While some companies are hiring people to promote the company brand on Twitter, others frown on their employees’ personal use of social networking during work hours. And now, it’s being reported that people waste so much time Tweeting/Facebooking/etc. that it costs British companies $2.2 billion a year, according to a survey put out by Morse. The results are based on 1,460 people surveyed, who on average used Twitter or Facebook for 40 minutes during the business week.
But is time spent on Facebook and Twitter really wasted time? As TechCrunch points out, there is a “difference between being productive and ‘not wasting time’:
I’d like to see more research in this field, but more focused on office workers who spend the majority of their day staring out the windows, yapping about last night’s television highlights with coworkers in the coffee and/or smoking room, attending meetings where no decision or progress gets made, or simply working on stuff that’s not particularly considered to be productive for their employer, the British economy as a whole, or the rest of planet Earth.
As a protective measure, some companies have banned the use of social networks by having the IT guy block access to the sites. The Washington Post put out guidelines on what to Tweet and what not to Tweet. Perhaps these tips could have prevented ABC employees from tweeting that Obama called Kanye a “jackass” during an off-the-record interview. Needless to say, basic Twitter etiquette will continue to evolve: In the meantime, don’t say anything that will get you fired.
And if you happen to be on Twitter, follow us — @discovermag.
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• ZOMG! U.K. court tweets its ruling against a Twitter impostor.
• Nerds rejoice as “time-telescope” is unveiled, possibly changing the way data is shared on the interwebs.
• Want some light? Cut your finger: New vampire lamp runs on human blood.
• Big brother satellites can spot illegal toxic waste from space.
• Kids that pig out on candy are more likely to be violent adults, says a new correlative study that has enraged sweet tooths everywhere.
• It’s arachna-Bowie! A rare, hairy, and yellow spider has been named after the master of Ziggy Stardust himself. It’s new title: Heteropoda davidbowie.
• Today’s flabbergast: If Fruit Loops are a healthy food, our derriere is a color television set.
• Swimmers of Amity Island, beware—great white sharks have been tagged up in New England (hear that, Robert Shaw?).
• It was only a matter of time: Porn hits Twitter.
• Meanwhile, Boulder, CO is being taken over by ladybugs.
Have you seen Wired writer Evan Ratliff in the past few weeks? We’re guessing the answer is no—otherwise, we assume you would’ve claimed your $5,000 prize.
That’s because Ratliff is doing his best to keep his whereabouts unknown (even to friends and family) until Sept. 15. The goal of the stunt is to demonstrate how easy it can be to disappear under the radar, even in the digital age. ABC News reports:
[Ratliff] must stay hidden for one month with a bounty over his head.
But to keep things interesting, Ratliff can’t go entirely off the grid. Like any digital denizen, he has to keep up with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and make at least the occasional cell phone call or credit card transaction.
By posting those digital breadcrumbs to the contest’s online page, Wired hopes sleuths both high-tech and low will be enticed to join the hunt. Already, hundreds — maybe thousands — have taken the bait, populating Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and comment threads with tips and teasers about his whereabouts.
Ratliff apparently got the idea while writing about Matthew Alan Sheppard, who disappeared in an attempt to escape financial ruin. Wired’s plot seems a little gimmicky, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t curious about where he is—and who (if anyone) will be able to track him down before time runs out.
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We’re not so sure that, when it comes time for your Discoblog editors to give birth, we’ll be punching the gory details into our Blackberries and sending them across the Internets. But hey, that doesn’t mean other women aren’t doing it! CNN reports on the “trend” of mothers-to-be-any-minute-now tweeting the ins and, er, outs of their labor. From the article:
[A]s Sara Williams showed on Tuesday when she posted Twitter updates about giving birth to her child, online social networking has pushed its way into the delivery room.
It’s now a trend for expectant moms to post to sites such as Twitter from the time they conceive to the moment they deliver a baby into the world.
Williams, wife of Twitter CEO Evan Williams, posted to her 14,000-plus Twitter followers when her water broke, when she arrived at the hospital, during contractions and when she decided to get an epidural. Her husband broke the news on his Twitter feed that their “perfect baby boy” was delivered on Tuesday afternoon.
