Category Archives: Social Media

24Aug / 2014

Not my favorite thing, Twitter

A few months back I faced the task of cleaning up who I follow on Twitter to increase it’s usefulness to me. My feed had become a list of lefties in an echo chamber of middle-class rage. So I slashed and burned.

Now, some people I follow are there to keep me thinking outside my box, their lives are far from mine; socio-economically, geographically, and politicians, their views are confronting, if not obnoxious.

In other words, I’m choosing to see content on twitter that is deliberately irrelevant.

But what if relevance is not our goal?
 

What truthiness

What truthiness

Long ago, when Ashton Kutcher was being lauded for being the first to reach one million twitter followers, an Australian TV network asked him what the biggest challenge for Twitter would be. He said it would be a need to filter out all the crap. Increasing the relevance of your feed by adding posts, is not moving toward a filter, it is actually making it harder to find what you choose to see.

Context: Now, Twitter seems to think that we should see favourites on our timeline – not our own, but those of people we follow. This is akin to a stranger who has noticed you are checking the weather on your smartphone, chiming in with a “Did you also know that my brother’s soccer game was washed out last week? Look, here’s a photo!” It’s not warranted. It’s information only relevant in the sense that cats are relevant to string.

If twitter’s goal is to increase the relevance of tweets you see, this is set to fail. Even if every tweet they surfaced was in some way relevant to my interests, I don’t care. I still did not ask to see it. You had one job. And it’s hard enough filtering the pap and fluff out of my feed. To be force-fed an algorithmically chosen set of tweets is a worrying move toward Facebook’s all-powerful newsfeed.

If it is to simplify their interface, it does this as gently as a guy who invites himself to your dinner party and although he looks suave, he just brought three relatives you never wanted to meet. And they are dressed as donkeys.

Motivation: The main problem I see with serving other people’s favourites to your timeline is that their motives for clicking the star vary widely.

I recently had a guess at why people favourite my own tweets. These ideas also vary widely.

  • They want to show me that they have seen my tweet – bless.
  • They realise I have just uncovered a major, breaking new story and they are now running to their news director with the tweet in hand
  • It made them laugh so hard they are keeping it to print out and put on their fridge
  • They are compiling a list of the Most Enjoyable Tweets Ever Tweeted
  • They need to retain my joke for when they are feeling low and they need a lift.
  • They are stealing my quirky analogy for a book they are writing on pop culture
  • They want evidence that they knew me before I became famous – like Tom Cruise famous.
  • They need to keep my insight as a reference when dinner party debate inevitably turns to ‘Why do people keep touching me on public transport?’
  • They meant to hit ‘Block’.And then I had someone tweet a favourite they had been shown – it was of a plate of unattractive fried chicken. It was the kind of favourite that must have a backstory – probably not a good one, but nevertheless, a context that was completely lost on the recipient.

Privacy: The forced revelation of something many people consider private has been a major gripe in reaction to this blessed feature. I’m sure it’s not something that will warm people to your brand next time they are weighing up their use of your service.

And here is how some tweeters saw the change…

https://twitter.com/DudleyRees/status/503465292694290432

https://twitter.com/louisetaft/status/503440017663229952

Thankfully, there are ways to get around this imposition…

Avoidance: Stop using the official website when you want to use twitter – use Tweetdeck on your browser or tweetbot on an iPhone. Each of them offers a better, more tailored experience, and are free of this new feature.

 

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10Mar / 2014

How a Facebook gallery nabbed me a dream job

We’ve all read many articles regarding the privacy dangers of sharing your views and photos on social media.

Sacking case highlights pitfalls of social media

9 ways Facebook can get you fired

Blah, blah, blah.

However, I now have proof that the opposite is also true – your use of social media can give you the extra boost you need to get ahead of other candidates.

Where my hobby began
In Australia, all Year 10 students are forced from their cosy routines into the freakish hellscape known as Work Experience. Think of Work Experience as a hastily arranged unpaid internship that lasts five days yet often results in lifelong disillusionment.

