Archive for the ‘Social Networks’ Category

If there is one thing I absolutely HATE, it’s bullying in any form. I was victimized by bullies in high school and I still remember the incidents more than 20 years after the fact. Seeing the faces of some of those bullies on Facebook brings it back also.

Even after incidents such as Columbine, Americans still don’t get it. Sometimes after you’ve been pushed so far, you push back. Instead, they want to blame music, video games, the Internet, etc. WE can’t possibly be to blame. Yet in interviews people are still referred to as “freaks” and other flattering names.

Now, it’s cyberbullying. Here’s a good article on Care2: Sticks and Stones Can Break My Bones, Cyberbullying Can Potentially Kill.

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• Teen Dies ‘After Being Bullied At School’ (news.sky.com)
• Half of All LGBT Youths Cyberbullied According To New Iowa State Study (lezgetreal.com)
• Physical Bullying Down, Cyberbullying Rising (prweb.com)
• The death of Phoebe Prince and the connection between bullying and cyberbullying. (slate.com)
• Bullying incidents on the rise in Lake Washington School District (seattlepi.com)
• New study reveals prevalence of cyberbullying and its psychological impact on nonheterosexual youth (scienceblog.com)
• Battle over bullying: Incidents on the rise in Lake Washington School District (pnwlocalnews.com)
• Girls Develop Their Mean Streak Earlier (patspapers.com)
• Study identifies strategies for dealing with bullying (news.cnet.com)
• Stop Cyberbullying Parent Presentation (slideshare.net)
• Cyber Bullying Student Presentation (slideshare.net)
• Cyberbullying — a growing problem (scienceblog.com)

[Re-print from 2009]

Hashtags are a useful tool that help you to organize and share your tweets with others. Just like adding keywords to a Flickr photo, hashtags allow you to group tweets together with others sharing the same tag. The result being topics of interest that are easier to follow.

The use of hashtags evolved during the 2007 San Diego forest fires when #sandiegofire was used to identify updates relating to the disaster.

The hashtag #iranelection and Twitter recently played a crucial role in disseminating information in the ongoing controversy over the disputed Iran elections. Twitter has been so critical for communication in Iran that they rescheduled maintenance to occur in the middle of the night in Iran even though this meant Twitter was be offline during peak hours in the US.

However hashtags are not all political. Companies are using hashtags as a way to promote events and product launches in context, and also as a communication tool for remote employees to stay on top of relevant information.

Hashtags can also be used to share notes. For instance, conference goers can use a common tag so that all notes can be easily grouped together and reviewed by those present and absent.

Hashtag etiquette is still evolving so be sure to tag with discretion. How To Use Hashtags:

1. Follow @hashtags on Twitter. They will follow you back automatically, and your hashtags will be tracked.
2. Use hashtags to precede key words in your tweets. Be sure to check Hashtags.org to see if your topic already has an established hashtag.
3. Track the tagged conversations that interest you. Topics can be found via the search.twitter.com feature.

Valid hashtags are also indexed at Hashtags.org, organized by tag, and available as individual RSS feeds. Meaning the conversation can be accessed even without a Twitter account.

This article provided by Brave Media Internet Marketing Vancouver

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• A browsable, searchable archive of tweets (stopdesign.com)
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• How To Effectively Use Twitter Hashtags (makeuseof.com)