Twittter 140 charater messages
Blessing or hidden menace?
January 2010 |
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The great advantage of
Twitter is that it limits the length of the messages you can
write. By having to stay within 140 characters it forces you
to focus on what you write and it allows you to read a lot
of messages in a short time. However, a negative side to
this limitation is also emerging. |
For
companies certain messages cannot be written, because a
disclaimer needs to be added for legal reasons, which exceeds
the 140 character limit. A more worrying development is though
that keeping it short makes messages vulnerable to liability
claims. By not mentioning all the facts it is possible that a
comment on Twitter can result in being sued. Julie Hilden gives
a good example of such a case on FindLaw: http://bit.ly/5gB3kc
As I wrote before, it is all of course a case of thinking twice
before publishing anything. Twitter and other social media sites
make public publishing too easy and make people write things
they would not write in for example a news paper. So, if you
think a bit before hitting the enter button in Twitter, you
should be ok.
However, this does also mean that a lot of people will stop
writing their opinion as you never know what the consequences
will be. Will the danger of writing the wrong thing bring an end
to social media as we know it? The answer is probably that it
will help shape social media into a more mature format.
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