So, like most of my pals, I picked jobs based not on my hazy career goals but on my interests, hoping the environment would keep me motivated long enough to survive.

At the time, I enjoyed soccer, Sherbert Fountains, long walks in the bush and spending time in the city. In particular, I enjoyed hanging out inside certain grand historical buildings and Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building – with its enormous stature, towering domes and tessellated floors – stood out for me more than any other.

In my esteemed role as Shopping Centre Administrator, I spent half the week delivering mail to shopowners and the other half taking photos of the building. (At the time, I was obsessed with symmetry so I was in paradise.)

Fast forward to 2012, when I was tiring of Facebook’s culture of posting nothing but sentimental moments and wry observations. I began using Facebook photos as a photo-journal, documenting my interest in architecture. Because why not? Shareability gives credence to all kinds of unusual fascinations. Pretty soon I was posting my best three photos per week.

(I realise it’s the kind of obsession that sits better on Instagram. But, I figured Facebook is a disjointed stream anyway – your old classmate shares their kid’s drawing, your colleague is sharing a Buzzfeed list, and your chiropractor just liked their random old classmate’s photo. Aren’t algorithms great!)

Initially, I took photos of the most typical and unusual houses to fill the time while I drove sleeping kids around in my car. Then, I began making special day trips to suburbs I had never seen, just to photograph a house that was either unique to or typical of the area. Within months I was getting requests from others, and even contributions to the gallery. Later, I made the gallery public so that it could be seen by people beyond my Facebook friends.

Late last year – while in a perfectly good job completely unrelated to my work experience – I was approached to be the Community Manager at Houzz Australia.

  • Houzz is a start-up company, founded by a couple who wanted to make a digital place where you could get everything you need to remodel your home. Website | Apps

How my gallery moved me up the pack
I can safely say it was my skills in community management and social media that first brought me to the attention of the new local MD. But while there were certainly other people available with my experience in community and social, it was my Facebook gallery that sealed the deal.

My interviewer had checked my Linked In page and, I assume, my Twitter feed. Any good employer also googles candidates before a first meeting.

But my gallery went much further than that.

I found that as part of the interviewing process for a startup expanding out of the US for the first time, you need to speak with a wide range of different people. I spoke to several parties via Skype, including one of the founders and two foreign investors in the company.

Each of my interviewers had already viewed or heard about my Facebook gallery – making the photos an instant talking point.

In the gallery, I had two years’ worth of evidence that showed I was an enthusiastic fan of house design, plus, I was regularly posting content that generated discussion and attracted submissions.

Now, as Houzz enters the UK, Germany, France and Australia, I will be heading up their community and expanding their presence locally via social channels. I will be spending time every day working with nearly three million photos of architecture and design, symmetrical and otherwise.

Kids, work experience is a good thing. Choose wisely.

Posted in Apps, Architecture, photos, Social Media

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25Feb / 2014

A case for tweeting what we read, not what we think

A friend who works for Twitter asked me why I run a Twitter account that simply lists what articles I am reading on any given day.

Now I have considered it, it’s not unlike the ‘see what your friends have read” feature behind the News Corp paywall. But I just never feel comfortable sharing like that. But my @buckleupreads account is operated solely by me. In fact, this automatic feed of what has caught my eye is even more revealing than my neatly curated tweets of thoughts, links and photos that you’ll find on my main profile, @buckleup.

It’s a text version of what “The Narrative” camera seeks to do, following me everywhere on the internet, except that my @buckleupreads only records what really makes me pause.

What is worth sharing?

Twitter is a marvellous medium for sharing. The best, by far. But having an audience ready to listen has me forever contemplating, what is WORTH sharing?

My general rule has been to make every tweet educational or entertaining, preferably both.

But as my use of Twitter has developed, I have realised that’s all too restrictive. It may be a good place to start, but life has more variety, twitter needs more diversity and rules are meant to be broken. Even my own rules.

