Starting Up A Startup - Tweet Before You Think

How much thought do you give to your online posts? We seem so willing to put our thoughts and feeling out in a public forum, often without much thought of who might be watching. Whose reputation might be on the line? Yours? The company you work for? Your business? Those of you trying to build a brand and/or a business may want to stop and think about what emotions you allow people to tap into based on the comments you post online.

Have you ever gotten yourself in a sticky situation because of something you said online? Did you think it was just a small group of people who had access to your words, forgetting to consider the scope of whose eyeballs could be watching?

Starting Up a Startup - Tweet Before You Think? from Royal Ants on Vimeo.

Tweet This Post

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 8:19 am and is filed under Home, Starting Up a Startup, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Kent

My first public website/blog is still available at archive.org from back in 2001 - http://web.archive.org/web/20010708211525/http:... (I made 50 cents from that banner ad, baby)

I treat everything online as if it is going to be there permanently (or at least I should, I really hope nobody gets a hold of my old twitter account), because if a no-traffic personal website before the rise of social media is still publicly available, then just imagine the hundreds of millions of social network users who have no idea how permanent the internet is.

I can't imagine any young people these days ever becoming president, their lives are so open and available to everyone, that even a minor status update of 'omg so drunk right now lol' would give the future media serious ammo.

Josh "Shua" Peters

Thanks for the plug! I haven't gotten into major trouble, but I have gotten the wife a little peeved at me. However just the other day there was an article I came across online about a girl getting fired because of her FaceBook status. http://bit.ly/pwya9

Kaila S. | Link Building Compa

I haven't gotten into any major trouble, but do find myself wishing I didn't submit that last tweet or last status message. I have, however, caught 2 boyfriends cheating on me because of what they put out there on the net. I agree that what you put out has to be edited, but at the same time I like that some people are stupid enough to just say whatever!

Pauline

During the course of a custody trial for my daughter my ex-husband and I would email each other and send copies to the Guardian Ad Litem. My daughter was sexually abused in my ex-husbands care and he not only delayed the investigation but come to find out he was also withholding asthma medicine when my daughter was with me. Needless to say I was angry and suspicious in my response to him in emails and the "Guardian" held it against me saying I was sarcastic.
Now when I write anything I take time to ensure that my emotions are in check before hitting the send button.
Thank you.

Ryan

Thank you Pauline for your story. The power that this new media has is not something we often think about, especially in mediums such as email, social networking, status updates, etc. We typically think of those things as all fun and games, and the message only intended for the recipient.

This is a great example you of how the "think before you speak" adage applies even more online.

Ryan Roylance

2 Boyfriends? Wow... In those instances, the lack of censorship was an unfortunate slap in the face for you, but at the same time it may have helped long run? Interesting stuff!