Twitter Isn’t That Popular

Twitter is a real-time spin room for politicians, an organizing tool for government protests, a wire service for breaking news, and an online hangout to talk about live events and television shows. But, compared to Facebook’s 1.2 billion users or Yahoo’s 800 million, Twitter with only 55 million users seems like an “also ran.”  Twitter has a brand name, but many don’t know how or why they should use it. Teens seem to be somewhat divided on their use of Twitter with a recent survey showing that 26 % of teen social media users have accounts. Of course, with Twitter going public soon we are likely to see a push to get more teens involved as the social media company will want to show it has staying power in the social media marketplace. This is just a heads up for parents.

Former NFL Posts Picture of Teens Who Trashed His Home

When 300 partying teenagers broke into the home of former NFL star Brian Holloway, and tweeted pictures of themselves (“selfies”) out to the digital world, few, if any, thought far enough ahead to think that those pictures might be used by Holloway and police to track them down. Holloway set up a website called "helpmesave300" where nearly all of the photos and tweets have been uploaded from the Labor Day weekend destruction.

Holloway has been baffled by the response by some parents who are angry that he created the web site and posted the photos there. "Parents have threatened me," he said in an interview on ABC News. "Your kids are in my house breaking and stealing my stuff and you are mad at me because I posted pictures that they took and posted themselves of them partying and tearing things up?"

How would you feel if your kids’ pictures were put up on such a site? As discussed in this blog over and over again, we all need to learn that anything we post online becomes public information. This is a great discussion starter!