TWITTER: Cool or Cruel?

It’s all about social media these days. If you’re not up with Twitter and Facebook, you’re just not in touch. You’re not relevant. And it’s not just about keeping up, there’s huge value in these latest forms of the Digital Age: bringing down dictators in the Arab world, providing disaster response solutions in tsunami-ravaged and nuclear-threatened Japan, reconnecting us with those whom we’ve lost touch, and all the branding and marketing power that they provide.

But social media can also be used to disseminate thoughtless, insensitive, hurtful, or downright mean messages. Take for example the top seven tweets of this past week as presented in HuffPost’s