louisgray.com - Latest Comments in louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Steve Nimmons — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:51:39 -0000

I refer to Microblogging as 'single click, no safety catch' and an easy way to put out globally distributed 'sound bites' (or should I say sound bytes!). It is an interesting idea that a fire storm can be created with rumor mongering.

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Ken Hudak — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:08:30 -0000

it's brilliant marketing. They don't even have ads up on the site, so it's all just for the notoriety.

OK, there is one small opaque weird link for medical adoptions on the bottom. But, nonetheless, it's got me thinking about Subway for dinner.

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

richrecruiter — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:01:03 -0000

Hate to say it, but I think this was an orchestrated viral marketing campaign on behalf of Subway.

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

gzino — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:00:36 -0000

Agreed but should be pointed out that a benefit of *new media* is that falsehoods can usually be much more quickly and effectively debunked because those 10s or 100s of thousands of people are also publishers with the same worldwide, instantaneous distribution ability.

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Rodney_Rumford — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:35:40 -0000

Louis,
Great post and great insight on being responsible. But the other thing to note is is the velocity and frictionless way in which data travels via twitter and nodes of users follower networks. That is the streamlined beauty of twitter.

Cheers!

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

searchgov — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:35:24 -0000

this would always be the issue with the unregulated web 2 era -- here is analogy - web 2 is like 60es nobar roack music era , which will take time to settle down

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

gregorylent — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:48:40 -0000

subway? commercials? television? jared who? what? jeez, i thought this was the tech elite ....

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Carl — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:03:14 -0000

What if you're doing your fact checking on Twitter?

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Guest — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:52:49 -0000

Good call Louis. I actually have been thinking about how we limit misinformation - especially as it relates to politics: http://blurringborders.com/...

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

tweetip — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:27:20 -0000

1st tweets for this event http://tweetip.us/lk33o

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Anthony Farrior — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:23:54 -0000

Old Media has had it's retractions too but yes unfortunately there's no "editor" to check or have someone else check the validity of breaking news. The need to be the "first" one to break the news is also a poor motivation to blurt/tweet anything newsworthy. I blame Digg for that...

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Beth — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:09:50 -0000

Practical Jokes are apart of the Attention Economy ;) 15 minutes of fame is 15 minutes of free air time.

Now that you've blogged about it, the idiot has achieved digital immortality.

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Eric Rice — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:48:40 -0000

I did the same thing... someone mentioned to me that they heard from an IRC channel that Carlin died and my first answer was "Source?" It was ETOnline first, then MSNBC/FOX, CBS, and CNN last. And yeah, I've gotten Jared jokes for a long time, that and Walt Disney's son emailing me. Of course, Disney only had daughters, lol.

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

John Dowdell — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:35:39 -0000

re: "Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter"

That headline reads strangely to me. Smart people don't believe things just on someone else's say-so.

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

James Mishra — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:36:08 -0000

If you're going to publish news that is based off a rumor, it is best that you give the readers/viewers/listeners a warning to say that you are not sure that it is 100% true.

The Jared thing didn't fool me as the first source I saw it from said it was most likely a fake.

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Mark Dykeman — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:26:36 -0000

People were talking about the "Remembering Jared" website a couple of weeks ago on Twitter, almost got me then. Kat French has a good line about waiting for MSM to validate a claim - that's really worth thinking about, even though MSM isn't perfect and is susceptible to some problems.

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:57:36 -0000

You lost me at Winer being respected. Had to make sure I wasn't reading the onion.

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Louis Gray — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:38:25 -0000

There's no question he wasn't the first person to "report" it. But he did take a little flame and make it into an inferno. 46,000 users, and a Web 2.0 rock star personality will help for sure.

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Derek Gathright — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:35:41 -0000

Looks like Kevin wasn't the source, but it sure didn't help that he tweeted it.

http://summize.com/search?m...

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Chris Rossini — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:35:04 -0000

This is where your reputation on Twitter plays a big part. If a person develops a reputation of spreading false news, they will over time 1) not be believed, 2) possibly lose followers.

So for those who care about the above factors, the incentive is to not spread false information.

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Marie — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:30:48 -0000

I could completely fall foul of this! I'm a journalist working for a tech news site in Ireland and I rely on Twitter amongst other things as a lightning fast source of breaking tech news. Although I do check my sources so probably not ...

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Gary Bacon — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:27:55 -0000

Was that because of the source? *ahem*

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Louis Gray — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:27:44 -0000

But I can still complain about it, right? :-)

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Gary Bacon — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:27:23 -0000

Word spreads fast. That is the nature of it. Once a friend told me this wasn't the case ... back to the Twitterwebs to correct it.

Re: louisgray.com: Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.

Noah David Simon — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:24:55 -0000

these guys stole the idea from me. I did the story about ten years ago in comic book form. so lame. what I really hate about the internet is how the mob steals stories because it gets around, but you don't give credit to the original idea.... I did mine is 1998! it involved intergalactic bug aliens and an advertising agency.

it is a funny idea... but it wasn't original

http://simonstudiotheatre.b...