Hicham Maged's blog Acquiring knowledge lead to the acquisition of power

To Tweet or not to Tweet?

Twitter is a free text-based micro-blogging/social networking service that allows users to publish tweets. They are 140-characters posts that they share over the WWW via updating their statuses regarding whatever; starting with personal thoughts, passing by various humans issues (environmental, economical, social, political, etc) and last but not the least about the Big-Bang theory.

Since launched back in 2006, tweets are capable of linking to any 'URL'@ the WWW, something that positively placed Twitter among the top social networking list in terms of users; as of 2007 where (bloggers?) users’ interaction was not only sharing plain words but also publicizing their own sites either being personal or business.

As of 2008, politicians and main-stream media joined the game and by 2009 we see a tremendous dependency on this service in the social world and a hysterical attitude of following up public figures and celebrities who’s followers passed 1,000,000 (1 Million) users.

So what’s up, Dude?

Well, back to title of this post, I place my answer as follows: “That is not the question”. This simply means it is not ‘whether’ to use twitter or not but mainly about ‘how’ to use. Twitter is a tool that can be implemented either positively or negatively so what I am concerned about here is mainly abusing the system either technically or soically.

• Technically: via: Spammers, Site Hackers, and Terrorists, and;
• Socially: Hatred-Spreaders, & Pornography Preachers.

As for 1st abusing group, it is sad but true how the service is being abused by such bots-and-people. It’s important to take serious actions to reduce the technical side effect as much as possible. Consequently, as for the 2nd one, I am worried about how our children -in any society- might be exposed to such threats to how they are being raised which also something need some kind of control. That’s one hand.

On the other one, users who do not lay under the two mentioned categories are simply expressing their freedom of speech, which is something to be respected. That said, freedom of speech doesn’t mean insulting others just because a sect -in whatever- see that they are right and the others are wrong.

Of course, I am not calling for any kind of censorship; on the contrary, I am calling for our awareness about why in the first place we are using this service or whatever service: either in the online virtual world or the offline real one. This is something basically related to the ethical and cultural background of users that formers their perception and reflects their personality. In the matter of fact, not all of us know each other in the offline world so I can’t imagine your personality except from what you blog and Tweet!

My Tweets

Consider this post as a super-extra 140-characters tweet so here are some of mine to share:

• Quote by [Mark Twain];
• Quote by [Paulo Coelho];
• Web 2.0 Joke: Quite old one but couldn’t find the original link;
• Me, Myself and IE: The story of us. Duh! It’s clear;
• Facebook: in Real Action;
• POTUS: Literally means “President Of The United States” which how Americans shorthand it. and;
• Sha3bolla: One of Sha3ban Abdel Raheem’s songs [Arabic]

Related Posts

• Click and Run

Related Sites

• @HichamMG My Twitter Profile
• Twitter @ Wikipedia

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