Smart people are curious about the world, and smart people are curious about the other people who live in that world.
—Lauren Naturale (the voice of @MerriamWebster)
Tag Archives: Twitter
a lovely and appropriate medium
I’d argue that Twitter is a lovely and appropriate medium for voices that have traditionally been shouted down, shut out or ignored by the places that court the Franzens of the world. There’s a long history – maybe Franzen doesn’t know it? – of women using the materials at hand, whatever’s available to them to make art or make a case. I’d argue that feminist Twitter, women writers advocating for their work, one hundred and forty characters at a time, is a part of that history.
I love Twitter
I love Twitter. It doesn’t keep me from writing and I think it’s a really convenient scapegoat when the truth is that the real issue is self-control. I am totally fine admitting i have none. I’m not going to blame Twitter for affecting my writing. And also, Twitter doesn’t affect my writing.
Creepy by definition
So what? These are not private sites, anybody can read them. —gloeden31
How is this #creepy? If one wants to discuss skin issues openly, one should be more than happy to have a skin-issue company actually observe the discussion. —EthanPeter
@EthanPeter: Because reading blogs is creepy by definition. —skahammer
How DARE they view information that I posted publicly for anyone to read.
THIS is an outrage! —LUV_TRUK
Comments in response to a Gawker post titled
“Unilever Is Listening to You Talk About Your Skin Problems.”
Protesting
[A]uthors and educators protesting the censorship of literary works need no longer wait for the next school board meeting. Add this to the growing list of unexpected but welcome ways in which Twitter has become … a “game changer” in public discourse.
Like a Street
I’ve taken to Twitter like a duck to water. Its simplicity allows the user to customize the experience with relatively little input from the Twitter entity itself. I hope they keep it simple. It works because it’s simple. I was never interested in Facebook or MySpace because the environment seemed too top-down mediated. They feel like malls to me. But Twitter actually feels like the street. You can bump into anybody on Twitter.
Direct and … pleasant
I’ve noticed two things [are different since publishing my last book]. One is that I’m able to observe via Twitter the global launch of the book. I’m able to simultaneously see for the first time that the English language editions, which have been exported from England into Europe and Australia, are released a week and a half before they’re released to the rest of the world. I kind of vaguely knew before but didn’t think about. The other thing is the number of Twitter users asking me questions that I’m usually woefully unable to answer about formats and editions.
I am [experiencing a greater level of fan engagement]. It’s much more direct and much more pleasant than I would have expected it to be.
A surprising e-mail conversation
Two weeks ago, I saw a review on our Weddings page of a book called “Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality” (HarperCollins). Without much thought, I blurted out in a tweet that it sounded pretty stupid to me. But that started a surprising e-mail conversation with one of the authors, Christopher Ryan. It’s interesting not only for what Mr. Ryan says, but as an example of the way patient authors can profitably engage even caustic critics[.]
Alter the Habits
Some online commentators raised the question of whether the library’s Twitter archive could threaten the privacy of users. [Matt] Raymond [the Library of Congress’s director of communications] said that the archive would be available only for scholarly and research purposes. Besides, he added, the vast majority of Twitter messages that would be archived are publicly published on the Web.
“It’s not as if we’re after anything that’s not out there already,” Mr. Raymond said. “People who sign up for Twitter agree to the terms of service.”
Knowing that the Library of Congress will be preserving Twitter messages for posterity could subtly alter the habits of some users, said Paul Saffo, a visiting scholar at Stanford who specializes in technology’s effect on society.
“After all,” Mr. Saffo said, “your indiscretions will be able to be seen by generations and generations of graduate students.”
Aside: Doesn’t it seem kind of odd that the issue foremost in people’s minds would be privacy (on Twitter?!) rather than copyright? As in, does Twitter have the right to fork over your tweets en masse to the Library of Congress? Seems pretty clear from their TOS that they do (but do keep in mind that the copyright is still yours; what they have is a non-exclusive license to use your tweets); I’m just surprised that more people didn’t ask that question.
The Remainder Table 