{"id":2748,"date":"2009-04-13T13:16:55","date_gmt":"2009-04-13T18:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/granades.com\/?p=2748"},"modified":"2009-04-13T14:07:17","modified_gmt":"2009-04-13T19:07:17","slug":"twitter-is-for-transmitting-outrage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/granades.com\/?p=2748","title":{"rendered":"Twitter is for Transmitting Outrage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, on Easter Sunday, news began spreading through Twitter<\/a>, LiveJournal<\/a>, and other blogs that Amazon had de-ranked a lot of books that they had deemed “adult”<\/a>, in addition removing them from general search results. The majority of those books had little adult content, and the de-listing appeared to be targeting books with GLBT themes.<\/p>\n

The response on Twitter especially was vocal and wide-spread. The #amazonfail hashtag<\/a> has been one of the top trending topics since this time yesterday. Amazon has claimed that the whole thing was a “glitch”<\/a>, but the discussion continues.<\/p>\n

About a week ago, graphic designer Jon Engle warned people of his experience with StockArt.com<\/a>. They ripped off several of his logos, then turned around and sent him an $18,000 bill for him using his own logos. A #savejon<\/a> campaign began on Twitter and elsewhere. His story hit Digg. People began raising money to help Jon defend his work.<\/p>\n

Then The Logo Factory did some investigating<\/a> and discovered that Jon had most likely been the one lifting logos from StockArt.com. Metafilter posters found out that one of the StockArt.com illustrators had copyrighted his logos in 2001<\/a>, long before Jon uploaded his own logos. Further detective work at the Internet Archive confirmed those earlier dates<\/a>. Even so, the #savejon campaign continued on Twitter for days.<\/p>\n

Twitter played a large role in getting the word out in both cases. Moreso than any other social networking site, Twitter is ideally suited for spreading near-contextless outrage. Many Twitter clients include retweet support, where users can re-broadcast a friend’s post with the click of a button. It’s much easier than making your own blog post about the subject, and like the classic model of infection, the retweeting spreads from group to group. Tweets’ 140-character limit keeps you from adding much context to your re-posting, keeping information content low.<\/p>\n

While large sites like Digg, Reddit, and others can drive a lot of traffic in instances like this, theirs is mainly a first-order effect — most of the traffic is from them directly. Twitter works on second- and third-order effects, with friends of friends of friends spreading the word.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen a lot of argument about what value Twitter provides. Its 140-character limit means you can’t put much information in your tweets. But it turns out Twitter is well suited for transmitting outrage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, on Easter Sunday, news began spreading through Twitter, LiveJournal, and other blogs that Amazon had de-ranked a lot of books that they had deemed “adult”, in addition removing them from general search results. The majority of those books had little adult content, and the de-listing appeared to be targeting books with GLBT themes. The … Continue reading Twitter is for Transmitting Outrage<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t