Wednesday Twitter: Leavitt Leaves It, AIM 2-Ways, and Anthem BCBS?

Leavitt Leaves It

I'm surprised every week at the flurry of news having to do with how sports and Twitter are intermingling (and often fighting). This week has South Florida's Jim Leavitt quitting Twitter:

Leavitt has decided to quit in part because he found out a few of his players were tweeting on the way to and even in the locker room before Saturday's game against Wofford. Carlton Mitchell was updating his Twitter feed during the rain delay before kickoff.

"It just seems like something they probably shouldn't do," Leavitt told the Times. "I'm not going to use Twitter anymore. ... If I'm going to ask my players not to probably do it during that time, I'm just going to stop. My twittering days are over. .. .That's it for me, and hopefully it is at certain times for other players. We'll see."

Again, we're dealing with the advance warning, the threat that someone might let someone slip. And as I've said before, restrictions like that are in place because not every Twitter user is the brightest bulb in the bunch. Honestly, I'm mildly surprised that there hasn't been a college or professional sports team that's made the news because of a firing based on dumping extra-secret information at a very wrong time.

While it may be unfortunate for fans and a little extreme in my view, Leavitt is at least walking the walk well before he talks the talk to his team.


AIM on the 2-Way, and I Don't Mean Cincinnati Chili and Noodles

I can't say that this is huge news, but as someone who has been a Trillian addict for years now, I'm a little detached from what each IM client has been doing individually. Here's the skinny: in July, AIM upgraded their service to include Twitter and Facebook feeds. The rub? You could only read the feed, not update through the interface. Why anyone would release a service at half o'clock is beyond me. But they did go ahead and implement that pesky extra stuff everyone was asking for a week or two ago. And now you can update Twitter and Facebook through AIM.

As I may have already mentioned: just get Trillian.


BCBS FAIL

To avoid confusion, please allow me to begin by stating that the annotative context of the article lies here:

Currently, Anthem is piloting a program in which it uses Twitter to identify members who may have questions or concerns about their health benefits. Twitter allows Anthem to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, real time conversation, and respond to each tweet about Anthem. Members can follow Anthem on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AnthemHealth.

Okay, that's a notable item. Additionally, they have a Facebook fan page to implement discussions and a YouTube channel to ...channel their expertise and advice.

The Twitter and Facebook pieces make me somewhat nervous when talking about health care. I'm guessing that ABCBS has some generally knowledgeable folks in charge of owning their conversation online (though you may question that after the next paragraph), but there are a bevvy of folks on both Twitter and Facebook that do not understand either how to use the services or how visible their personal use can be. And then one angry woman does an @AnthemHealth Tweet about why they won't pick up the cost of [enter embarrassing personal surgery here] and wonders why her tweet is on a dozen schadenfreude websites and people have stopped following her.

Oh, don't change that channel! We've got one more level!

Because this if from Reuters we can assume it is a published news release - verbatim - from Anthem ("SOURCE Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Wisconsin"). And that's where the connotative nature of this article reveals itself.

Not just for teens anymore - social networking and media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are being used by adults to interact with their friends, families and to gain information.

I know. It's like listening to your mother karaoke "Baby Got Back." The most recent research on Twitter showed teens are much more a minority user than previously assumed. But even at that level of media ignorance, language assuming Twitter as EVAR a huge teen/tween phenomenon pushes past a n00b label to "You do not now - nor have you ever - understood what this is about. Please stop embarrassing yourself, leave, and self-educate."

Wait. More?

Anthem is also launching a brand channel on YouTube (www.youtube.com/AnthemHealthConnects) to create a vital and viral community around health and wellness.

Oh, and your uncle dials up "I Will Survive." Just because you have a YouTube channel does not mean that you are doing anything viral. Yes, YouTube videos can go viral, but it is generally because it is something nasty, sick, painful, heroic, incredibly annoying, or unbelievable. I'm guessing Anthem's professional and informational outlook would prevent them from anything that had the potential of going viral.

My biggest hope about this article is that it was not written with the advice or input of the team that is heading up this social media expansion, and that the author just doesn't get it (not that that says much for their collaborative organization). If not, then Anthem might want to brace for a very serious Epic Fail.

