Arbitration & Mediation

Twittering from the mediation table: social media come to ADR

By Diane Levin

I recently joined Twitter.  Twitter, for those of you not yet familiar with this social media tool, is a social and business networking, microblogging, and instant messaging service.

Messages sent via Twitter are short, limited to 140 characters, demanding an economy of expression of its users. Twitter is based on one simple question: “What are you doing?”  Millions of users around the globe are eager to answer, sharing with their network brief updates, news, and ideas sent via computers and cellphones.

Not surprisingly, Twitter, God help us, has come to mediation.  Mediators and clients alike are sending dispatches from the mediation table addressing a range of topics:

• Mediator career advice
• Preparing for mediation
• Facing the intractable opponent
• Mediator bias
• Techniques for winning over clients
• Say it ain’t so: a mediator tweeting mid-mediation
• After the mediation: the client’s perspective
• The joys of settlement
• How mediators unwind

A Twitter member for only 7 days, I remain undecided about Twitter’s usefulness to me and plan to tell you what I think once I’ve given it a little more time. Others have ably weighed in, pro and con. If you’d like to connect with me via Twitter, you can follow me here.

Full post as published by Online Guide to Mediation on February 05, 2009 (boomark / email).