American Morning
Anti-social networkers
You might say they are an endangered species. Folks who could care less about twitters, tweets and pokes. They're the last of the social network holdouts and they're proud of it. CNN's Christine Romans has the story.
Fly Clear program shuts down
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/06/26/tinker.clear.art.jpg caption="CNN Producer Ben Tinker reports on the sudden shutdown of Clear lanes at U.S. airports."]
From CNN Producer Ben Tinker
Well, it was a novel idea. "Fly through airport security" was their motto.
The Fly Clear program allowed passengers to bypass often-lengthy airport security lines - for a fee, of course. The price of a year's membership was around $200; with about 250,000 members, we're talking about a revenue stream in the ballpark of $50 million.
As a member, you can imagine my surprise when an email popped up on my BlackBerry at 12:52 a.m. last Tuesday, announcing:
"At 11:00pm PST today, Clear will cease operations. Clear's parent company, Verified Identity Pass, INC. has been unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor to continue operations. After today, Clear lanes will be unavailable."
It just so happened that I was booked on a flight out of Atlanta Tuesday morning and arrived at the airport late, as usual, only to discover the Clear kiosks had already been shut down. Clearly by "today" the company meant they were shutting down "yesterday," Pacific Time, a mere hour and eight minutes after sending out that email.
I wasn't the only one confused. Along with travelers across the country, I relied on airport employees to explain what had happened and point me in the right direction. Even the majority of news networks, including CNN, didn't really touch the story until Wednesday morning.
CNNMoney.com: Clear Lanes abandons customers
John Walsh leads teens in discussion of sexting and cyberbullying
Press Release: What Every Parent Needs to Know: Cox and Harris Interactive to Present Findings from National Teen Online and Wireless Safety Survey on Sexting and Cyberbullying
ATLANTA, June 22 /PRNewswire/ - For the fourth consecutive year, teens from across the country will gather in Washington, D.C. for the Cox National Teen Summit on Internet and Wireless Safety held in partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children(R) (NCMEC).
As a part of Cox's Take Charge! program developed to keep kids safer online, America's Most Wanted host and children's advocate John Walsh will guide teen participants from Cox Communications' markets across the country in a discussion of Internet and wireless safety, with a focus on ways parents, guardians and teen mentors can help children be safer online, at home and on the go. Discussion topics include sexting, cyberbullying and parental controls.
Results of a new survey conducted by Cox in conjunction with NCMEC about the behavior of young people online and a recap of the summit will be presented during a virtual media conference on BlogTalkRadio. John Walsh, Harris Interactive and select teens will be available to answer questions. On June 25, the teens will deliver the news directly to Capitol Hill in meetings with members of Congress.
Boss watching you online?
The city of Bozeman, Montana was asking people applying for city jobs to hand over their passwords to social networking sites – like Facebook and Twitter.
After the story spread online – the city backed down but the question remains: just how much privacy can you really expect online?
CNN's Alina Cho has an update on the story she first told us about a few months ago that involved two workers who got fired for what they said on Myspace.
Social media's role in Iran protests
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/06/18/intv.thompson.nick.iran.art.jpg caption="Nick Thompson of Wired magazine discusses the use of social networking in the Iranian protests."]
Information today is a precious commodity as the Iranian regime cracks down, severely limiting our ability to report there. Protestors and media inside Iran have turned to Facebook, Twitter, and text messaging to get the word out about what's going on.
Nicholas Thompson, a senior editor at "Wired" magazine, spoke to Kiran Chetry on CNN’s “American Morning” Thursday about the social media phenomenon in Iran.
Kiran Chetry: First of all, are we overstating the role of social networking in organizing these rallies in Iran?
Nicholas Thompson: I think we're overstating the role of Twitter. I don’t think we’re necessarily overstating the role of cell phones, Facebook, or social networking in general.
Chetry: So what is Twitter being used for in Iran?
Thompson: Twitter is being used for some internal communications. What it's really being used for is getting the word out to the outside world. The great thing about Twitter is you can have as many followers as you want and anybody can read anything. It's a completely open network.
So it's great if you want to get news to your friends in America, people in the media in America who are watching and playing an important role in this drama. But if you actually want to organize a protest and if you actually want to get people to together at 6 o’clock, Twitter is kind of sort of useful, but it's not being used by everybody in Iran the way that it's sometimes portrayed as here in the United States.
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