Tweet Responsibly
The web is buzzin’ with the newest high profile ‘off the cuff blunder remark’. This time it’s not racial and it’s not some guy with a cowboy hat. This time the slip up comes from non-other than Steve Rubel, famed blogger and an Edelman Public Relations Senior Vice President via Twitter.
Here’s the quote,
“PC Mag is another. I have a free sub but it goes in the trash,” - Steve Rubel, Twitter
And here’s the kicker - Jim Louderback, Editor in Chief of PC Magazine and business associate of Edelman happened to read this little quote. And this little quote didn’t strike him as being real cute. He wrote a guest editorial on Strumpette and did a great job articulating his point. My favorite lines are,
“One of the company’s top execs had stated, in a public forum, that my magazine (and by extension, my audience) was useless to him.”
and…
“While it’s nice to know what at least one person at Edelman really thinks about us, it didn’t do much for the relationship between my 11 million-strong audience and Edelman’s clients.”
Needless to say, Steve apologized. And what I like in particular was how Louderback accepted Steve’s apology in the comment section of Steve’s blog.
To me, there are some interesting things to take from all this. One, we need to all Twitter and post responsibly whether it be on a blog, forum, or where ever. Post as though everyone could see it - like your employer, your mom, your kids, your neighbors, the police, etc. These are public places.
And I think Louderback says it well when he describes Twitter as “a new stream of consciousness service that combines the immediacy of instant messaging and SMS with the permanence and subscribability of RSS and blogging.” The keyword there is “permanence”. Google, Yahoo, and MSN archive everything you put on the web. Know that as Truth!
The other thing to get from this is that we all (bloggers, Twitterers, MySpacers, LiveJournalers, etc.) are all becoming public personas, like celebrities. And like celebrities, we all need to be prepared to take responsibility for what you say in the eyes of the public. Previously I did a post about why this is both a good and bad thing. So Tweet responsibly!
But, aside from the lecture on responsibility… my favorite thing to take from all of this is that Chief Editors and Senior VPs use Twitter too! How sweet is that?
