Reporter twitters funeral of 3-year old

twitter logo Social media tools like for example microblogging platforms have a lot of advantages. News organizations like CNN use it to engage viewers in conversation and big brands like GM and Jetblue also communicate via Twitter. But there are of course occasions when these channels are not appropriate to use and Berny Morson, a reporter at The Rocky Mountain News, demonstrated poor judgement on Wednesday this week when he decided to tweet the funeral of a 3-year old boy that was killed by a pickup truck the week before.

Covering a tragic indicent like the loss of a small child, and in particular the very emotional setting during a funeral, requires a great deal of respect for the privacy of the people involved.

“We’re at this emotional service and there was this reporter non-stop text messaging,” Mike McPhee, a Denver Post reporter said. “How would you not notice?”

With tweets like “the father is sobbing over the casket”, Morson in my view clearly crosses the line for what is ethical. Just because you can, doesn’t mean that you should.

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Jaiku is back online and opens up to anyone

Jaiku, the microblogging site, has been down during the last five days due to server issues and a move to the Google data center. Five days is an enternity for a site like Jaiku and it has given us users some serious abstinence. We’ve gotten used to sharing ideas with each other, giving tips and discussing different topics. Without Jaiku the discussion tried to move elsewhere to places like FriendFeed or Twitter, but it wasn’t really the same thing.

When Jaiku now is back online it has opened up to everyone. Previously you had to get an invite, which were limited, by an existing user. Now there are unlimited invites so anyone can register. It will be interesting to see if the discussion among my existing friends will pick up on the same level as last week and if we will see an onrush of new users. If so, will Jaiku be able to handle the increase in traffic?

Footnote: You will find me here on Jaiku.

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Brands on Twitter and Jaiku

More and more businesses and organizations are on Twitter, the micro-blogging site. Fluent Simplicity has a long list of brands on Twitter. My employer, Burson-Marsteller, is not on the list but can be found on http://twitter.com/bmdigital. I can also add NRK and GCI Communique, both from Norway.

So, who’s on Jaiku? Let’s create a list, I suspect it will be pretty short. This is what I’ve got so far. Add more in the comments or by email.

Media
Aftonbladet: http://aftonbladet.jaiku.com/
Expressen: http://expressen.jaiku.com/
Sydsvenskan: http://sydsvenskan.jaiku.com/

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Social bookmarking news

Here are two stories about social bookmarking that migh be worth sharing:

Problogger gets banned and unbanned from StumbleUpon. Maybe it was just his email that got him unbanned in less than two hours, but the responses from social media friends via Twitter, Plurk, Digg and email probably also helped.

del.icio.us launches new faster version of the site with better search and new design. The site also now redirects you from for example del.icio.us/kullin to delicious.com/kullin which seems a bit unnecessary, but maybe they’ve finally realized that the original domain was too complicated. You need to log on to your account again in order to save links, which might be a problem for users that don’t remember their password. Another downside with the new design is that you don’t see all your tags on the screen without scrolling, but apart from that the new design looks good.