Comments on: Hey Twitter, keep the shades off

The microblogging service is having its Ed Sullivan moment. This could be bad if its founders aren't circumspect about it.

[catincal]

Love the pop culture reference, but isn't it the drummer that Tom Hanks makes wear the sunglasses? :) Tom Everett Scott's best role ever.

[nickyykcin]

Err, if you're going to reference a movie... make sure you get the facts straight. It wasn't the singer who wore the shades, it was the drummer (and his nickname happened to be shades).

[garbonzo17]

Uh, yeah, it was the drummer...

[mattonfire]

The bubble may be about to burst for twitter, and some could say has already burst for facebook (because my mom joined).
But social networking is here to stay and will continue to change the way people communicate and how companies do business.
There have been a lot of bands with one hit wonders. The true test is to stay relevant and keep making music that people want to hear.

[jabberwolf]

The bubble already burst,
I think ( at least hope) people learn that information and facts and not reliable just because of popularity.

Twitter= The stupid tweeting, and twits listening.

[waderockett]

So who else read this post and immediately bought the song? Caroline, I suspect that if you'd included an affiliate link you could have made some serious coin today.

[caroline.mccarthy]

I actually bought the song on Amazon MP3 immediately after publishing the post. Darn, guess I missed an opportunity for more pizza money! :-)

[nyclocationscoutus]

the more Twitter goes mainstream - larger user base - the more it becomes attractive to spammers and scammers and blackhat haxxors - case in point: Windows / IE. I already block more new followers than I allow to follow. it really is skeevyspace out there in areas.

[epiczero17]

The issue you have with Ashton and Anderson Cooper, is the same issue I have with your botched pop culture reference. Don't call the kettle black.

[Wisewinston]

Ashton Kutcher on Oprah: "We're at a place now with social media where one person's voice can be as powerful as an entire news network." Please explain to me why this is a good thing or more importantly why this is not a dangerous development? Forget Kutcher and CNN antics for a minute. This is important. From one point of view the Long Tail is beautiful, and giving people easy access to production has been a huge advance, but from a long-range societal point of view we see our cultural institutions and journalistic standards being swept by the wayside under a wave of user generated content that can't possibly replicate the standards of authorities like newspapers. People love to bash newspapers but compare it to the drivel and shoddy sourcing of most citizen journalists on the internet. I mean, c'mon...

I used to be all for the democratization of media. Now I'm hopelessly unsure. Maybe I've been reading too much Andrew Keen recently, but I'm starting to wonder why people are embracing these societal changes without asking any questions. Don't even get me started on behavioral advertising and how radically this will change society. Everyone's rejoicing while journalistic institutions are failing, believing the crowd will take the place of mainstream media and do just as good of a job. Maybe they will, who knows, but this argument should be front and center instead of us all just continuing to skip along our merry way, posting more anonymous videos and engaging in more acts of digital narcissism. From a concerned Technophile. @Wisewinston

[mb99]

Exactly right. We are raising a generation that seems to think virtually everything in print must be true while simultaneously lowering the standards of who can put things "in print". I have serious reservations about where all this is going to lead. At the very least we need to seriously increase the emphasis on teaching critical thinking skills in our schools to counter the lack of journalistic standards in the information stream.

[Mac User Too]

I would not fret over the democratization of media. In the past, our news was presented to us as the media saw fit. They omitted, slanted and hyped, but they did so with 'excellent journalistic standards'. Today, we have many sources for our news, some traditional, some not, but it is self-correcting. The savvy readers are developing a healthy degree of skepticism and erroneous reporting gets called out, more or less, immediately.

[Disabled2Independent]

It's also rather naive to take 'one voice as powerful as many' at face value. Ashton Kutcher is a celebrity. It hasn't been accurate to say he's just 'one voice' for some time now - this is just the latest technological amplifier.

