careful, it can become a viral tool for negative press. Anything typed in Twitter is 'ON THE RECORD,'" said Steven Talbott, Sr., vice-president of business development at Caveo Learning & Performance.

"Treat all your conversations like your grandmother was listening," social-media consultant Josh Peters suggests,

"Your company should be clear in its expectations on your employees' Twitter communication," added Kim Kobza, president of Neighborhood America.

Read more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/9/dark-side-of-twitter-what-businesses-need-to-know-stelzner.asp#ixzz2kfYS9zxk

I started to to research further into the basic opinions on twitter, there are so many controversial opinions. It is drawn to my attention that the social media today are consumed by twitter and people are so consumed that they believe everything they read is the truth. 

CNN Reports - twitter and other social networking tools can numb a persons level of compassion, suggesting a social morality nightmare. this is where people become indifferent to human suffering, and possibly enjoy watching train wrecks happen.

Below is an online example of how information about an individual can be generated very easily, and how it makes it possible for online predators to become obsessive over a specific target. 

Information is passed far too quickly through the twitter platform, and the brain can not digest the true emotional content of one 'tweet' or a series of them. 

How much do you reveal about yourself on Twitter? – This question is a topic of great  concern right now among many leading security agencies but not because you reveal too much about yourself but because company employees are revealing too much about their company.

However our article here is to look at the other less commercial side of this secret enquiry going on since some weeks. The other side I am talking about here ishow much YOU reveal about yourself on Twitter. Well Twitter was made as a gossip nest where everyone can come and say “what they are doing“.

However just a few minutes ago, I decided to make a small test and see what information I can get from one of the guys who follow me by examining his past tweets as well as present tweets. So the person we’ll look at in this first example is @Tushal who is a friend.

So by examining his last 50 tweets only, I can get some really valuable information about him. Below are some facts obtained about him just for this test based on ONLY the last 50 tweets.

1. He is from Mauritius Island (of course)
2. He is a University of Mauritius student – (Potential target for UOM Data Extraction)
3. He has big problems with his Internet connection! – (Potential targeted client by Rivals)
4. He gets his internet connection from Orange ISP in Mauritius – (He will not get a job from Orange lol)
5. He uses a MyT connection of 512 kbps
6. Yesterday was his friend Ashvin birthday! – (Potential data to further exploration of his friends)
7. He likes to eat Chocolates – (Potential victim of spam by chocolate ads)
8. He likes to eat KFC – (Potential victim of spam or phishing attempts using KFC brand)
9. He is currently waiting for a Memory Card for his PC! – (We know he is a hard gamer!)
10. He buys from Ebay often and mostly tech stuffs!  – (Potential target for Ebay spam tweets)
11. He should be at Reduit by 8:30 on Mondays! – (Valued information is someone wanna kidnap him lol)

Ok I am fed up of reading his tweets. But the above tweets simply shows what information anyone can get about the person even by not really knowing him and only examining his tweets. These information are obtained only from his last 50 tweets and now you can imagine how much more we can get by examining his whole timeline since he started to tweet.