Twitter’s ‘Tweet Lifters’ Take Credit Where Credit Isn’t Due

Twitter’s ephemeral nature means content comes and goes in most Twitter feeds at the speed of light. As it flashes by you see the good, the bad and, if you are unlucky or accidentally follow an idiot, the ugly.

So taking a tweet and reposting it without crediting the source is no big deal, right?

It’s only Twitter. There’s so much stuff flying around who will notice, right?

Wrong!

People do notice and you will be caught. Your “tweet lifting” (a term my friend @markfrisk coined) will be noted.

You may be called on it publicly (the best case scenario as it may make you stop the lifting or whatever you want to call it). Or you may simply suffer a silent, but deadly decline in your reputation.

Take the case of someone I follow, someone I know personally and someone I once would have trusted completely as both an authoritative voice in social media and a “good person.” We’ll call this individual Person A.

Person A is a believer in Twitter and its power to connect people and build collective knowledge. Person A has taught classes on the topic of Twitter. In the past month I have noticed that Person A reposts items that I and others have posted – usually within minutes, but sometimes hours later.

Person A does this without crediting the original source and sometimes with minimal or no changes to the original tweet.

How do I know this? Obviously I can’t be 100 percent sure, but the evidence has me at 99.9 percent. For example, a tweet this past weekend on a somewhat obscure topic was reposted six minutes later. A Google search found four stories on the exact topic, two of which ranked higher in the Google search than the one I chose.

I had chosen the story to link to because I liked the way it was written. Could it be mere coincidence that Person A reposted a link to that exact story just minutes later. It could. But this has been a pattern for several weeks.

In another example the bit.ly shortened URL I had in a tweet was repeated in a Person A tweet about an hour later, although some of the tweet’s language had been changed.

In yet another example the entire tweet, word-for-word and with the exact same bit.ly shortened URL showed up, uncredited, five hours later.

I think I know enough about URL shorteners to understand that an identical shortened URL would not be created by bit.ly.

In his blog postSharing Content (Anatomy of A Tweet And A Retweet) Francisco Rosales spells out just how important attribution is. And I agree with him when he says it is a “critical piece of the tweet”.

The bottom line is this: Your reputation as a “good person” on Twitter is on the line: Don’t be a “tweet lifter” on Twitter.

Examples:

Posted at 11:30 a.m. Friday, Feb. 19, 2010

Reposted without credit at about 4:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 19, 2010

To read more from Francisco Rosales go to his blog at socialmouths. To follow him on Twitter go to @socialmouths

Possibly related posts:
Twetiquette: 10 basics for Twitter politeness
The Twitter Term “Twanker”

The Twitter Juggernaut

Social Media’s fastest growing platform won’t slow down

Twitter continues to tweet up a storm and seems unstoppable in its drive to be the No. 1 Social Media platform.

The latest evidence comes in a poll on LinkedIn that rated Twitter more important to business than LinkedIn! This in a time when LinkedIn is widely considered to be “The Social Media network for business.”

In his excellent summary of the survey, “Poll: Business People Say Twitter More Important Than LinkedIn” Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb points out that the poll question may have been tilted against LinkedIn. As asked in the poll, the question was: “What is the most important new platform for brands to master?" And he quibbles that if the question had been "what do you prefer" that LinkedIn would have fared better. Nonetheless Twitter did come out on top in a poll on LinkedIn.

And if you’re looking for more evidence that Twitter will be the Social Media App of the Year in 2009 and likely the No. 1 Social Media platform in 2010 (if not sooner), here's the latest:

- Twitter is the fastest-growing major website in the U.S., according to USA Today in its May 25 story Twitter has millions tweeting in public communication service. It had 17 million registered users in the U.S. in April — up 3,000% from a year ago, according to market researcher ComScore

- Twitter founder Evan Williams points out that in a single year Twitter has gone from 1.6 million to 32.1 million users. In a CNBC interview Twitter's growth 'just getting started he says: "We think we can grow a long term sustainable valuable business here, and we're just getting started."

- A Squidoo lens called Twitterapps lists 275 Twitter applications and believes it does not have anywhere near all of them covered.

- When an old school media publication such as Time magazine devotes space to 10 Ways Twitter Will Change American Business you know the Twitterverse has reached into every corner of our existence.

And on the subject of Twitter’s universal reach Brian Solis has posted an excellent visualization of the Twitterverse on his blog PR 2.0. I highly recommend it.

Whether Twitter is the No. 1 Social Media platform now or later, one thing is certain its rapid growth and adoption for all kinds of purposes will not slow anytime soon.

Related posts
Twetiquette: 10 basics for Twitter politeness
What Twitter isn’t

What Twitter isn’t

Or, why the Twittersphere is nothing to be feared

Much has been written about the booming popularity of Twitter. Some writers are even now trying to claim some cool, deep-thought cache by professing to being embarrassed by their involvement with Twitter.

For a shining example of this you need only read Virginia Heffernan’s Let Them Eat Tweets: Why Twitter Is A Trap in the The New York Times Magazine of April 19.

So, as Twitter applications breed faster than rabbits and Big Media falls all over itself to mention Twitter at least once an hour and even La Diva Oprah has blessed the Twittersphere with her presence you have to wonder why some writers are rushing to distance themselves from Twitter.

Is it fear? (If all these amateurs keep writing what’s a pro to do?) Maybe it’s jealousy? (Not enough people are paying attention to me)

I really can’t begin to understand the visceral forces at work, but in response to Ms. Heffernan’s cry for help (for that is surely what it was) I humbly offer:

What Twitter IS:

A simple means of connecting. Ms. Heffernan lists “connections” such as the Internet, Skype and texting before saying “Only the poor — defined broadly as those without better options — are obsessed with their connections.” She seems mortified with the most basic human desire for connectivity making us seem “poor.” Really? I think our longing for connections is what makes us richly human and Twitter makes this connecting easier than ever.

A way to add value to our lives. This is clearly not understood by Ms. Heffernan who confesses: “I myself mostly post links to this column, hoping that the self-promotion is transparent enough that people can easily ignore a link or click it if they’re curious.” Surely there are other things of value our fearless writer might share. Look, if I start following someone on Twitter who only uses it for self-promotion, it’s very simple: I STOP following them.

A way to share the human experience. If you’re on Twitter you want something … and maybe you can provide or share something. Not as Ms. Heffernan claims are we living “on the Web in these hideous conditions … because … we can’t afford privacy,” but rather we connect on the Web because we want more from life. Twitter and other social networking tools allow us to learn from each other … across the entire planet.


What Twitter IS NOT:

A substitute for human interactions. Ms. Heffernan writes that “a surprising number of people now seem to tweet about how much they want to be free from encumbrances like Twitter.” If life on the Social Web is truly interfering with your life in the real world that is not Twitter’s fault … you surely had issues long before Twittering was part of your life.

A static social networking space Twitter has evolved from posts about “banal stuff, like sandwiches” to people sharing the things they love and they hate, sharing news, links and even recommendations. Ms Heffernan seems perturbed about this turn of events.

A way to get rich or at least out of poverty. You see this is Ms. Heffernan’s real issue. She is poor … or at least not rich. Tucked away in the top third of her piece is the line: “In other words, I’m not sure I’d use Twitter if I were rich.” And the piece concludes with her applauding a tweet that says “I wish I was rich and had personal assistants.” “Right on,” Ms. Heffernan sings.

So, the truth comes out: Our fearless writer really only needs to be rich to be happy and Twitter-free. Now that is a deep sentiment I’m sure all of us can embrace.