by Sabrina Forbes. For the past couple of years, Twitter has been honing its definition of what it means not only to individuals but brands and companies, too.
Tag archives: twitter
Shelf Life: Talking ecommerce with Teljoy • Twitter indexes Kiswahili
Teljoy’s strategy to claim the online pie and Kiswahili leads #AfricanLanguagesDay — Cheryl Hunter’s weekly pick of all things new!
Tech Speak: Stream team
by Mike Sharman. Live-streaming apps allow us the opportunity to become closer to the non-polished professional-production-quality action of real life.
Media Report: Global media buying trends
a The Media Report 2014 feature by Oresti Patricios (@orestaki) Imagine being able to buy media at a click of a button — the same way you’d buy some airtime online or be able to purchase an airline ticket. The news is that you can now do this, and it’s the hottest media buying trend across the globe.
Smart Africa TV: Social messaging goes big in Nigeria
by Russell Southwood (@BalancingActAfr) Nigerian tech blogger Jesse Oguntimehin (@JesseOguns) talks about how Twitter came to grow so big in Nigeria and recent trends within it.
Ads and media tweets
by Herman Manson (@marklives) Not an awful lot seems to have been written about sponsored tweets making their way into the Twitter feeds of media organisations or journalists until a mini blowout early last year.
Tech Law: Publicity vs privacy — if you’re a marketer, you won’t like this column
by Paul Jacobson (@pauljacobson) A fairly subtle, and yet fundamental, shift has been underway for a few years now and it is likely to radically change digital marketing if it becomes the norm. This shift isn’t necessarily about users moving from one service to another (although this is indicative of the shift); it is more profound than that. As you may expect, this shift has do with privacy and, if you’re a marketer, you’re not going to like it.
How Twitter challenged the illusion of journalistic omniscience
by John Jewell, Cardiff University. Twitter values itself at US$12 billion and expects to raise up to US$1.3 billion in sales. But let’s forget about the money and think about Twitter’s impact in its relatively short lifetime of seven years.
Tech Law: Yes, you can be sued for sharing a defamatory Facebook post or tweet
by Paul Jacobson (@pauljacobson) In the recent Isparta v Richter and Another case, Acting Judge Hiemstra found that the first defendant’s comments were defamatory. Reading the judgment, you may be forgiven for forgetting to ask whether the second defendant is also liable, particularly given that the second defendant was only tagged in the offending Facebook posts. Hiemstra’s finding on this question was very brief and, at the same time, pretty profound:
[35] The second defendant is not the author of the postings. However, he knew about them and allowed his name to be coupled with that of the first defendant He is as liable as the first defendant.
This is a pretty powerful finding. In the context of Facebook it means that, if you are tagged in defamatory content and you don’t do anything about being tagged (or perhaps even mentioned), you could be liable, too. This argument likely extends to other platforms such as LinkedIn, Google+ and perhaps even Twitter.
In the case of Facebook, you can control who can tag you (you can choose to approve any tags before the posts become public). As with Facebook, you can mention LinkedIn users, although it’s not clear whether you can control this and remove tags. It’s the same issue with Google+ mentions.
Social media puts HR ethics under the spotlight
by Karen Sutherland, Monash University Social media has definitely changed the game for job-seekers and recruiters. Traditionally, HR recruiters placed an advertisement, sifted through the responses, and interviewed the shortlisted candidates before appointing the best interviewee with the best references. Those days are over.
The increase in social media adoption has provided recruiters with access to volumes of information about candidates that they were never before privy to. With this vast amount of candidate data at their fingertips, recruiters may struggle with the ethical implications regarding how much they let this information influence their decisions when appointing staff.
Limited research has been undertaken in Australia in relation to this issue. However, research from the Unites States suggests that HR recruiters are using social media in two ways: to find candidates and to screen them after receiving their applications.
The jury is still out on the effectiveness of social networking sites such as LinkedIn as recruitment tools, although, they have been described as a “shop window” for recruiters searching for suitable employees. A US study of 1000 recruiters found that 92% used or planned to use social media as part of their recruitment strategy and 93% chose LinkedIn as their most favoured tool for this process.
While the potential savings to time and costs may be enticing for recruiters using social media instead of traditional methods, this practice limits the field exclusively to social media users. If social media skills are not a key selection criterion, limiting the candidate pool to only those with a social media presence could be deemed as unethical and discriminatory. It is unfair for candidates to be excluded purely because they have not jumped on the social media bandwagon. Additionally, recruiters could be overlooking quality candidates by limiting the field.