Shocking as this may seem to some but once something is put on the Internet it pretty much there forever. Whether it’s a good article you wrote or something eventually regreted saying on someones blog it’s most likely going to be saved somewhere on a server even if you delete it. I think every person has had a situation where they were not thinking clearly or were ranting about something and began to type feveroushly. Look how easy it is to miss-interpret an email. Haven’t we all done that?
With the growth of Twitter that becomes even more evident, and potentially dangerous. Last week a Google employee tried to delete a Tweet she made regarding a comment she made on a satirical blog (BBSpot). As TechCrunch wrote, while the comment was about Apple being removed from Google Searches and was by most clearly meant to be funny. However, it apparently had the potential to be taken out of context and viewed as offensive to some. Even though she deleted her comment on Twitter apparently you can uncover removed tweets by using Twitter Search and therefore Wha-La…it’s on the Web forever.
As many have said before, ‘think before you speak’, but now you need to remind yourself to think before you write something on the web (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, etc.). Becuase unlike our memories today that can be short due to information overload if we can’t remember what we said it’s probably in a database somewhere in the world…..
