#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – analysing Twitter accounts

The 10,000 Words blog offers up some ideas of tools which can be used by journalists and news organisations to analyse the performance of Twitter accounts. Tipster: Rachel McAthy.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

Similar posts:

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – using QR codes
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Editing audio on the go
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – using curation tools
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – newsroom resolutions for 2012
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – using digital tools to report elections

Ten pros and cons for Facebook comments

This tweet inspired a conversation:

It is 10 weeks since Facebook overhauled its comments system, which allows websites to install a plugin to enable anyone logged into a Facebook account or with a Yahoo ID to comment.

The comment also appears in on friends’ news feeds on Facebook so has the potential to drive additional web traffic.

So what are the pros and cons?

1. More comments

Denmark-based Thomas Baekdal, founder and editor-in-chief of Baekdal.com, a business magazine about new media, media strategies, and trends, and 42concepts.com, a design magazine, has found the switch from commenting system Disqus to Facebook’s plugin has paid off by increasing comments by 800 per cent. But he has only switched one of his two sites. He added the widget for Facebook Comments for 42concepts.com but not to Baekdal.com.

This is an important thing to keep in mind. I did not change the commenting system for the business section – only for the design articles. There is a huge difference between the two – both on audience, and market.

The design content is also less about creating articles, and more about a “visual experience”. They are specifically designed to tell the story through the images. This makes 42Concepts the perfect target for people on Facebook.

Stories like this lovely example on the ‘yarnbombing’ of potholes.

Facebook Comments resulted in 10,000 comments in the first 30 days for showbiz, entertainment and media news site Digital Spy. That’s an average of 333 comments a day.

Tom Miller, community manager, told Journalism.co.uk that Digital Spy was not using a comments system (such as Disqus) before introducing Facebook Comments and encouraged commenting by directing readers from their forums, which are among the 25 most popular forums worldwide with 50 million posts, according to Miller.

2. Quantity doesn’t mean quality

Baekdal said Facebook Comments works for content that is suited to ‘snacking’.

We all know the Facebook behaviour encourages snacking (while Twitter is far more serious). The quality of comments also reflects that. Most of them are, ‘woooo!!!’, ‘omg!!’, ‘nice’, ‘cute’, ‘g0oo0o00o0od’, etc.

People do not actually comment, they express a feeling. There are no discussions.

But the result is staggering. As I tweeted, I have seen a 800 per cent increase in comments.

3. Increased web traffic

Web traffic is up for 42concepts.com as a result, Baekdal said.

Because each comment is shared on Facebook by default, the traffic from Facebook is up 216 per cent (but still only accounts for two per cent of the total traffic whereas StumbleUpon accounts for 62 per cent).

So have comments driven traffic to Digital Spy? Miller said:

I don’t think we can attribute traffic directly to Facebook Comments, but we did just have a record month with 9.84 million unique users in April.

4. Comments are attributed to a person

One big difference from using a system like Disqus is that Facebook comments are always attributed to a person, weeding out spam but also potentially reducing commenting from people who like to hide behind anonymity.

Digital Spy said Facebook’s commenting system is partly self-policing in nature. “People aren’t too controversial as they know mother-in-law will be reading what they write,” Miller said.

Baekdal told Journalism.co.uk that he’s only deleted one comment so far.

5. Comments with bad language are hidden

Facebook Comments has a language stalker tool which immediately hides comments with bad language. You can also opt to apply a grammar filter to add punctuation and expand “plz” to please and dont to “don’t”.

6. Moderation can take time

Digital Spy has found that moderating 10,000 comments a month takes time with four administrators taking half an hour whenever they can to post-moderate. Baekdal, on the other hand, only occasionally checks comments and spends an average of  just 30 seconds a day scrolling through.

Larger organisations like MTV and ITV outsource a service such as eModeration to cope with the number or comments.

7. It lends itself to post-moderation

Both Miller and Baekdal post-moderate and many news sites prefer pre-approval of comments to offer more content and legal control

8. You can enter the discussion

“Another advantage is that you have your Facebook page linked to your account,” Miller said, so that if two people are having an argument you can add a post. “It’s amazing, people do listen,” he added.

9. The backend system of Facebook Comments not user friendly

Miller said the backend of the Facebook system is “a bit of a mess” but believes Facebook will improve. “You can’t always see what article the comments have been posted to,” Miller explained.

“That is certainly true,” added Baekdal. “Administrating Facebook Comments is not a usable experience. It’s engineered, it is not designed to fit into people’s workflows. It’s very hard to see where a comment goes. It hard to track, it takes a lot of steps to moderate.”

