There’s a brewing hubaloo over what Steve Rubel twittered in passing about his free subscription to PC Magazine: throw it in the trash. The problem? His company, Edelman, pitches PC Magazine all the time to try and solicit publicity on behalf of THEIR clients. The kicker? The president of PC Magazine, Jim Louderback, picked up on his Twitter. Mr. Rubel has since apologized, but its now gained traction in places like Strumpette, as Mr. Louderback pondered blackmailing all correspondence from Edelman.

If the First Law of Ambient Broadcasting discusses the importance of any given ambient message, the Second Law reveals who is listening.

And that is, “EVERYONE” …

Regardless of how important that initial message was.

If we use Twitter as the most popular ambient broadcasting tool du jour, we could debate about how important most Twitters are. And in fact, most Twitters *aren’t*, or rather, their importance is relative at any one time. But most Twitters are universally important only *sometimes*.

The kicker is that at *all* times, *everyone* is listening.

That is, you may not have a friends list in the thousands, but even so — it would be wrong to fool yourself. Each Twitter is broadcast on the home page. Each twitter is also broadcast on Twitterific. Furthermore, Twitters are archived, and I’m sure searchable through Google. Unlike instant messages, they aren’t private, and they don’t go away. There is a chance, just like blogging, that your public message will be heard by an unintendedly wide audience.

But unlike blogging, the ease at which you can produce ambient messages is positively scary. So scary that it should make command-and-control types quake in their boots and curl into a fetal position.

In fact, the “ambient” nature of it means you could do it anywhere. You (obviously) don’t have to be at a computer to do it. Not that being at a computer ensures any degree of thoughtfulness or sobriety (in the broadest sense of the term), of course.

But the corollary to “everyone is listening” is clearly “be careful what you say” — not only because of who is listening, but also because its so easy to say the wrong things and not have a chance to take them back.

While our understanding of Ambient Broadcasting is clearly nascent (pupa-like if you will) and evolving, the Steve Rubel incident has clearly illustrated the needs for mental boundaries as it applies to tools like Twitter. Twitter, and other tools for broadcasting your thoughts, opinions, and feelings in real time, clearly dance over the lines between one’s professional life and one’s personal life. And its different than blogging that way.

It takes time to blog. It may not take a lot of time — but certainly more than whipping one’s own cell phone out to post a text to Twitter. And in that time it takes for you to whip something up in your favourite blogging software, it makes you think, even for a second as you push “publish” — wait, do I *really* want people to read this?

Furthermore, blogging has been around long enough for there to be a discourse around what is acceptable “on” blog, and what’s acceptable “off” blog. Corporate blogs, CEO blogs, and cog-in-a-machine blogs all abide by some rule — stated or unstated — over what is acceptable to be published in a blog, even though we’re living in an age of supposed transparent media.

Twitter and its bretheren blur that line in a way that will require a new discourse, and new policies, internal and external, about ambient broadcasting.

Because everyone is listening, no matter how important you think what you’re saying is. And even if you don’t think its important, it might be important to someone else.

And that someone, as Steve Rubel has found out, might be important indeed.