Analysis: The week in Tweets - microblogging shows Olympic strength

Twitter flexes its muscles across days of social drama

It's been evident for several years now that Twitter is a monetising, highly effective business commodity. Be it sponsored tweets, increased SEO click rates from well-distributed retweets and appearance in the right lists, having a social network presence is always, statistics show, a key priority in any publicity strategy.

But with the Olympics drawing together so many Twitter users at once, many of them involved in the bitter coverage wars between media organisations and solitary publicity hounds, this week has proved fertile ground for observing Twitter in action, dramas and reactions unfolding in such a way as to highlight the influence of this fast-moving and hugely socially penetrating product.

From protesting Rule 40 - which bans Olympic athletes from promoting non-Olympic sponsors, to two athletes, Swiss footballer Michel Morganella and Greek athlete Paraskevi Papahristu, being disqualified from the games due to racist tweets, the Olympics has had its fair share of key involvement with social networking.

But the first major occurrence this week was during the Tweetstorm that was last Friday, 27th July's opening ceremony. As tweeters clambered over each other to be the wittiest, cleverest or most dramatic microbloggers of the night, replies, retweets, hashtags and trends filled networks.

But it was Conservative MP Aidan Burley who quickly began to trend, a single tweet in which he referred to film director Danny Boyle's smorgasbord of UK cultural references and celebrations as "leftie multi-cultural crap" seeing him become focus of the ire of a nation, and beyond.

Negative comments poured in from the public, celebrities and even other Conservative MPs, and within minutes Burley had been forced to close his own account; a direct example of the level playing field Twitter can offer, as a vast democracy swept in to react to this voice. So important became Burley's legacy from the evening, that even Downing Street had to step in, a source from the prime minister's office later stating "we do not agree with him."

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Analysis: The week in Tweets - microblogging shows Olympic strength

Twitter flexes its muscles across days of social drama

Meanwhile, on 28th July, Twitter deleted the account of Guy Adams, a journalist for the Independent, after he tweeted the work email address of President of NBC Olympics, Gary Zenkel.

Adams' complaint was that NBC was delaying coverage of the opening ceremony to ensure its broadcast in a primetime slot. He also later clung to the defence that Zenkel's address was publically available on Google. Twitter's decision to silence Adams was of most concern to many users in that it was being seen to allow itself to be swayed by its partnership with NBC as a partner during the Olympic games.

Three days, and tens of thousands of angry messages on Twitter later, the decision was reversed, Twitter even admitting on a blog that it did "mess up" by identifying Adams' Tweet as a violation, and flagging his account for suspension. Without so many complaints from its own service users, and the eyes of the world remaining on Twitter through Twitter, would the same decision have been reached?

Finally, Friday 3rd August saw Daily Mail and General Trust offshoot Northcliffe Media drop its planned legal action against a Twitter user who set up a spoof account of its CEO Steve Auckland.

The user, who crusaded to remain unnamed after arguing, again, that they did not break any laws or user agreements, filed legal papers in San Francisco on Tuesday 1st August calling for Northcliffe's subpoena to be dropped.

Twitter subsequently played ball, and two days later, the case has been dropped entirely. While it seems Twitter will now have to further refine its, ‘editorial distance' in its treatment of ethics, this is still clearly a victory for a majority of voices that tweeted loudly and strongly.

Twitter continues to grow in power, gradually adding facilities to its ecosystem to keep users on the site, viewing content that before was external. Meanwhile, ‘last generation' social networks - such as Facebook - continue to find problems monetising an uncertain future in mobile.

Twitter displays a mean line in sponsored and prioritised content for its advertisers, but perhaps its real secret is the network's ability to give its users the clout to cleave their own creative paths through its matrix of voices and opinions. Twitter as a business model most certainly works for itself, but it's a model anybody - from individual to organisation - can also make work for them, often with spectacular results.