Trump & Twitter: Don't Delete ⛔️, Stop ❤️s & Retweet 🔃

The President of our country is now threatening war on Twitter weekly and it's scary as hell! 

I get the dilemma: Twitter thinks it's doing a public service by providing direct access to the news worthy leader of our country; 45's critics say it's an abuse of the platform.

Solution: Let him tweet (so we have the record for history, for Mueller, and for monitoring) but stop the spread of his tweets by cutting off the ability for him to get ❤️s and retweets.

This compromise allows him to go on record but not use Twitter to spread the threats/war speech.

It's hard to believe Chief of Staff Kelly, FLOTUS (with her anti-bullying campaign) and his children have yet to stop this destructive habit but since they haven't we need to patch together a fix that will stop the spread while keeping an eye on what we need to know as a nation.


Note: Probably good idea for him not to be able to retweet any non-verified accounts as well but let's start with baby-steps.

💡Twitter [TV] Channels: Fun, Fans & Profits

Twitter [tv] Channels from Joy Meredith

The original post from 10/10/2013 has been replaced with above slidedeck.

View sample channels: [Scandal] [DWTS] [Shark Tank] [AMAs] [Nashville]

...and let me know what you think @JoyMeredith :)

Tom's Twitter Tainted By Troll

I love Twitter and adore Tom Peters so you can imagine how disappointed I was when last week he almost stopped tweeting because he was being harassed by one kooky follower. When he posted his intention to leave I along with many many others chimed in: why didn't he simply block this jerk? Seemed too simple of an answer and apparently it was. Turns out this stalker was setting up multiple accounts for the sole purpose of hassling Tom, as soon as he blocked them another would pop up.

Aside from the annoyance that one unbalanced person was going to ruin the rest of our fun interacting directly with Tom, it made me wonder what kind of person has this kind of time on their hands and what's with all the hostility? Then I realized, as did Tom, that it doesn't matter- there are some nutty people in the world and it would be a shame to let them spoil all our fun.

But that said, this is a real issue that social media sites are going to need to step up and handle better. Blocking, un-friending, etc are all good for the casual annoyer but for a persistant pest or heaven forbid a more menacing scary threat there needs to be a way to address the situation more proactively. Twitter and the other sites are going to need to implement a stronger harassment barrier. I'm not sure of the legality of it all but there should be a way to block the IP address so that even if someone makes up another email or account attempt it would block them from signing on to the service permanently.

If Tom, a fully grown accomplished adult, can be worn down by this sort of thing I can only imagine what a teen or more vulnerable person would have to deal with. There are obviously reasons people want/need anonymity and privacy for certain types of interactions on the web but there should be a way to control who comes at us too.

To Catch a Predator caught and hopefully made online child predators fear they would be arrested and exposed - maybe it's time for the same treatment for these trolls and expose and shame them into stopping the bullying. There have been many cases of teens being bullied into suicide so it is not a victimless annoyance. And even if they are not life threatening in nature, we should be able to go online and interact without being driven away by a few badly behaved bullies.

Emergency Tweet Stop

Tweeting to me is connecting with people and finding out the latest information going on in the world. People and companies might have different uses which is their business but when something like yesterday's bombing at the Boston Marathon happens it should be a flag up that you need to either rethink you social media plans or build in an emergency tweet stop. It was annoying to say the least when trying to get information on a friend running the marathon that all these scheduled tweets kept showing up in my feed. My annoyance is not the point though... your branding is. 

Gary Vaynerchuk summed it up best:

If you must use someone else to tweet or use an auto program (which you totally don't have to!) make sure you have plan when a national tragedy is striking. Out of respect, out of decency, and selfishly out of your own branding value: don't tweet when others are looking for news, mourning, or trying to really connect- otherwise you look like an ass.

Attention TweetDeck: My suggestion is to have an auto-stop on scheduled tweets in times of national crisis. This can be an option that is chosen at set-up and sends a notification to user that their tweets have been stopped due to X-reason which can be restarted easily. Or a second option is a notification that gives them a heads-up there is a national tragedy/disaster and that they have option to reschedule all tweets to resume X-hours later. I believe this would be a highly useful and appreciated option for your users. 

Hip To Be Square

Enjoyed this 60 Minutes segment on Twitter and Square Founder Jack Dorsey. The short version:

Geeks Are Taking Over The World: It used to be the engineer/programmer types were behind the scenes not on magazine covers or flattering profile pieces. Not any more.

Art + Engineering = The Killer App: Jack uses the Golden Gate Bridge as a metaphor for how building in simplicity and beauty allows the mechanics of something as complex as a commuter bridge to fade away. Good design makes for pleasant and seamless ease of use-- e.g.: Twitter & Square. Steve lives on.

Hands Free Money: We are on the verge of hands free purchasing. When transactions are just taken care of it makes us feel like our life is just working. I don't think we're at the point of seamless lifestyles yet, but we're getting a taste of it- and it is nice.

We're All Merchants: The days of needing a real register and store are over. Got a phone, you're in business!

Jack might be a square but he's already contributed a huge amount to changing the way we communicate with each other and deal with money. I, myself, love Twitter and just started accepting payments with Square. Not sure NYC should rule this guy out.