You are what you tweet — be discreet!
The digital revolution has ushered in the apocalypse for some and a rebirth for others (depending on which side of the old/new media fence you happen to sit on). The old media ways have been left behind to choke on the dust kicked by empowered consumers, as they sprint ahead and embrace the ever-expanding array of new media consumption mediums and channels. Yes, this is great — this is progress. Not only do we have access to so much more information, but it’s also mostly free and accessible everywhere. Most importantly, now we can all contribute to this new media universe – blog, tweet, upload, tag, share and become your own little media empire!
Not unlike what the origin of language and then writing did to human beings thousands of years ago –- the power to transcribe thoughts and communicate instantaneously, across geographic and cultural boundaries in this manner is leading to huge personal and social transformations. The difference is, in the offline world, we could expect a lot of what we said and shared during our lifetime (for better or worse) to be often counterbalanced by the problem of inadequate data storage & retrieval capabilities (the limitations of human memory). 
In the pre-Internet days of the offline world, we were mostly reliant on every social interaction, new friendship or acquaintance, good or bad deed, and every moment spent communicating through various mediums during our lifetimes to eventually add up to shaping how others perceived us. Unless you were a published author or generally someone famous, or influential with access to mass media communication channels, you were limited to gradually and painstakingly building your personal legacies within your social circles over your lifetime. As we all know, that’s no longer the case anymore, because we’re all media producers now and we’re all are beginning to shift our offline lives online. You can share what you’re thinking, doing, eating, buying, your opinions on anything and everything online –- not just with words, but along with images, moving pictures and sound. All this in an environment with infinite storage and retrieval capabilities
With every tweet, status update, blog post, photo or video uploaded, you’re essentially leaving bits and bytes of yourself (some of which you may never be able to take back). Just because you forgot about what you tweeted yesterday and just because tomorrow you may abandon Twitter or Facebook for the next shiny new Internet toy, doesn’t mean what you’ve shared is forgotten. As search technologies keep evolving, there’s going to be very few places for the information you’ve shared, and consequently for you to hide. This is not meant to scare you or convince you that social media and over sharing should be curtailed (who am I to say that?). Create and share by all means –- just remember that with this new found power, you’re not only interacting, making friends, entertaining yourself and others –- you’re building your digital legacy, which will live on long after you’re gone.