For example, I had left no room for opinion, the views that create or add to a debate, the banter that can lead to new ideas and a wider perspective.

And secondly, the sharing of links to articles – offered without any comment – is one of twitter’s greatest services and is a genuine timesaver. Simply type any topic and t.co into the Twitter search bar, and you will receive a stream of tweets pointing you to recent articles on the topic. If I spend even ten minutes walking or on public transport, I grab a few links, save them to reader (I mostly use Pocket) and then paste the text into a voice-to-text app so I can listen while still remain a visually engaged citizen of the universe.

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Based on this routine, I decided to make a twitter feed of those articles, mostly for my own record-keeping, but also for anyone interested in seeing – without any moderation, wit or judgment – an RSS of what I come across in a life in Sydney influenced by faith, family, design, technology, intolerable traffic and world class weather, coloured by a job tied to the media, social networks and emerging trends. A bit of unedited life-blogging.

Many news sites feature a ‘most read’ list, but unless I know and relate to those people it holds little value. I would love it if all my friends had a twitter feed like @buckleupreads, so I could easily follow a list of what they had been reading. It would be like my friends had curated Google News every day and shared it.

The biggest downside of this idea is that some articles I choose to read are a total waste of time. Some articles promote me to act, others to laugh, many to say “meh”.  Only those that make the Buckle-cut will get mentioned on @buckleup. Think of that account as the premium experience. And there isn’t even a paywall.

Yet.

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09Aug / 2013

The opportunity cost of photo opp’s – Social Media election Ep2

Abbott - a photo opportunity waiting to go wrong

Fairfax photographer Alex Ellinghausen captured this moment when, well, I am yet to hear any good explanation for what is happening.

As you can imagine, the bizarre photo has been gratefully received by political junkies on social media, myself included. Its is simply Abbott meeting a family as he toured a factory.

But if Rudd is a chronic nerd, Abbott is an expert at gawk. The leader of the Liberal Party seems to have a knack for leaving his mouth gaping, for showing his bare chest and for looking down his nose at journalists. To these skills, we can now add hair-sniffing.

If you re-live that horrendous minute of silence Abbott shared with Channel 7’s Mark Riley, you’ll notice Abbott can make at least two of those mistakes at once.

By this point, we must assume that no amount of media training will solve the dilemmas Tony brings to media appearances. His avoidance of an interview with Leigh Sales – he was eventually interviewed by Sales’s colleague Chris Uhlman after months of requests – suggests that the presence of women only exacerbates his problems.

The critics of Abbott on Reddit enjoy hashing over the moment, again on 7.30 Report, when he let his guard down and conceded some speeches are fudged, not a true reflection of his position, not ‘gospel truth’.

Go on, re-live it. The nodding?! Why is he nodding!

I feel certain that to meet Abbott is to encounter a man with good social skills but a poor sense of personal space. He may have more in common with Mark Latham than Kevin Rudd.

Abbott even reminds me of Bob Hawke, with his tendency to “aaahhhh” his way out of answering any question quickly.

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It is time for One Nation to change their name to FacePalm.

Stephanie Banister, the One Nation candidate for the Queensland seat of Rankin has become this week’s real political star.

The only thing more astounding than her factual errors are the basting she has received from international media.

I can see Islam from my house

I can see Islam from my house

The Huffington Post's take on our own gaffetastic candidate

The Huffington Post’s take on our own gaffetastic candidate

SMall Brooklyn zine HEEB even picked up the story

SMall Brooklyn zine HEEB even picked up the story

This kind of merciless mocking could have happened just as dramatically without the great amplifier of social media, yet social media has enabled a few new angles to keep this rather entertaining story alive…

https://twitter.com/Arun_B_Tweetz/status/365844124336783361

But unlike Palin, Banister’s gaffe tape is being cut short…

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06Aug / 2013

The social media election – Ep1

If the politicians are going to do some
electioneering in the social domain, it’s only fair that we cast judgment on their strategies (or lack thereof).

The potential for awkwardness, hilarity and/or humiliation is very high. And that’s just within this blog.

