On The Terrible Story Of Shellie Ross (And Everyone Else)
the real Jessica Gotlieb makes my uncomfortable as the chief crusader in this case. She's now instigating a "tweet in" against MSNBC for airing a piece that did not agree with "mommy bloggers": http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/34484610#34484610
Notice that Jessica's twitter bio says "Nielsen Power Mom" & she's wielding this power to protect one of her own.
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On The Terrible Story Of Shellie Ross (And Everyone Else)
agree
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On The Terrible Story Of Shellie Ross (And Everyone Else)
This is only the beginning; in 10 years time video will be available as well. We already live in a world of oversharing, it will only get worse.
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On The Terrible Story Of Shellie Ross (And Everyone Else)
To MisterHippity - yes, I do wish that the mother decided not to share a personal tragedy like that with 5,000 spectators, so that it eventually got out into the national press.
Followers on twitter are not 'friends' or 'community' - don't kid yourself. The mother in question was not following bacl 3000 of her followers, so she was broadcasting at them, not 'building' a community. So yeah, somebody who was following her for useful or funny info perhaps (3000 of them at least) did not expect something as personal as this, and it shocked a lot of people - hence the attention of the national press.
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On The Terrible Story Of Shellie Ross (And Everyone Else)
If the blogging/social media/twitter was a business, and it looks like it was, then she should have a babysitter taking care of the toddler, or have him attend daycare. That's exactly moms who are welders or writers do. It is impossible to work from home while taking care of a toddler.
On the "pro" status - the mother posted 74 tweets between (I'm guessing) 8 am and 5:22 PM.
Question for those who tweet a lot - how much time do 74 tweets take? Let's say 3 min per tweet (including posting, reading other ppl's tweets, clicking on links) - is this conservative or too generous? But let's assume 3 min per tweet - that's 3.5 hours of being online & not taking care of the kids. And we all know how engrossing being online can be.
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On The Terrible Story Of Shellie Ross (And Everyone Else)
I'm late to commenting, but I was mostly disturbed that the mother tweeted up to the minute *before* the 911 call. So she was tweeting away all day - 74 'tweets' that day, including 5 in the 5 min prior to the last one (and uploaded two pictures). It is indeed sad that she tweeted while her son was drowning. And no, it does not take a second for a child to slip away, get in the pool and get enough water in his long that he cannot be revived via CPR.
Another disturbing part is that the mother was a semi-professional blogger, so social media for her was not just "community" & "friends" but also traffic to her blog, advertising revenues, and freebies from companies. Her twitter profile states "Wal-Mart BeyondEleven Mom, MEO of Blog4Mom, product reviewer, Ford Flex test driver, PR friendly soccer mom blogger" - does it mean that Ford gave her a free vehicle to "test"? "PR friendly soccer mom" essentially means "I'll review your product on my blog/promote it to my 5,000+ follower if you give it to me for free (or pay me)."
The whole "mommy blogging" phenomenon baffles me. Apparently, many consumer goods companies spend a lot of money catering to "mommy bloggers" including free products, sponsorships, trips to "mommy blogging events" etc.
So yes, it does bother me that the mother was so busy building her online reputation that he entrusted supervision of her toddler a 11-year old (and how does *he* feel now?
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On The Terrible Story Of Shellie Ross (And Everyone Else)
You ask if she spent 5 min on the phone, etc - I'm not sure if you have kid of have taken care of babies/toddlers. The point is you don't let them out of your sight when they are in your care. if you writing a letter, talking on the phone - make sure you have a visual on your toddler. If you want to be online, do it when the child is asleep for the night or nappping. I work while my child is in day care. 5 minutes spent tweeting is way too long not to know what your 2 yr old is doing.
As far as judging goes, of course we judge, it's in our nature. When you see a shocking story like this -- I think it was "2-yr old drowns while mum tweets" in Google News - of course you are going to have an opinion about. Not all opinions agree, such as mine is different from yours. If you don't want to be judged don't broadcast your story to 5400 strangers (maybe a few hundreds were 'friends' or 'community' but not all 5400.)
(74 tweets is one tweet every 7.5 minutes - plus there's facebook, other people's blogs etc. I do feel that her use of social media was excessive - if blogging/twitter is a job, get a part time babysitter or send kid to daycare.)