If you want to find out what one voice can really [easily] do, start a blog with your deepest thoughts and watch it immediately explode... you may be waiting a while. Unless you're brilliant in a way people like AND have some smarts about marketing yourself, you're still a silent single person. It may be easier to reach more people, but it's nuts to say that *any* one person can easily reach many many people without something catchy, explosive, authoritative, etc.

[JournalRhythm]

Now all that remains is a case of ding-dong-dutch
to Mister Turner and to tell Larry King that "I told you such"
i guess the moral of the story is I'd get more views
writing about Ashton Kutcher rather than about news

To hear me sing my full summary, watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHkDmKx435k

[clsmithj]

This is one internet fad that I'm proud to say I don't want any part of.

[omidalavi12]

So you want to "follow" Oprah or this guy. That is why we are getting behind. Instead of being ahead in science and technology we want to "tweet", we want to "follow" so we can check what our our "leader" reads so we can read the same. Boring and Stupid! This is my $0.02

[PedroDCardoso]

Here's an article that comes at this from the same perspective, in a more "direct" manner. Think you'll like it...but I am biased, as I wrote it...but agree. This is "abuse" of a platform by those who it was not really intended for. Twitter is for the people, not the mega stars to exploit and manipulate for their financial advantage.

http://tinyurl.com/d4ep9c

[sockeye35]

Anderson Cooper is probably an o.k. guy, but as a newscaster? Honestly who can take him or that entire group seriously? The other night he was on there for about 5 minutes talking with that cute girl Erica Hill about Bristol Palin's sex life. You would never find Ted Koppel doing that. I've seen Anderson Cooper as the drama hound he is ever since he wanted to be viewed kayaking down Bourbon Street during Katrina. This Twitter thing is no different and for all I care Ashton and AC can tweet each other until their thumbs fall off.

[ToTheChase]

Kutcher and Cooper are perfect dope mates. Both twits who reply on charm, silver hair and hats for attention and not much brains. Kutcher is sometimes described as "popular actor," but he's relegated himself to a camera pitchman that uses outdated, uncool phrases in ads, like "boo-ya." They both seem desperate for a hipness pat on the head from 14-year-olds, so maybe some group therapy would help. Oh, and Kutcher in his Pledge to the President, seriously thought no one besides he and his friends knew how to properly dispose of our "number two." What petrie dish grew this bubble boy?

Someone picked that petrie dish from the recycle bin.

[blafouille]

yes but at which quantity of carbon monoxyde emission...?

[sbmeirow]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-daum18-2009apr18,0,7710376.column

"If Twitter were a person, it would be an emotionally unstable person. It would be that person we avoid at parties and whose calls we don't pick up."

[sbmeirow]

Ashton Kutcher is the King of Twits (losers)!

[ps84]

" waving posters with crudely drawn fail-whales " -- awesome!

[CrabbyGolightly]

Tweets Turn To Snarls As The Big Dog 'O' Enters Twitter Pack. http://tinyurl.com/ck3gyp

[Fatesrider]

As a source for serious updates of breaking local news, traffic reports, weather alerts and other events in which a large number of people need to be kept informed, I can understand the value of a service such as Twitter. Beyond that, however, I see little to recommend it. The real trouble is it's rarely used for such purposes. Narcissistic egotists with inferiority complexes who demand constant, personal validation by how many 'followers' they have seem to dominate Twitter's use. And while it could be said at least we know where these 'twits' are, the fact remains that, by and large, because of the sheer number of vacant and irrelevant 'tweets' sent daily, Twitter is utterly useless. The sad part is there are enough participants in this dark look into the human psyche to perpetuate this 'service' for some time to come.

[susiecheng]

Hi Caroline,
'
Thanks for this article.

It is good to know what other people think of twitter. Twitter is a good place for us to meet like minded people where we can't meet in our daily life. I like twitter and I promote it to all my friends and business associates. I use twitter to connect with people who I want to communicate with, it is not for the sake of CNN or any Ashton Kutcher. I think everyone has different reason.

Great article!

Best regards,

Susie Cheng
www.twitter.com/susiecheng