My Experience in the Twittersphere

So I have to admit, my first week on Twitter was anything but productive. Every time I went to tweet, I kept thinking to myself "who on earth cares what I'm doing?" I then decided that maybe I should observe for a bit, and see what other people were tweeting, and what was deemed acceptable. Come my 2nd and 3rd week on Twitter I started to get the hang of it. For me, the tweets that I most enjoyed making and reading, where not the updates on what people were doing, but something cool they had found. Whether it was a new website, or an article about something social media related, even youtube videos.
When I first started on Twitter the only people I was following were the other students in my social media class, as well as people that Gee recommended. By the end though, I started finding some of my friends, and other interesting people to follow. I think this made me more involved in Twitter as well.
The one thing I didn't like, were the people that tweeted too much. I felt like every 2 seconds they had a new update, most of which to me seemed unnecessary. I think if something is truly interesting, go for it, tweet. But an update every 3 seconds is a little excessive.
There are two people that I really liked following. One was telie (Tennatte Elie). I felt like her posts were always fun to read. I liked being able to see what she was working on, and then be able to read it in the Sentinel a few days later. I think it's really neat that sometimes she asks her followers for advice or help on a piece shes working on. I also liked following askelf (E.L.F. Cosmetics). They always had tweets about makeup tips, or new products they are working on. I'm into makeup, fashion, and such, so I really liked reading what they were up to.
For the future, I think Twitter will be a great way for me to stay up to date about social media news, and see what some leaders in the field are doing (mashable,augieray etc.) Also when I hopefully end up doing PR for a fashion design company, Twitter will be the perfect way to stay in touch with customers and clients, informing them about the business, as well as monitoring attitudes towards the company.
In the end, I had about 30 tweets, and 15@ replies. I finally feel comfortable in the Twittersphere, and plan on keeping up with it.

Twitter as a Threat to Justice?

It's a common known fact that jurors taking part in a case are forbidden to discuss any information relating to a trial outside of the courtroom.Not with family, friends,not with anyone. Now however, with the popular emergence of social networking sites jurors are slipping, and discussing cases on sites like Twitter and Facebook.
As of March 17th, two verdicts in US trials are being appealed because jurors made comments about the trials on these sites.
Comments ranged from giving away the date of a court decision, and even tweeting about how much money a company was going to have to pay it's investors.
Is the legal world ready to face the new challenges that social networking sites pose? How can jurors stay from being predisposed to a certain verdict.
In the world we live in with instant communication and information, the court system could struggle in keeping trials speedy, but mostly fair.
What do you think the courts should do? Is there anyway to prevent jurors from using the wide range of social media sites during a trial?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7948845.stm

LinkedIn Popularity Grows, as Economy Declines

In the March 2nd issues of Advertising Age, I found an interesting article about the increasing popularity of LinkedIn. As unemployment rates are expected to continue to grow (to at least 9%) involvement with LinkedIn is seeing a serious increase. Two weeks ago the site hit 36 million members,and the site is growing with a rate of one member per second.People are hoping to reconnect with former colleagues and business contacts as a ways to search for leads for jobs.

Even with the helpfulness of LinkedIn, it seems to me that there are still more people looking for jobs than jobs available. Its hard to say that the increased members of LinkedIn will reflect in more jobs being found. I think that regardless of LinkedIn, and other job sites like YahooHotJobs and TheLadders, jobs will continue to be hard to come by. It will take a turn around in the economy to return the job market to a more healthy status. Until then it comes down to differentiating your self, and making employers see your personal characteristics that make you stand out.