
This week, the Roundtable discusses online negativity and nastiness, Twitter charging brands for use of the popular microblogging platform, and terse exchanges between Twitter users–is 140 characters too short for complex topics? Jen Zingsheim and Chip Griffin are joined this week by guest Barbara Nixon, of Georgia Southern University. Barbara is also a life member of the International Listening Association.
Click here to listen to the 33-minute discussion.
- Both Crisisblogger and Communication Overtones covered online nastiness this week. Crisisblogger’s interesting take is that it’s connected to the economy, and makes the connection between that and the lack of trust in companies. Andrea Weckerle (guest author on Communications Overtones) has a different angle, examining the “disinhibition effect.” The Roundtable discusses the ramifications, if there are any, for online communications and engagement. (Barbara brings up the New Yorker cartoon of “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” which, can you believe, first ran in 1993?)
- We all know that our favorite social systems are going to have to figure out a business model, but charging brands for commerical use of Twitter? Will this work, and how will brands respond to this possible change?
- Yet another Twitstorm arose this week between Marketing Consultant April Dunford and reporter David George-Cosh.Here we have, again, a situation where things got out of hand on Twitter, in public. Is it too easy to get in trouble on Twitter? The Roundtable also looks at the far more civil, yet still tense, Twitter conversation between Shel Israel and Scott Monty. Barbara Nixon offers a great three-point process for responding on Twitter.