Social Networking

Everyone's A Star

"At a wedding in Lake George, N.Y., this summer, a middle-school math teacher was chatting with another guest, Reid Rosenthal, a finalist in the reality series “The Bachelorette.” Someone snapped a photo.

"The teacher, who requested anonymity to avoid being teased by her students, was surprised a few days later when she received a notice from Facebook that she had been tagged in a photo. Mr. Rosenthal was also tagged.

"Soon the creepy e-mail messages started, the teacher said.

“Oh, my God, do you know him?” wrote one gaga “Bachelorette” fan who somehow found the photo. “I need to be set up. I’d be perfect for him.”

“It was irritating,” the teacher, 30, said. “I would never do something like that.”

"The photo was quickly untagged and now the teacher has strengthened her Facebook privacy settings, preventing strangers from viewing her profile." NYT

Twitter Haiku

Twitter's 140-character limit (and to some extent text messaging) challenges us to say everything we mean in the fewest words possible without compromising meaning, and has spawned some fascinating linguistic constructs.

Which can really be fun for the hardcore Wordie.

For example, one of my writerly friends recently closed a Tweet with:

"Kthanxbai"