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Channel 7 reporter Alex Hart uncovered a certain level of awkwardness in political videos previously reserved for Rudd’s off-the-record rants or Tony Abbott’s minutes of silence.

Enjoy it – or, at least, watch it.

What’s wrong with it?

Bernadette wants to be cool. Her first barrier to having us believe this is her first name. She’s your aunty who wants to be your best friend despite forgetting all your birthdays and re-gifting you some crap from CopperArt. She then describes your particularly non-rockstar lifestyle in ho-hum suburbia, punctuated only by realisation your dreams are unattainable (cue Liberal three-word slogans).

Also, she says ‘LOLCATS’ out loud.

Bernadette is big L Liberal with tragically small production values, broadcasting from a world of macro-suede, friends called Suzie and dreams of making a difference beyond her weekly bookstall down the arcade.

 

———————–

Despite the fact it was posted on his party’s Facebook page one week ago, Fred Nile’s Australian Christian Democratic Party gained considerably more attention today when it was spread more widely on twitter.

https://twitter.com/genericleftist/status/364329143258718208

Before long, Fred’s post – nothing new for a group who likes to target the homosexual lobby’s ‘Equality’ slogan – was being compared to racist discrimination

https://twitter.com/dsblue55/status/364379961185951744

What’s wrong with it?

Nile’s team pushes a very conservative Christianity agenda using techniques as old and tired as I imagine his average supporter is. The decision to focus on divisive issues and approach them with bitterness means that his efforts online will never resonate widely. Indeed, In the context of social media context where messages need to be truncated, Fred’s approach replaces any complexity or nuance with cheap, often offensive one-liners.

I think that the result of his approach will be to narrow his appeal – even while his posts may get enormous reach within social networks.

This is an example of a post everyone feels safe to retweet without fear of people thinking you endorse the views.

Let me know of you see any good or sensationally bad examples of social media campaigning in the next five weeks. Such a shame it’s not eighteen months like in the US.

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21Jun / 2013

Vinstagram: social media blessing or curse?

As millions of users jump on the latest social network feature – 6 and 15 second shareable videos – I’m wondering, how will this change the landscape of sharing? The skills needed to make a compelling video seems to be beyond most of us. So will our experience of social media be diminished? Do we actually want to watch these super-shortform videos as much as we enjoy browsing photos? Will our friends’ content be worth the wait to download?

When I heard about the addition of video to Instagram, I thought that Facebook needed to compete with Twitter’s bite-sized-video-sharing juggernaut Vine, but on the other hand, a photo app with video… wouldn’t that be like Twinings getting into the coffee business?

Instagram is a marvel. The simple app reminded us of what we appreciate about the still image, and it arrived just as digital cameras and smartphones seemed to be reducing all our precious moments to a flat, faded and blurry picture.

Now, video looks set to go the same way. With seamless sharing across social networks, we’ll soon be showing our friends where we are with a panorama, not just a single frame. There’ll be crappy, wind-blown audio, dimly-lit party videos and clips of cats being cute.

Screen Shot 2013-06-22 at 12.52.41 AM

Then there is the time limit – 6 seconds on Vine and now 15-seconds on Instagram. Expect to see sentences cut short, holiday panoramas that pan too quickly and people talking at an absurd speed to describe what’s happening.

I find it difficult to create compelling content within such a short timeframe. Vine’s six-second restriction limits any genuine storytelling and instead encourages videos that lie on a spectrum of spontaneous to trivial. Vine seems to acknowledge the challenge by recommending posts which are usually excellent examples of stop-motion animations, a very time-consuming process most of us will never master.

I believe 15-seconds may be the sweet spot. And some reports claim it’s no accident that it’s also the length of short TV commercials. It certainly holds more hope than 6-second movie trailers, like this Wolverine clip (epileptics beware) that WIRED calls a ‘tweaser’.