10. It is suitable for ‘snackable content’ but not for all types of site

Baekdal has this advice based on thinking about his two websites:

I would advise people to test it. But as a strategy, I think Facebook comments fits well with “snackable content” and content that invokes feelings. I do not think it would work well for a site like the Financial Times.

Find out how to add Facebook Comments here.

To install Facebook Comments into WordPress click here.

Related articles:

Facebook: Our Comments Plugin Increases Publisher Traffic up to 45 per cent [STATS], from ReadWriteWeb.

Disqus has this month revealed it is doubling in size with investment of $10 million despite Facebook Comments, according to this article on the ReadWriteWeb technology blog, and its CEO is not worried about the threat of Facebook, says a Venture Beat article.

In the same way as you can @mention and refer to someone on Twitter, you can now do so on Disqus. It has since released @mentions, which “allows you to pull people into new conversations by mentioning them in your comments”, according to the Disqus blog, and follows Facebook @mentions, released in 2009,

Similar posts:

• Independent integrates article comments with Twitter and Facebook
• WordPress rolls out Twitter and Facebook comments options
• Nieman: Blogs, SEO chief and Facebook comments result in traffic increase for LA Times
• Poynter: NY Times introduces unmoderated comments for ‘trusted commenters’
• Testing times for Mail Online’s comment system

Al Jazeera: Reports missing journalist Dorothy Parvaz has been deported to Iran

Al Jazeera reported today it has been given information that journalist Dorothy Parvaz, who was reportedly detained in Syria upon her arrival last month, has been deported from to Iran.

This information has come from Syrian officials, who had previously told Al Jazeera they were holding Dorothy in Damascus, and that they would be releasing her. Ms Parvaz was initially detained in Damascus 12 days ago.

Last month Al Jazeera confirmed its Arabic bureau in Syria had been suspended for safety reasons.

Similar posts:

• Al Jazeera calls for answers on whereabouts of journalist Dorothy Parvaz
• CPJ: Call for freedom for detained journalists after releases from Libya and Iran
• Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj released
• Committee to Protect Journalists: Bahrain government freezes Al Jazeera operations ‘indefinitely’
• Al Jazeera Arabic joins Livestation

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – using LinkedIn for reporting and job hunting

Replay this career chat on Poynter to hear more from LinkedIn’s Krista Canfield about how journalists can get more out of the platform, for reporting and job hunting. Tipster: Rachel McAthy.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

Similar posts:

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – how to quote sources responsibly
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – reporting in new places
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – questions to ask before reporting
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – pitching business ideas
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – iPad app development

Journalisted Weekly: Bin Laden, wedding hangover, & Scottish election

Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about.

It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations.

Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

For the week ending Sunday 8 May

• Bin Laden’s death pushed royal wedding out of the headlines
• AV, Scottish and Welsh elections dominated political news
• A mass grave in Ivory Coast and rising African affluence, covered little

Covered lots

• Osama bin Laden, found and shot dead in Pakistan by the Americans almost 10 years after 9/11, 1,329 articles
• The Royal Wedding, including comment on wedding highlights and honeymoon destinations, 590 articles
• The AV referendum goes to the polls and loses the vote, while the Lib Dems suffer most in the local elections, 465 articles
• The Scottish parliament election, with the SNP winning a second term on an overall majority, 258 articles

Covered little

• The neighbour of Joanna Yeates, Vincent Tabak, pleads guilty to her manslaughter but faces trial for murder, 21 articles
• The last known WW1 veteran, Claude Stanley Choules, dies aged 110, 15 articles
• Ahmadinejad’s allies accused of sorcery, amid a power struggle between him and Ayatollah Khamenei, 6 articles
• A mass grave is uncovered in Ivory Coast, one of several found since political unrest gripped the country after last year’s disputed election, 3 articles
• A study by the African Development Bank reports 1/3 of Africans are now middle class, 2 articles

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

David Cameron: 737 articles (+135% on previous week)

• Nick Clegg: 480 articles (+200% on previous week)
• Ed Miliband: 322 articles (+258% on previous week)
• Alex Salmond: 299 articles (+390% on previous week)
• George Osborne: 171 articles (+53% on previous week)
• William Hague: 153 articles (+91% on previous week)
• Tony Blair: 137 articles (+44% on previous week)
• Gordon Brown: 136 articles (+35% on previous week)
• Vince Cable: 103 articles (+124% on previous week)
• Liam Fox: 47 articles (+24% on previous week)

Celebrity vs serious

• Simon Cowell, US X Factor judge, 88 articles vs. the Welsh Assembly election, with the incumbent Welsh Labour Party gaining 4 seats bringing their total to 30, 78 articles
• Pippa Middleton, with talk of how good she looked in that dress, 48 articles vs. Canada’s election, with Stephen Harper’s Conservative party winning a majority mandate, 31 articles
• Victoria Beckham, pregnant and still wearing high heels, 43 articles vs. the worst wildfires in 30 years breaking out across Britain after a very dry April, 9 articles

