I don't know how widely this story is being circulated, but I do want to share this article about Google giving news outlets the opportunity to charge users for reading their stories online.
Basically, some news publishers are arguing that Google News is a "backdoor to subscription-protected sites," like the one maintained by The Wall Street Journal.
As the article explains, "You can read WSJ.com stories for free if you search for them on Google News and then click through. News Corp. The owner of the Wall Street Journal, knows this, but allows it because otherwise Google won’t index its site and then it will lose 25 percent of its traffic."
To appease the publishers, Google has agreed to let news publishers opt into a new program called First Click Free. If publishers choose to participate in the program, they will be able to limit the number of times per day a user can access their stories through Google News. After the publisher-determined limit has been reached, the user will be asked to pay for additional access.
The way I see it, there are two ways of looking at this situation, which I will describe later. For now, read the article and Google's press release and make of them what you will.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Twittiquette: Is There Such a Thing?
Shhh...
Did you hear that? That's the sound of Emily Post rolling over in her grave.
During my online travels, I came upon this article from The New York Times about how people are taking to Twitter to vent their frustrations, with some less-than-desirable results. For example, "Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association, was fined $25,000 for criticizing a referee in a tweet after a game." Now I didn't read the tweet in question, so I can't comment on whether or not such a large fine was warranted in that case.
However, I will share a tweet tweeted by Courtney Love aimed at designer Dawn Simorangkir, whom Love accused of being a liar and a thief:
“You will end up in a circle of corched eaeth hunted til your dead”
(I believe that was supposed to read, "You will end up in a circle of scorched earth, hunted until you're dead." I wasted about ten seconds of my life trying to decipher that little gem...ten seconds I'm not getting back. Thanks, Courtney.)
The lawsuit over these and other similar tweets has yet to be settled.
What really troubles me about the information presented in this article is the idea that people are using the 140-character limit on Twitter as an excuse for being overly blunt and downright insulting.
Here's a short excerpt from the article:
“It’s the same reason why schoolyard fights don’t start out with, ‘I have a real problem with the way you said something so let’s discuss it,’ ” said Josh Bernoff, a researcher and an author of “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.” “You get right to the punch in the nose. Twitter doesn’t allow room for reflection. It gets people to the barest emotion.”...
“The basic [libel and defamation] law[s] will be the same, but I would think that a defendant might argue that the language used on Twitter is understood to not be taken as seriously as is the case in other forms of communication,” said Mr. Abrams, who has represented The New York Times. “We will have to wait and see how judges and juries figure out how to deal with this.”
No room for reflection? Not to be taken seriously?! Sounds a lot like a cop-out to me. The art of haiku is just one example of writers making the most use out of the amount of space allotted to them. The problem here is that people too often use Twitter because they want to get a message across quickly, which often means that they don't think before they tweet. They're looking for that instant "rush" that comes when they feel that they've successfully gained revenge on someone by defaming them in front of the entire world (or, at least, the people reading the tweets). Now that this issue has been brought to the public's attention through articles like this one, maybe we can acknowledge this unfortunate reality and make sure that we're at least civil in our tweets (and in our online communications, in general).
Think those quotes were bad? It gets worse.
Jeffrey Michael, an executive at Horizon Realty Group, is quoted as saying, "We as a society have to realize this type of behavior isn’t going to go away. We are not going to have civil conversation in all corners of the Internet. Part of that means we have to develop a thicker skin. We should not accept physical threats, of course. But what we recognize as upsetting and hurtful will diminish over time."
I think poor Emily just did a somersault.
As far as I'm concerned, an insult will always be an insult, regardless the medium used to express it. While it's true that insults, themselves, may change over time, the sentiment behind them remains the same. I seriously hope that he's wrong when he says that what we consider to be hurtful will change as time passes. If he's right, then we're basically in for an anything-goes society were people fire insults at each other at will.
I'm sure I'll be revisiting this topic (or some related tangent), since people's lack of willingness to think before they post something doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon.
I'm interested to hear what you think about this topic. Have you been the target of a tweet like those described above? Or have you found yourself succumbing to the temptation to tweet in the heat of anger?
Did you hear that? That's the sound of Emily Post rolling over in her grave.
During my online travels, I came upon this article from The New York Times about how people are taking to Twitter to vent their frustrations, with some less-than-desirable results. For example, "Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association, was fined $25,000 for criticizing a referee in a tweet after a game." Now I didn't read the tweet in question, so I can't comment on whether or not such a large fine was warranted in that case.
However, I will share a tweet tweeted by Courtney Love aimed at designer Dawn Simorangkir, whom Love accused of being a liar and a thief:
“You will end up in a circle of corched eaeth hunted til your dead”
(I believe that was supposed to read, "You will end up in a circle of scorched earth, hunted until you're dead." I wasted about ten seconds of my life trying to decipher that little gem...ten seconds I'm not getting back. Thanks, Courtney.)
The lawsuit over these and other similar tweets has yet to be settled.
What really troubles me about the information presented in this article is the idea that people are using the 140-character limit on Twitter as an excuse for being overly blunt and downright insulting.
“It’s the same reason why schoolyard fights don’t start out with, ‘I have a real problem with the way you said something so let’s discuss it,’ ” said Josh Bernoff, a researcher and an author of “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.” “You get right to the punch in the nose. Twitter doesn’t allow room for reflection. It gets people to the barest emotion.”...
“The basic [libel and defamation] law[s] will be the same, but I would think that a defendant might argue that the language used on Twitter is understood to not be taken as seriously as is the case in other forms of communication,” said Mr. Abrams, who has represented The New York Times. “We will have to wait and see how judges and juries figure out how to deal with this.”
No room for reflection? Not to be taken seriously?! Sounds a lot like a cop-out to me. The art of haiku is just one example of writers making the most use out of the amount of space allotted to them. The problem here is that people too often use Twitter because they want to get a message across quickly, which often means that they don't think before they tweet. They're looking for that instant "rush" that comes when they feel that they've successfully gained revenge on someone by defaming them in front of the entire world (or, at least, the people reading the tweets). Now that this issue has been brought to the public's attention through articles like this one, maybe we can acknowledge this unfortunate reality and make sure that we're at least civil in our tweets (and in our online communications, in general).
Think those quotes were bad? It gets worse.
Jeffrey Michael, an executive at Horizon Realty Group, is quoted as saying, "We as a society have to realize this type of behavior isn’t going to go away. We are not going to have civil conversation in all corners of the Internet. Part of that means we have to develop a thicker skin. We should not accept physical threats, of course. But what we recognize as upsetting and hurtful will diminish over time."
I think poor Emily just did a somersault.
As far as I'm concerned, an insult will always be an insult, regardless the medium used to express it. While it's true that insults, themselves, may change over time, the sentiment behind them remains the same. I seriously hope that he's wrong when he says that what we consider to be hurtful will change as time passes. If he's right, then we're basically in for an anything-goes society were people fire insults at each other at will.
I'm sure I'll be revisiting this topic (or some related tangent), since people's lack of willingness to think before they post something doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon.
I'm interested to hear what you think about this topic. Have you been the target of a tweet like those described above? Or have you found yourself succumbing to the temptation to tweet in the heat of anger?
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