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You Better Think Before You Twit
Last week my column for Information Week was titled, "Always Think Before You Submit" and took a look at examples of people who made mistakes when they have said things online that have impacted their careers. The column includes a look at the recently fired Virgin Atlantic staff after they said things on Facebook.
Today we learn via Rick at Readwriteweb that the delete function has been removed from Twitter. Why they did this is beyond me… Rick guesses it might have something to do with performance. Users have also been wondering what’s going on via Twitter Search.
So now more than ever, THINK BEFORE YOU TWIT. This advice might sound silly but considering how much of an emotional tool Twitter has become, don’t let it ruin your career. What sounds funny today might be looked at very differently in the near future. Type your message in, leave it for a moment, take a breathe and then click submit.
Update: The delete function has been restored so feel free to say whatever you want now. (duh)
Both your IW and this one are good posts and solid advice. It’s something I think about from time to time. I blogged about it myself last year: http://is.gd/6suB. It was a post on how Stacy Snyder lost her student teaching job after posting a picture of herself on her MySpace profile wearing a pirate hat. She had wrote the comment “drunken pirate” and it ended up costing her greatly. She lost her job and teaching certificate. It’s was a harmless pic and comment to the rest of us, but to her employer it was not so harmless.
I think Twitter is even more dangerous because it’s so easy to just tweet some random thought in passing that ends up offending others and you may not even think it’s anything bad, but others do. And it can cost you a job, a client, a project, etc.
However, on the flip side of that, do we really want to work for, or with, someone who is offended by what we say? Online and offline, I’ve done my share of offending and rarely regret it because it’s not that I said or did anything wrong it’s merely a case of different viewpoints, different opinions, different personalities.
But, I suppose that I could do a little more thinking before posting, especially with twitter.
;-)
Good advice Allen!
Excellent points. Good for other sites as well…
Very sound advice. I was once quoted in a major newspaper. All the reporter did was look at my tweets and copied one of my tweets from 3 months earlier and added that tweet as a quote into a financial news article.
So, you never know when someone will see something you said on twitter.
truth is people should do this all the time everyday no matter if online or offline
I’ve never yet had to delete a twitter, but yes, I’ll agree it’s easy to tweet something you might regret later.
At least when composing an email, you get time to think what you’re saying, and re-read it over before hitting send (what do you mean, you never read your own email before you send it?)
Twitter is a good training tool for “think before you click” – since it’s such an instantaneous technology.
Very good points.
i thought its only temporarily… in anticipation of the election loads, and DELETE can reduce your DBs performance. The delete function will be back after the vote is done.. so i heard.
so the home page should read: “What are you doing? Think about it.”
although if it’s temporary, “What are you doing? Think about it. Never mind.” would work.
we won!!!!
This is all well and good, and is some very sound advice (some I should have followed myself more than once) … however, the delete function has been restored… a quick glance at the Twitter Status blog would have helped this post be more fact-driven and less rick-driven ;) http://status.twitter.com/post/57958888/deleting-posts-temporarily-suspended (we still love ya though, Allen.) :-D
The only time I’ve ever used the delete key is when a typo (yeah I know a lot of typos) slip thru that really should be corrected