technology


Is it rude to tweet your travel plans?

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

Much has been made recently of a video podcaster who used Twitter to broadcast his family vacation only to return home and find his house had been burglarized. Whether or not the robbers used social media to plan their break-in hasn’t been proven. But I think we might be missing the point in only focusing on whether or not tweeting your travel plans makes good sense in terms of protecting your home. A few weeks ago I interviewed Groundswell author Charlene Li and she brought up the very good point that tweeting your itinerary may be socially rude. “I travel to New York all the time for work and I have a lot of friends there who I can’t see every time,” she said. “So I don’t tweet about having lunch in Central Park.” According to Li,  when it comes to etiquette, social media is forcing us to think about how much transparency we really need and value.  What do you think? Is it rude to tweet your travel plans? Or do the pros of using Twitter to plan a vacation outweigh the potential hurt feelings?Â