My boss sent our new media team this article today. Here’s the headline: “Rocky Mountain News plan to Twitter another funeral canceled after staff complaint.” Twittering at a funeral, especially the funeral of a 3-year old is just sick. I’m sorry, I’m all for free speech, free press, new media, etc., but having a reporter Twitter from a funeral just smacks of a huge lack of journalistic integrity.  I’m glad that the editors bowed out of doing it from more funerals. I think that as new and social media press on, people are going to have to define what is appropriate and what is not. If you want to Twitter from an event, fine, but a funeral goes well beyond the pale. Wake up Rocky Mountain News.

I understand the value of Twitter, but I would like to remain a holdout as long as possible. My reason in general is that I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for more text minutes so that my friends can tell me via Twitter when they take a shit. 

Anyway, I’m glad to see that NASA is embracing microblogging. It’s pretty cool. Hm, NASA can Twitter, but I can’t get permission to finalize a channel on YouTube for my flying organization. Bureaucracy. Yay.

I thought this new social media site is a pretty great idea. Blood recipients in Canada can share their stories about how a donor saved their life. The concept sounds simple, and is, but I think is pretty poignant when you realize the idea behind the site (hint: lifesaving).

After recently writing about the time suck factor of Web 2.0, Jenny from the Farm brought up my reluctance to sign up for Twitter. She joined recently and just registered her phone and here’s what she had to say about the experience:

Because of my new found love for Twitter, I went ahead and added a 250 message/month plan to my cell phone plan. I thought, 250, yeah that should be enough. Well, I recently checked my usage and I was up to 270, and the billing cycle wasn’t over yet. But, I think I like Twitter so much that I’ll upgrade even further to unlimited messaging. And then there’s the time I spend reading text messages and responding to them. It seems like there are some afternoons when my phone does nothing but alert me to a new message.

Damn! 270 texts for a partial billing cycle!!?? Yowza! I’ll get to the text charges momentarily, but first off, I don’t think I can handle my phone going off nonstop with friends telling me that they just ate a biscuit or used 3 sugars in their coffee instead of 4. Thanks to a post by Saxby’s Fifth Avenue, I read a few tweets that people post on Twitter and discovered that is some of the stuff people post. The other problem is that I’d be the idiot telling everybody else all the minutia of my life. Trust me, I’d tell you if I was just in the hopper. Does anybody want that? No.

Now then, onto the texting charges. Up until 6 months ago I didn’t even pay for text charges and I was quite pleased about that. I was getting free unlimited texting from Verizon as part of a class action lawsuit (I LOOOOOVE class actions!). Once the terms of the agreement expired I noticed a huge jump in my phone bill. I realized, “DAMN! Texting is expensive and suddenly everybody is using it more and more.” So I just kept on with my charges and bitched about it regularly and did nothing else. Finally, it was time for a new phone a couple weeks ago and I asked the lady what they have for text plans. I got some deal that gives 100 texts a month for $5. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay much more than that for texting! So another reason that I would not sign up for Twitter is that it’s not a free service if you factor in the cost of texting. Plus I think the names Twitter and tweet are really stupid. Honestly. Hell, I don’t particularly care for the word “blog.” That’s technology for you.

We had a pop quiz in class this past Wednesday. Garrett announced it in the morning via Twitter. Does that kind of advance knowledge make Twitter worthwhile? Nope. Not even with announced pop quiz capabilities! 

And on a final note, Garrett, what is with the chocolate milkshake addiction? (Click the link to Saxby’s above to see what I’m talking about) As someone who has suffered the indignities of lactose intolerance, I guess I just don’t understand milkshakes. So be it.