Perhaps this insanely concentrated format is ideal for a generation bred on 140 characters, acronyms and snapchats. Did you know that on average, nearly 20% of the audience that starts watching a given video clip will abandon it within the first 10 seconds of playback? What’s more, a slow 3G connection kills all the spontaneity. Viewers start to leave after waiting just two seconds.

Working with a brand, I know that brands often need even longer to tease a piece of broadcast content effectively. So I’m loving the extension that lesser known competitor TOUT gives to brands who sign up for their app. It’s well built, offers video uploading from your camera gallery, sharing across all networks and some editing.

I prefer the still image and a caption, personally.

Stop Press: Twinings IS in the coffee business. But let’s not encourage them.

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10Jun / 2013

Print is dead and news websites are next

Not long ago I was all nostalgic about newspapers. Then, as most of us did, I got over it, I switched to reading the news online and I haven’t bought a paper since.

Now, in 2013, I am feeling nostalgic about newspaper websites, a format of news that is under constant attack from apps, syndication, aggregation and personalisation.

But I see a new future forming, where we can get access to headlines and stories with speed, ease, and in any format we want.

First, a quick review.

The paper era

I grew up with the father spreading the Sydney Morning Herald unhelpfully across the breakfast table each day. He would read from it aloud and with impunity. It didn’t matter if anyone was already talking… or even if anyone was listening. And the amount of paper used in a weekend was also overlooked. In retrospect, much of this glorifying of papers was absurd. In fact, kicking back with a paper used to act as a forcefield to any responsibility. That’s partly why it was so excellent.

I hit high school where one of the great schoolboy thrills of taking Economics was having the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) delivered to you each day.  It was as if you had arrived in adulthood a full two years before your peers. I flaunted it – I now realise – to people who couldn’t care less. But I loved it and consumed it like some of my friends drank Coke – recess, lunch and sometimes under the desk in class.

As a fully formed adult, I had The Australian delivered to my house. This routine was much less romantic than I had remembered when growing up in the Blue Mountains. Instead of venturing into the front garden to discover the paper under a shrub, my entire family would be woken at 6am with a thud the size of a bass drum on our front door. The newsagents were depressingly on target.

One day when I had had enough, I emailed to cancel my subscription, adding a note that News Ltd really should consider a digital-only option. (They replied quickly. It turns out they do.)

The website era

For some months now I have been able to access The Oz stories by putting in my password  – a process I repeat daily as I switch between devices – this is a major irritant). And I have now lost track and any memory of the what the subscription costs me. Both of these issues are deal-breakers when I consider signing up to multiple news websites.

Checking SMH used to be as routine as having breakfast. But thanks to their  sensationalised frontpage splashes, their bipolar design and their use of wires syndication, the Herald and other major Australian news sites have long since been replaced in my routine.

The SMH website – where content has, at times, been an afterthought. via/ blogandwebsitereview.wordpress.com

I realise they’ve been forced to prioritise traffic and I hope the introduction of subscriptions may see a return to more meat and less milk.

Thanks to the web, I consume news from about ten different news websites around the world each day. Different days lead me to different topics and different news sources. While this remains my routine, I can safely say that while I do consider journalism to be an essential part of a democracy and needs to be paid for, I will never sign up for ten accounts. I don’t care if they offer me paywalls, metred models, apps with freemium or some kind of thrilling Shop-A-Docket BOGOF adventure. It is simply to much for one person to keep track of.

Thankfully, my habits are changing and I don’t think I will need to buy into all this.

The feed era

Technology has largely replaced my need for the web. Some days, I will not even touch a news website, thanks to apps and syndicated stories I read on site aggregators or a ‘Read It Later’ service such as Instapaper of Pocket. What I don’t find there I scroll passed on Twitter.

With the death of Google Reader, I now start my day at Google News. I will then skip to several different sites where I save links to read stories later, or I copy the text and paste it into an app that reads stories to me as I travel to and from work.

