SocialMedia404

I resisted commenting on the recent use of Twitter to cover a funeral. Now, I read that a train crash in LA may have been caused because the engineer was text messaging while driving.

At lunch today I met with a prospective client. She expressed a valid concern  about using social media and the possibility that someone would say something negative about her organization.

To me these are all the same issues, and all part of the evolution of how we, as a society use social media.

Social media tools and techniques are not inherently bad, or good, they are just tools. It’s how people use them that makes the difference. Just like the spurious logic that says that terrorists use the Internet to organize, therefore ban the Internet.  Social media tools do not generate negative comments, or cause train crashes, or make people act in poor taste. These are all individual choices and they will get made, good or bad, with or without social media’s help.

What we need to recognize is that norms and basic rules of the road need to be developed so we all have a sense of how to act on-line in the ever growing number of social situations. This has all happened before of course as we all had to learn e-mail etiquette such as always filling in the subject line, and not copying everyone on everything all the time. Next came “netiquette” or how to behave on-line generally so as not to piss off others. Now we have “smetiquette” or social media etiquette. Rules of the road for social media so as to avoid the pitfalls and problems that come with the new territory.