Arab spring

• Libya and Colonel Gaddafi, 142 articles (+53% on previous week)
• Syria and President Bashar Al-Assad, 82 articles (-10% on previous week)
• Gaza and Hamas, 70 articles (+312% on previous week)
• Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu, 38 articles (+443% on previous week)
• West Bank and President Abbas, 27 articles (+170% on previous week)
• Yemen and President Saleh, 23 articles (28% on previous week)
• Saudi Arabia and King Abdullah, 9 articles (+50% on previous week)
• Iran and President Ahmadinejad, 9 articles (+350% on previous week)
• Turkey and Prime Minster Erdoğan, 8 articles (+14% on previous week)
• Egypt’s Military Council, 6 articles (+500% on previous week)
• Bahrain and King Al Khalifa, 6 articles (+50% on previous week)
• Morocco and King Mohammed, 2 articles (-71% on previous week)
• Iraq and Prime Minister Al Maliki, 2 articles (-33% on previous week)
• Algeria and President Bouteflika, 1 article (+100% on previous week)
• United Arab Emirates and President Al Nahyan, 1 article (0% on previous week)

Who wrote a lot about…’Osama Bin Laden’

Toby Harnden – 14 articles (Telegraph), Farhan Bokhari – 12 articles (Financial Times), James Lamont – 12 articles (Financial Times), Declan Walsh – 12 articles (The Guardian), Ewen MacAskill – 10 articles (The Guardian), Jason Burke – 10 articles (The Guardian), Padraic Flanagan – 9 articles (Daily Express), Rob Crilly – 9 articles (Telegraph, The Scotsman), Catherine Philp – 8 articles (The Times)

Long form journalism

4,084 words: Tunisia: after the revolution – Roula Khalaf, Financial Times, 6 May 2011
3,994 words: Osama bin Laden obituary – Lawrence Joffe and Jason Burke, The Guardian, 2 May 2011
2,941 words: Morgellons: A hidden epidemic or mass hysteria? – Will Storr, The Guardian, 7 May 2011

More from the Media Standards Trust

Visit the Media Standards Trust’s new site Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism

Churnalism.com ‘explore’ page is available for browsing press release sources alongside news outlets

The Media Standards Trust’s unofficial database of PCC complaints is available for browsing at www.complaints.pccwatch.co.uk

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

Similar posts:

• Journalisted Weekly: Brisbane floods, Arizona shootings, and Tunisia protests
• Journalisted Weekly: (More) royal wedding, AV, and letter bombs
• Journalisted Weekly: Royal Wedding fever, AV, and Syria crackdown
• Journalisted Weekly: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Queen and privacy
• Journalisted Weekly: Royal Wedding, marathon and the NHS

Rusbridger: ‘If we want a PCC that is effective we will all have to pay more’

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, who has been and remains a vocal critic of the Press Complaints Commission, argued last night that the regulatory body should be supported and improved, not scrapped, and said the press will need to pay more to if it wants an effective regulator.

Delivering the Anthony Sampson lecture at City University London, Rusbridger, who resigned from the PCC code committee in November 2009, did not let up in his customary criticism of the body, calling it “ineffective” and its 2009 report into phone-hacking at the News of the World “utterly feeble”.

“How, MPs reasonably ask, can we as an industry argue that self-regulation works when it evidently failed quite spectacularly over phone hacking?”, he asked.

In March last year, speaking at a debate on self-regulation in the House of Lords, Rusbridger suggested the PCC might be “flying the wrong flag [and might be] better to rebrand itself as a media complaints and conciliation service and forget about regulation”.

But he argued last night that self-regulation remains preferable to statutory regulation, and called for the PCC to take a tougher stance on issues such as phone hacking.

He asked why it hadn’t written directly to News International over Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the heart of the phone-hacking scandal, to ask “why are you paying fees of someone likely to be involved in illegal activity?”.

The PCC, he said, needed to “do something which showed a vertabrae”.

I can’t imagine a fine than would scare News International, they’re just so big and rich. What scares them is the truth, they’re are scared of the truth coming out.

I put it to Rusbridger after the lecture that one of the things required to strengthen the regulator and allow it to undertake proper investigations would be better funding, and asked if, alongside his criticism of the body and calls for it to be improved, the Guardian should lead the way in making a greater financial contribution.