The Herald used to hold sway over the city, defining Sydney’s mood so accurately and charmingly that you wanted to save those big moments and photographic spreads for posterity. Then, the website you had to visit daily became a chore, with conflicting multiple typefaces, what seemed like more ads than content, hideous full-page ads and auto-playing videos. Now, even with an ad blocker, the Herald’s frontpage feels like gratuitous click-baiting: superficiality up front, quality if you can find it.

Will I pay for it when the Fairfax paywall finally appears? Possibly. If by paying I can avoid their entire website and just get to the stories and links I want, I will consider the cost worthwhile.

Here’s the rub – If I pay to avoid your paywall, I’d also be glad to avoid your website. What I want most of all is a direct route to your stories and journalists. Strip back the entire interaction between user and news and I will engage fully not in your site experience but the content. Which would you prefer?

I realise site design is there to distract me, tricking me into spending more time reading and clicking, but the time for this kind of manipulation is short. The kind of personalisation I am talking about not just for early-adopters.  My 70-year-old father loves Readability, and the most old-school producer at my former employer Channel 7, was using Flipboard well before I was. The word is out.

I need easy, quick consumption.

I don’t want your website – I’ll use a reader.

I don’t need your curation – I’ll use Flipboard or Zite.

I don’t need your production – I’ll strip out the ads with an ad-blocker, any formatting using Readable and personalise it my own way.

If you did all this for me, I’d consume your content more readily, more often, and if I do that then social sharing will follow.

The future

I am optimistic that paywalls and premium content will lead quickly into an era of consume-it-your-way news services.

Flipboard

I’m already on Twitter and using it as a news feed, so how about premium twitter feeds that users must pay to access? The story loads within the twitter eco-system. The point is I got to the news where I was. Facebook or other social platforms could implement a similar model and it could serve targeted ads.

An aggregator app that charges a single subscription but provides me paywalled news from sources I respect?  Awesome. It’s like iTunes but for news.  Think Flipboard – with a Freemium model.

For those times when I have to use a website – a practice I liken to having to cash a cheque of pick up a parcel from the post office – can  we please give the designs a genuine overhaul. We’ve done little more than remove serifs and rearrange pictures since 1996.

Frontpage editors, save all your features that let me save stories, drag sections, or pin the article to Pinterest (what?!). How about an update that genuinely modernises it like the HuffPo’s glorious NewsGlide or USA Today’s photo-led tablet-ready makeover. Those sites make me want to explore the news, not grab and run. Until then…

Me and news websites? We’re done.

More reading:
A paywall is not enough —Fairfax must become bespoke or fail – The Conversation
Fairfax gives a taste of what is to come for premium content charges – SMH (in 2010!)
Top 15 Most Popular News Websites – ebizmba.com (June 2013)

Posted in Apps, media, Pop Culture, Social Media, Tech

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11Feb / 2013

Best Pope Benedict pics and memes

BREAKING: Italian media reports Pope Benedict will resign on February 28.

What better time to look back at the joy Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger has brought us…

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04Sep / 2012

Basics of Twitter

Twitter, when used effectively, is an extremely quick way to find and share information. The nightly TV news – God bless them – can’t stop reporting what’s happening in Twitterland, because more often than not, it’s where things happen, or happen first.

Yet here we are a few years into the revolution and I continue to find people who want to understand Twitter, some even want to be part of it, but they haven’t joined up. From what I can tell, these happy but misguided people fall into three categories; sceptical or ignorant or both.

So, here is my concise contribution to resolving that.

(I won’t spend any time here going into why or what you would tweet. I believe that once people have spent any time using Twitter, these questions appear as silly as the idea we would all sign up just to tweet what we’re eating.)
————-

When getting started on Twitter, there are three important things to know.

20130123-085302.jpg

@usernames
Your username is your nickname within Twitter. Everyone can see it, and, like your profile picture, it helps define your Twitter identity.

To send a tweet to someone in particular, put their @username at the start of the tweet.

When you ‘mention’ someone this way, this appears on their Twitter page – or their ‘timeline’ – but not on the timeline of anybody else. (The exception to this is if someone is following both of you.)

