Fast-growing Twitter being taken seriously

Twitter is the new "black" when it comes to technology.

Made extra famous by United States President Barack Obama, you cannot now turn around without someone tweeting you.

The owners of Twitter were rumoured last week to be thinking about an initial public offering (IPO) of Twitter while seeking to both raise funds for expansion while retaining control of the company.

No-one can really explain how the owners make money out of Twitter but they must be close.

Advertisements are rumoured to be appearing soon.

America's first Twitter Christmas began in earnest last week.

Across the United States, retailers and their customers used the social networking site to talk to one another about bargains, problems, purchases and shopping strategies.

Twitter allows public communication through short, to-the-point messages.

Many people use it to send mundane updates to their friends but increasingly, retailers see it as a business tool.

In America, where a Twitter post can in theory be seen by millions, the big retailers are all scrambling to come up with Twitter plans.

They are designating technology-savvy employees to respond to posts, sometimes by providing immediate inventory information from a sales floor.

Mack-line has not received tweets from any retailer in New Zealand, or anywhere else for that matter, but wonders if retailers will switch on to Twitter by the Boxing Day sales.

You get the impression that people are starting to take Twitter seriously when the NZLawyer magazine starts writing about it.

Editor Darise Ogden wrote in the November 27 edition that tweeting was heard from within an Australian courtroom for the first time in October.

It came from the laptops of two pioneering Australian technology journalists - Andrew Colley, from The Australian, and Liam Tung, from ZDNet.

While it outraged Fox News, the Federal Court of Australia seemed less perturbed, Ms Ogden said.

Justice Dennis Cowdroy chose to let Mr Tung and Mr Colley continue tweeting from his courtroom during the movie piracy case against ISP iiNet.

His Honour said that Twittering could serve to inform the public in a more speedy and comprehensive manner than might be possible through traditional media coverage.

The Australian also quoted Federal Court chief executive Warwick Soden, who took a pragmatic approach to the introduction of yet another form of court reporting.

"We live in an age where portable electronic devices offer a range of communication tools and are not just mobile phones. Used properly they promote efficient business practice," he said.

In the United States, where tweeting from within a courtroom was first seen, there has been a mixed reaction.

In March, NowPublic reported District Court Judge J. Thomas Marten had allowed Wichita Eagle reporter Ron Sylvester to tweet updates from a racketeering gang trial he was presiding over.

NowPublic reported the practice had been challenged by defence lawyers who were concerned that a juror might visit the online site to read the posts.

Judge Marten was reported as saying that jurors were always told to avoid newspaper, broadcast and online reports.

"You either trust your jurors to live with the admonition, or you don't," he said.

Other commentators have warned of the dangers of inaccurate tweeting from a courtroom and Mack-line concedes that inaccurate tweeting could be a problem.

But as communication tools develop, it is unrealistic to expect people, including jurors, not to use them.

Now, Mack-line awaits the first retail tweet of the Christmas season to arrive.