Wednesday Twitter: Tennis Balk, Emergency Use, Surgery Window

Roddick Tweets Back

From the NYT:

It did not take long for Andy Roddick to respond to rules posted by the Tennis Integrity Unit regarding players’ use of Twitter during the United States Open. His vehicle? Twitter, of course.

“I think its lame the U.S. Open is trying to regulate our tweeting,” he wrote Friday night. “I understand the on-court issue but not sure they can tell us if we can’t do it on our own time … we’ll see.”

Another sports figure being Tweet-blocked by the governing body of the sport. It's only a matter of time before every sport has some written policy about Twitter and social media. He goes on to state that you'd "have to be a moron to send ‘inside info’ through a tweet." But that's the problem and reason in and of itself: rules and guidelines like that are in place to rope in the lowest common brainpan.

But I can also understand where Roddick is coming from. Especially in tennis, every player is a free agent and you're as valuable as two things: your record and your PR campaign. For anyone with an agent worth their salt, they recognize that Twitter is a part of the popularity package and limiting it could literally hit in the wallet.


Tweet in Case of Emergency

The Safe America Foundation:

a national safety group working with the U.S. government, announced yesterday that text messaging, social networking sites, and Twitter could help families stay in touch in the wake of a disaster. Although Twitter hasn't always been known for its stability, in emergency situations when phone lines and other traditional communication avenues are down, social networking sites like it and others could turn into reliable backup methods for reaching loved ones.

While I wouldn't necessarily rely on Twitter alone, it is an interesting idea to - extrapolated - keep in touch during a disaster by using various social media. GMail went down earlier this week. Where was the confirmation? Twitter.

Unfortunately, all of my forms of communication rely on 3 things: landline, cell signal, and electricity. Electricity going out (and it seems the most fragile) knocks out the router, therefore any access to the internet. Cell signal and data package would still allow for internet access and phone calls, but with no internet at home, most of those channels would be packed, leaving the most reliable communication to the tiny SMS packets that can pop through much more easily. If that goes down? I may be one of the only people in my family that has both a corded phone (no electric dependency) and an active land line, but I'd be calling people without corded phones or through the clogged cell network.

Good advice to expand resources, but how realistic is it, really?


A Window Into the Surgical Process

This was a heartfelt story of one of the hundreds/thousands of ways Twitter can be used, from the AP:

[Monna Cleary] underwent a hysterectomy and uterine prolapse surgery, had given her OK for hospital spokeswoman Sarah Corizzo to post a play-by-play of the operation on Twitter, a social-networking site that lets users send out snippets of information up to 140 characters long using cell phones or computers.

Corizzo sent more than 300 tweets over more than three hours from a computer just outside the operating room's sterile field. Nearly 700 people followed them. Eight tweeted questions to Corizzo about the procedure and a Cleary family member commented on how fascinating it was to follow the surgery.

When the haters sneer at you and say "Yeah, but what's it good for?" you can link them to this article.

What's Up With a Kidney Donation Post?

I know this has nothing to do with web design, SEO, social media, or technical gadgets. However, my father and sister, a little over a year and a half ago, donated their kidneys to my uncle and a receiver from West Virginia. It was a cross-donation.

Here's the skinny: My father wanted to donate his kidney to my uncle - his wife's brother, 10 years in dialysis - but was not a match. My little sister stepped up and got tested and was a match for my uncle. But since my dad still wanted to give, he had his tests compared and sent out and matched a guy in WV. That guy came up for the surgery, four went under, two came out one kidney less, two woke up with something that would make their lives better for a very long time. The compatibility was so good that my uncle's kidney flushed pink with blood and started working immediately on the operating table. A year and a half later, everything is good, and both donatees are living a much better life because of it.

But this post isn't to brag or blog about my father and sister. They were small potatoes compared to this story:

Kidney Paired Donation: 16 Patients, Four Hospitals, Four States
Henry Ford Hospital is the first in Michigan to participate in a domino donor kidney transplant in which eight patients received a new kidney from eight unrelated donors at four hospitals in four states.

Surgeries were performed on four separate days at Henry Ford, The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis as donated kidneys were transported by airplane to their intended recipients under a Kidney Paired Donation.

It is believed to be the largest series of kidney paired donation procedures performed in the United States. All eight donors - five women and three men - and eight organ recipients - five women and three men - are either in good or fair condition.

Organ donation is damn important in our country. And how easily it can be expanded is frightening. Make a commitment, at least on your license.

Make a difference.