It means that if you and I have a conversation, as if we were using text messages, most people won’t need to read our stream of comments, and would never come across it, unless they went looking for it. Available but not entirely public.

So, don’t be afraid to have a conversation or send people tweets, as these are generally unseen by your followers.

Twitter also offers the option of sending messages visible to everybody. So if you have something of interest to say, you don’t need to put anybody’s @username at the start of your tweet. Just gi ahead and broadcast.

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Direct Messages
The other way to tweet is direct messaging. This is a private message sent via Twitter between two people following each other. It is the only way to keep tweets private. While you can’t prevent the recipient of your direct message from sharing it more widely, this rarely happens. For me, this is the main way Twitter is replacing email. But more on that another time.

Retweets
‘RTs’ are the main way people re-share content. A retweet has less gravitas than a forwarded email. It’s best to imagine an RT as a forwarded email sent with a subject line FYI (For Your Information). That said, choose careful what you retweet to avoid it becoming spammy. Some of Australia’s most prolific tweeters retweet up to fifty tweets per day. Because I could, I tweeted them to let them know they were overdoing it. Sure, they ignored me, but I’d got it off my chest.(Don’t actually know if they read my whingey tweet. But still.)

The major concern people have with retweets is the fear that you are endorsing whatever is in the original tweet. This, to me, is a moot point for individuals but a serious issue for brands.

As a person, I can post a photo of graffiti without anyone suspecting I had painted it. Some who see my tweet may think I like the graffiti. Others who know me better will realise it’s just me highlighting how our city is going to rack and ruin. I don’t particularly mind either way but it’s not the best way to tell people what you think is appropriate or funny. It IS a great way to show people something you think others need to see.

For brands, the danger of being seen to condone various points of view must be taken much more seriously. That’s one reason it is safer to retweet with context.

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Retweets with Added Value
I believe re-tweets are much more valuable if you take a moment to add a comment, a thought or some context to the content of your re-tweet. Where possible, I include a salient fact I gained from the article, or the statistic that surprised me most. Sometimes I even grab a quote that summarises the main thrust of the article.

Sure, it’s not as quick as hitting re-tweet, but it does help explain to people why you’re sharing what you’re sharing, and solves the problem of whether a re-tweet constitutes endorsement.

Now, go get tweeting, and tweet me your complaints or questions. I promise to read them. I may even retweet them.

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12Jun / 2012

Best Questions asked of Mr Abbott on #AskTony

When Tony Abbott made himself available via Twitter this afternoon to answer questions, the social network let loose like a classroom left alone with a casual teacher.

That’s not to say it wasn’t enjoyable but real questions were few and far between.

I, for one, support the idea of such real accessibility. Let’s hope we see more of it from our politicians – because as long as it’s a rarity, it’s only good for entertainment value….

@kinnasurprise “What is love?” #asktony

@BiancaSteman why do you have to be so mean #asktony

@GeorgeBludger: does my black hole look big in this? #asktony

@benpobjie: Why so grumpy, Grumpybum? #askTony

@HelenRazer: Have You Ever Seen The Rain? #asktony

@albericie: When will you accept our invitation to do an interview on #lateline? #asktony

@Chriswhitewrite How many roads must a man walk down? @TonyAbbottMHR #AskTony

@Chrys_Stevenson Are you a folder or a scruncher?#toiletpaperquestion #asktony

@Gwillotine: #asktony How’s Malcom?

@ana_au_: Do you really want to hurt me? #asktony

@AndyofSuburbia Butter or Margarine? #asktony

@maevegobash: Which douchebag staffer told you that doing an #AskTony thing on twitter would make you seem hip and approachable?

@RupertMurdochPRHow @TonyAbbottMHR is it possible for Australia to have the “worst prime minister ever” and yet you are less popular than her? #AskTony

And this piece of platinum Twitter as Mr Abbott signed off…
@RobJamesBoN My planet needs me. RT @TonyAbbottMHR: Sorry. I have to go now but thanks to everyone who responded #asktony

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