Tagged: Twitter tag

#trafigura – catch it while you can

You may well know about the case last week of The Guardian versus oil trader Trafigura.  The Guardian has been running a campaign against Trafigura concerning dumping toxic waste in west Africa.  Trafigura has been very active in using legal means to prevent information about this spreading – including obtaining an injunction preventing The Guardian from reporting a question rasied on the issue in Parliament.  However, the information leaked / spread via social media, Twitter in particular, and the injunction was lifted.

My point is that this little piece of history  – i.e. the visibility of the #trafigura tag on which most of the action took place – will only last for a couple of weeks and then it will be gone.  This is because Twitter only keeps content in tags visible for this period.  I think this is a serious problem – see Twitter is making then destroying history.

A Twitter tag is McLuhan’s light bulb

I have been working on-and-off over the last few days on a BIG POST about stories and how the social media revolution is putting the story at the centre of not just communications planning, but organisational management as well.

As part of this I was re-visting the ideas of Marshall McLuhan – author of ‘Understanding Media’  and originator of  ‘medium is the message’ idea – a phrase many use, but much less understand I suspect.  Continue reading