Comments on: I like print media just fine thanks

By: Walter Roark

Walter Roark — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:26:06 +0000

Mark, I am a social media blogger who reads your posts frequently. The company I work for here in Atlanta, Georgia, is ThePort Network and we have several media chains as clients. They are all in very, very difficult competitive times. But some of the more progressive ones are trying hard to turn things around with new, integrated social networking communities. For me, I like reading on- and offline content if it's well done. Speaking of well done, we featured your excellent blog on my educational social media site today, as well as on our corporate site.

http://www.socialmediabuyingguide.org/post/spot...
http://www.theport.com/blog.aspx

Every time you post, you appear in our RSS feed roll on the Social Media Buying Guide.

Anyway, thanks for all the great links and keep up the good work.

Walter

By: Sean Platt

Sean Platt — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:18:13 +0000

That's really cool. It shows not only that the instantaneous nature of Twitter and online communication in general makes miscommunication possible, but that it makes solutions and clarity easily achievable as well.

By: Mark Dykeman

Mark Dykeman — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:14:31 +0000

No question that brief communications like Twitter or E-Mail leave lots of opportunities for misinterpretation, etc.

By: isabella mori

isabella mori — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:12:29 +0000

fascinating! i love posts like these. i always like to point out that communication, online or offline, is so much more than just shuttling bits and of information back and forth.

my grandparents' generation often didn't want to have telephone conversations - so little chance for expression! then we used to say that we can't express emotions or subtleties in email. i hear that less and less now. once everyone is used to twitter, facebook messages, etc., will that change, too?

don't have an answer. just wondering.

By: Mark Dykeman

Mark Dykeman — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:05:50 +0000

Yeah, I feel the same way about using emoticons, but I've come to believe they are a necessary evil.

Those are certainly three strikes against clear communication in microblogging, but we just have to do the best we can.

By: Bill

Bill — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 14:49:32 +0000

With Twitter, it's a bit of a no-win situation. There are three things that affect communication as it applies to Twitter. The obvious one is the 140 character limit. The upside is the emphasis on brevity, the downside is the difficulty in achieving clarity.

The second thing is the way we read online, emphasized even more so with Twitter. We don't really read, we scan. So it is very easy to misread a tweet's intention and meaning.

These two aspects stress the importance of being careful about what and how we write. It stresses the editorial function. But …

Number three pops up, real-time communication. Where something is immediate, taking time to fashion a tweet so it says exactly what you mean and does so in a way that minimizes the chance of misinterpretation, is difficult at best.

I don't think there is away around this problem other than to be aware of how easily we can miscommunicate and to do our best to be clear within the limits imposed. (I often use smiley's like or an lol, although I hate them, simply because I worry someone might misunderstand what I'm saying.)