After my knee jerk reaction (as an educator, I feel pretty strongly that education is the answer to many of our problems), I've been reconsidering. I suppose the founders of ThinkUp could make the argument that they are educating via their service as well. And to be fair, the company does provide services (additional analytics) beyond helping people "act like less of a jerk online."
Still, my thoughts are that unless someone just doesn't want to think for themselves, and is unable to learn about the many free tools that are available to provide analytics for them in their use of twitter and facebook, most can manage without a service like this.
Perhaps I'm thinking too narrowly, I'd be interested in hearing thoughts from others on this topic. Feel free to comment.
(Full disclosure: I am beginning my fourth year as an adjunct instructor for master's level students on professional Identity management.)
2 comments:
I guess many folks are very tuned into what they say in each individual social post (I often spend way to long on each one.. trust me) but they might not see the forest for the trees. I signed up for the service and one of the first tidbits… nearly 1/2 of my tweets include one or more "me/I/my/"… Maybe I should have known… but I was surprised a good number of my posts could have been read as being mostly about me. So, like you I remain skeptical. However, I'm interested in what others - including analytical systems like this - have to say about my social media posts.
Thanks for the comment, Shawn. Good points!
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