The power and problems of twitter
Posted in Random on: Saturday, December 13, 2008 by Paul Boag
I take no pleasure in this post. I do not like embarrassing myself in public. However, I need to both publicly apologise and also share a valuable lesson in the use of twitter. If you use twitter, please read this post. It is important that you do not make the same mistake.
I love twitter. I think it is amazingly powerful tool, but I have also seen people post some pretty dumb things on it. I have seen people forget the public nature of twitter and post personal things. I have seen people post when they are drunk. However although these can be embarrassing, they pale into insignificance when compared to the consequences of a post I made today.
Today, I was travelling to see relatives in Somerset to celebrate Christmas. We do it every year and although I love to see them it feels a long way for a short meal. To make matters worse I was tired and rundown. I just could not face it. This led me to post the following to twitter…
Off to somerset to endure a ‘christmas meal’ with the extended family.
What should have been a simple journey turned into a nightmare. First we encountered an accident and had to turn around and then twice we found the road blocked by floods. A 2 hour journey took well over 3 hours. Little did we know this was a part of a much larger problem.
While sitting in traffic caused by the floods, I posted the following…
This is turning into the journey from hell. Two roads closed because of floods. One road because of an accident.
Eventually we arrived and we joined the family celebration. By this time I was exhausted and even grumpier than when I started out. In my grumpy mood, I made another post to twitter, this time using brightkite…
Help me. Please help me. – http://bkite.com/02XsB
This post had terrible consequences for two reasons unforseen by me…
- I failed to put my characteristic smiley at the end. What I meant as a joke about ‘enduring a Chistmas meal with the extended family’ read as a serious request for help.
- Also because it was sent it from Brightkite my location was included. The problem was that the location was incorrect. Instead of it showing me safe in the middle of Minehead, it showed me as being in the middle of nowhere!
The combination of wrong location, lack of smiley, my previous twitter about road conditions and the BBC reports on flooding led one of my followers to be concerned about my well being.
This person decided to call the local Fire service and express some concern about my well being. He has since emailed me and I want to share what happened…
I hasten to add I didn’t call them on 999, just their local number, and I did try to emphasise the ‘it’s probably nothing, but…’ card. I just wouldn’t have forgiven myself if it *had* been something serious and I hadn’t mentioned it to someone who could at least look into it.
The result was the fire service dispatched two fire engines to attempt to find me. They fearing I was caught in the flood!
You can only imagine my horror when they called me angry at what appeared to be a hoax. I have huge respect for the fire service and hated the thought that my actions had hampered their efforts to help people really suffering because of the weather.
After explaining what happened on the phone they were incredibly understanding. I apologised profusely and said I would do everything I could to make others aware of the dangers of irresponsible twittering! (hence this post). I have also donated to the Fire Fighters Charity, which (to add insult to injury) is one of my clients!
Some have suggested that the caller was naive to call the Fire Service in the first place, as if I was able to twitter surely I was able to call on a mobile. However as his email made clear, he did take all precautions and I am nothing but thankful to him for showing me such concern.
It is wonderful that the twitter community is such a caring one and I love the fact that those following me do genuinely care. However, this shows that twitter can also have serious real world consequences if not handled responsibly.
Please learn from my mistakes and think twice before posting on twitter. Check what you are posting and ensure it cannot be misread especially out of context.
19 Comments
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As much as various factors fall into this post. Like you being upfront and helping others with your experience and the ‘concern’ from the person worried that the podcast would end.
You have to admit this is like a setup for a comedy for nerd. Like an episode of The I.T. Crowd.
I just made a stupid mistake myself about 30 minutes ago and what should have been a direct message ended as a public one with some personal details. Doh!
How was the meal in the end anyway?
It sent a chill down my spine when I saw your message, but you twittered about it being a mistake before i did anything about it. Glad you’re alright :)
oh dear Paul! I know this can’t have seemed very funny at the time, but seriously – this is comedy gold. I’m sure many script writers would love to have come up with that.
Anyway, I guess the moral of the story is think before you post.
Let’s be careful out there kids.
You raise a very valid concern and one that most of us on Twitter have probably never thought about. I will say that I very briefly wondered if you were truly in trouble and I did feel a bit of relief when I saw your next tweet. Like the caller to the Fire Service, it is something you wouldn’t want to chance.
Anyway, I think it is great that instead of trying to sweep the whole crappy day under the rug, you’ve turned it into a public service and have educated us all. Thank you.
Oh, and Merry Christmas!
I must admit to have seen the tweet and followed the brightkite link. But then thought nothing more about it, attributing it to an uncomfortable situation for yourself rather than anything worse. However putting the tweet in context of some of the other tweets it’s understandable how some could come to the conclusion they did. The truth is it’s best to be on the safe side rather than take the chance that something bad could of happened. The lesson is that with all electronic communication you have to make sure your actual intention is clear as it’s easy to get the wrong idea.