And when the baby arrives, you can be sure to set your wee one up with his/her own post-utero feed—which some tech-loving parents have already done.
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For hundreds of years, people have flocked to Jerusalem’s Western Wall to stuff prayer-laden slips of paper into cracks in the ancient structure. But let’s face it–for most of us, it’s quite a trek to Israel. Luckily, it’s now possible to submit your prayers via Twitter, from the comfort of your own desk chair.
AP reports:
The service’s founder, Alon Nil, says petitioners can tweet their prayers, and they will be printed out and taken to the wall, where they will join the thousands of handwritten notes placed by visitors who believe their requests will find a shortcut to God by being deposited there.
The 25-year-old economist started the Twitter page three weeks ago and has already received hundreds of prayers.
Even before the Western Wall got Twitterific, religious folk could submit prayers via fax or e-mail. But maybe there’s something special about boiling down your heart’s deepest wishes into 140 characters or less.
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Job hunters, maybe you should be building your Twitter network instead of your resume—at least if you’re interested in the position of Senior Manager-Emerging Media Marketing at Best Buy. The electronics giant reportedly listed “at least 250 Twitter followers” among the requirements for the position.
The Telegraph reports:
According to the advertisement, the chosen candidate would be “the primary lead for the Best Buy’s mobile, social, and video marketing & media efforts to drive in-store and online sales, create sustainable word of mouth evangelists, and brand loyalists.”
Basic requirements for the job included a Bachelors degree, two years of mobile or social media marketing experience, four years [of] people or resource leadership experience and one year of active blogging experience.
The job opening, which was at the company’s Minnesota headquarters, appears to have been filled. But because companies increasingly look for candidates with good social networking skills, it’s a good bet that job-seekers will see similar specifications in the future from other employers.
Just don’t tweet about how you hate your job, because your boss is probably on Twitter, too.
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When TMZ broke the news yesterday that Michael Jackson had been rushed to the hospital for cardiac arrest, rumors about the King of Pop’s fate flooded Twitter. Sure enough, the dreaded (and beloved) fail whale soon began to appear, when the 66,500 tweets about Michael crashed the micro-blogging site’s servers.
Millions of people also turned to Google, searching for “Michael Jackson” to find out the latest on the singer’s health. The BBC reported that Google initially thought it was under attack, because the Web slowed down so drastically when the news broke:
Millions of people who Googled the star’s name were greeted with an error page rather than a list of results.
It warned users “your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application”.
Other mainstream media sites including AOL, CBS, and CNN all needed additional time to load as well. As for us here at DISCOVER…well, we’re sworn to secrecy.
Image: flickr/ Jason Edmonds
Yes, according to new research out of Harvard Business Review. Study authors Bill Heil and Mikolaj Piskorski found that of their sample of 300,542 Twitter-ers, collected in May 2009, “the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days.”
So who’s writing all the tweets? A mere 10 percent of users, say the researchers—making it a far cry from average social networks, where the top 10 percent of users create only 30 percent of the content. There’s also the possibility the numbers are being swayed by “the large number of bored-user and spam accounts” on the site, suggests Silicon Alley Insider’s Nicholas Carlson.
To top it all off, there’s apparently a nice, juicy gender divide forming on the world’s most popular micro-blog:
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Twitter isn’t just the hippest new way to get gossip, headlines, and nosy details of your friends’ lives. It’s helping people whine, embarrass themselves, find taco trucks and counter the Taliban like never before.
Now, researcher Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire is using Twitter to investigate the not-so-scientific world of psychics. Specifically, he’s looking to learn more about the ability to psychically identify geographic locations, a so-called psychic power that actually has a name: remote viewing. Wiseman will think of a place, and research subjects will “tweet” where they perceive the location to be. He predicts that up to 10,000 people will participate, and all locations Wiseman chooses will be in the U.K. (which, uh, narrows the guesses down pretty considerably).
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