DISQUS

Your Name*Molly Chris,
That was my EXACT question! I'll wait for an answer. Of course I could look it up to see if it's been answered elsewhere if I weren't too lazy to do so. :-P

Alex Luft Those numbers are huge, indeed. But do you think that brand recognition is going to be the thing that drives some users away from the site? The fact that I'm NOT on YouTube and my player doesn't look like the YouTube player (and doesn't have the logo) makes it all that much cooler that I'm on Vimeo (for example).

But I have to say, that the YouTube community (which grows from its numbers) is super-important and super-huge. I do hope they can monetize it. I'm sure they have tricks. We're just in the beginning here. Let's see where this goes in two years.

Ernesto What does that have to do with twittering though? If we all ran our businesses according to what our lawyers said we should and shouldn't do, we wouldn't be able to do business.

Lawyers are all risk averse... up until they get into litigation on your behalf, and then it's protracted expenditures (what a business model right?)

Business is about managing risk.

So everyone, don't buy into the "twitter is scary" hype. Just like email, chat, websites, blogs... if it will get into trouble saying it... then don't write it.

If you have honest, fair, business practices and do the best you can, you should be too busy to get into trouble online.

Want real tips? Don't anything online that you wouldn't face to face...

Don't hate on people, just ignore (thus avoid defamation lawsuits).

Don't tell people company secrets (thus avoid early terminations, breach of NDAs etc.).

Don't tell everyone your personal stuff (thus avoid "invasion of privacy").

Don't steal stuff online (thus avoid copyright violations)

Don't misrepresent yourself (thus avoid trademark/fraud accusations)

The rest is easy. So go ahead, twitter... nothing to be afraid of.

Roger We're on the same page here. Basically, if you conduct yourself ethically there is no reason to fear your Twitter activity. The scaremongering of how Twitter can be harmful is Luddite thinking that does not develop the technology. We need positive models with best practices and recommended protocols rather than a list of don'ts.