To be honest, I saw the Help me tweet, went on the brightkite link and thought “what the eff is Paul on about now?”. the map that showed you in the middle of nowhere, I thought poor family must live on a farm and you were wanting a distraction from it, going by your earlier post.
Why didn’t I think you were in trouble or anything?
1) yes you would have been able to call if you could tweet!
2) ok you missed out ;) or something from your previous tweet but the inverted commas round the “christmas meal” along with the mention of family, showed me you werent exactly looking forward to it.
3) when you mentioned the delays and the THE tweet, I realised you were being sarcastic and didn’t actually need help.
saying all that I guess I can see why someone might take it to mean you were in trouble.
WOW – that is amazing!
Shows that twitter can be extreamly powerful and that it can be used for more than just spreading chatter and information.
We should always be aware of what we are sharing out in the Twitterverse (and web at large)
Thanks for sharing the personal story. I love the real life example of personal impact (sorry u had to go through it for others to learn)
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http://twitter.com/franswaa
I am glad you are ok! You are right that we do love you :)
I hope that your home isnt flooded. Take care now!
Ouch – an unfortunate situation, but must be reassuring to see that the community are so concerned about your well being and would be prepared to help if you were in trouble.
It’s pretty awesome that the twitter community ‘has your back’ as it were; but I have to say my first thought is that were you actually in trouble, you’d have posted a far more detailed tweet.
Had the tweet read: ‘Trapped in flood in middle of nowhere – please send help’ then I’m pretty sure there’d have been more calls to the fire brigade!
Great to see that the twitter community can be just as thick as the offline one.
You lot need to get some fresh air, just to help you realise that twitter is NOT the center of the universe. Maybe you could go for a walk in Selworthy, it’s a beautiful place: http://brightkite.com/places/ebfa158c92611ddb00a003048c10834
Hey Boag… UNSUBSCRIBE!
I also saw the tweet and I also for a second wondering if anything was really wrong. But as I knew you were on the way to the family and the trip was proving rather hellish, I took it more as “Shoot me. Please shoot me.” kind of thing.
These things do happen. There was that story of a guy in somewhere like Egypt who got arrested and managed to twit just “Help” and from that his followers were able to help get him released.
Don’t blame yourself Paul or the follower. You both did perfectly reasonable and harmless things. It was just the combination of circumstances that made things spiral a little out of control.
I remember thinking “I hope he’s OK” but not having a clue who to contact in the UK to assist left me hoping that someone would at least call you to see that you were alright.
Glad to hear everything worked out for the best.
Wow.
I didn’t see this happen on Twitter. And since I’ve listened to every podcast you’ve ever recorded, I could “hear” your voice saying “help me” and understood your meaning immediately–along the lines of “this is frustrating, and thanks for listening.”
On the other hand, just yesterday I saw the horrific result of a freak accident.
Grateful you’re well, thanks for the reminder that life is precious, and merry Christmas to all.
I expected to see that members of your extended family saw your tweet and were less than pleased. That’s also a concern – when you put info out into the Internet, you have no control over who eventually sees it: your family, your current boss, your new boss …
I have a strong bias against the stupid, so my comment will be rather predictable…
But I really don’t think this is your fault at all paul. I saw all of your tweets in real time, and didn’t think twice – since the situation and implications were all very obvious to someone with an IQ above oh, I don’t know, 4…
I don’t mean to offend the person who called the fire brigade, but really, it was a massive error on their part, perhaps more naive than stupid, but a error nontheless.
Hi Paul i must say your post was fascinating to discover after reading an incredible article recently about the LA Fire Department using web 2.0 tools such as Twitter, google maps, Yahoo Pipes and other sources of real time information to mashup an alert centre which they claimed saved lives. So much so i actually posted a blog about this…
LA Fire Department save lives with Web 2.0
“Short of motorized fire apparatuses, this technology is the best thing that’s happened to our department in 122 years,” Humphrey says. “It holds more potential to save lives than any other civic tool.”
It really hit me that these tools have a huge value to the emergency centres and similar organisation such as Samaritans, Child Care and charity organisations looking for signs of abuse or cries for help. Your post raises the concern that these can also be taken out of context and exaggerated which could be a major drain on resources.
Have a read of my post at http://forwebsake.blogspot.com/2008/11/la-fire-department-save-lives-with-web.html
Regards
Craig
It’s always nice to be able to learn from OTHER peoples mistakes. I’ll chalk this one up to Lessons Learned. Thanks for the freebie Paul.
Wow, thanks for this post—this makes us aware of the real power behind social tools like Twitter once again.
Tweet carefully, folks!
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twitter.com/schrader