Twitter allows you to mark certain posts as favourites.  You may do this for a number of reasons – because you thought it was funny or interesting, because you want to reply to it later, or as a general bookmark feature

They’re Private, Right?

Wrong. You can see any Twitter user’s favourites – even if they’ve protected their tweets. You can’t see the tweets of protected users.  Here are my favourites http://twitter.com/edent/favorites

You can also see who has marked your tweets as their favourites.

What Do Your Twitter Favourites Say About You?

Let’s take a “random” example – The Royal Mail.  They only have one favourite.

njsykora

(Francis Lambourne)

It is written into the CWU constitution that Royal Mail must go on strike once every 4 months. Whiny fucks.

On 14-7-2009 14:15:53 from Echofon

Nice.

If you’re advising on social media policy – be sure to tell your clients that what they mark as a favourite are open for all to see.  What they bookmark may not create a favourable impression.

Now, there may be perfectly legitimate reasons for clicking “favourite” on an obnoxious or offensive tweet. You may want to mark it so you can show your lawyers, blog about nasty people on the Internet or even a simple mis-click with the mouse.  But in the highly fraught world of social media – it pays to think twice about how your actions may be perceived by others.

A few days ago, the Post Office – in their infinite wisdom – set their legal dogs on those running Ernest Marples.

The Post Office charges for the file that they generated which converts post codes to location.  It can cost anywhere from £1,000 to £4,000 per year to get accurate data.  That’s a price that I can’t afford – neither can many non-profits, startups or innovators.

“I take the position that the postcode file and the data set of physical coordinates that go with it are a national asset that should be freely available to any UK citizen“  – Tom Watson MP

The Guardian has shown that there is more economic benefit to the UK by setting this data free.

So, what can be done about it?

• Sign the petition to the Prime Minister
• Write a blog post, send a tweet, and tell your friends what’s happening!
• Call, email or fax your MP

The Royal Mail is in its death-throes. It is vital that data created and supported by public money is returned to the public before it is sold off to the highest bidder… only to be sold back to us.