It’s difficult, it’s not lavishly funded and it’s clearly not set up to do something like a big investigation into phone hacking. I think if we want the kind of PCC that’s going to be effective we are all going to have to pay more. But that’s a pretty tough message if you work on the Yorkshire Post or the East Anglian Daily Times. Why should you pay more when by and large you’re not doing things that are going to require fantastically expensive investigation?

He acknowledged that the PCC did not have the funds to undertake thorough investigations, investigations “with teeth”, and said the press would have “to be a bit more creative about the way that we fund the PCC”.

It can’t just stagger on as it is, being completely ineffective because they shrug they’re shoulders and say ‘we haven’t got the power and we haven’t got the money’.

See Rusbridger’s full lecture at this link.

Similar posts:

• Alan Rusbridger: ‘Weak press self-regulation threatens decent journalism’
• Martin Moore: seven models for reform of self-regulation
• Comment is Free: Phone hacking – select committee must move quickly, says Paul Farrelly
• Will inquiries find PCC a chocolate teapot, or a serious ‘mediator’?
• FT editor criticises Fleet Street for ‘conspiracy of silence’ over phone hacking

#Followjourn @datamineruk Nicola Hughes/data journalist #newsrw

Who? Nicola Hughes

Where? Nicola is a data journalist who has been blogging about data journalism at Data Miner UK, since 2010. She has worked with the digital team at CNN and joined Scraperwiki earlier this year. She will be speaking during the Sorting the Social Media Chaos session at Journalism.co.uk’s news:rewired  – noise to signal event at Thomson Reuters in London, on 27 May.

Twitter? @datamineruk

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to sarah.booker at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

Similar posts:

• #Followjourn @michelleminkoff /journalist
• #Followjourn @Countculture /developer #newsrw
• #followjourn: @NeilHarmanTimes – Neil Harman/journalist
• #followjourn @sophyridge – Sophy Ridge/journalist
• #followjourn: @KathViner – Kath Viner/journalist

‘Consider the risks’ warning over super injunction Tweets

Many of you are likely to have heard by now about the Twitter account which appeared on Sunday featuring a series of allegations about public figures taking out super injunctions. The allegations, which received widespread coverage in the press, have since been denied by some of the individuals who were named, again using Twitter.

Since then there has been much debate about what this means for the future of this type of court order in an online world.

Yesterday on the International Forum for Responsible Media blog, Judith Townend collected together a number of opinions on the legal implications. One media lawyer, said to be a specialist in privacy law, told Townend that both social media users and mainstream media organisations should consider the risks.

But according to Danvers Baillieu, a senior associate and social media specialist lawyer at Pinsent Masons quoted in this article by the Telegraph, when it actually comes to the likelihood of someone taking action, “pragmatism prevails”.

…already thousands of people have either tweeted or re-tweeted protected information in the last few weeks alone. He said there was “no way” the authorities have an appetite to take action against swathes of Twitter users.

Similarly in such situations Twitter, for example, could say it is a US-based company and therefore not subject to European laws, the article adds.

It can also argue that its users are responsible for their own tweets and not the company. Furthermore, Baillieu said that Twitter can also defend itself on the basis of freedom of speech, under the First Amendment of the US constitution.

But while the legal issues remain cloudy, as Jon Slattery usefully illustrates in this blog post today, much of the national press continue to show the clearness of their feeling on the issue, claiming recent actions have “humiliated” the courts and resulted in a “legal crisis”.

Similar posts:

• YouGov accuses blogger of libel over polling allegations
• NY Blogger Three: issued press credentials but still pursuing legal action
• MediaGuardian: Max Clifford plans legal action over NOTW phone hacking
• Independent: Max Mosley ‘bankrolling’ legal costs of phone hacking victims
• MediaGuardian: MPs’ super injunction debate to go ahead on Wednesday

Financial Times: Clearance on BSkyB bid delayed by at least two weeks

Clearance on News Corporation‘s bid for the remainder of BSkyB will be delayed by at least two weeks, the Financial Times reported this week, “after a hitch in negotiations between Rupert Murdoch’s media group and UK regulators”.

People familiar with the talks between the two sides said on Monday, that the delay had been caused by the level of detail that Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport required in a merger remedy offered by News Corp.

The remedy was for Sky News to be spun off into a separate company called Newco to address concerns for media plurality.

See the full FT report here (FT.com does operate a registration model).

Similar posts:

• Channel 4 News: BSkyB deal explained, Jeremy Hunt grilled
• NUJ to protest against green light for News Corp’s BSkyB takeover
• Peston: Ofcom has recommended BSkyB bid go to competition commission, that is a fact
• Jeremy Hunt considering impact of News of the World closure on BSkyB bid
• Boston Globe joins New York Times in paywall plans

News International to rethink ‘iron-curtain’ paywall approach for the Sun

The Sun is to use a mixed model to charge for online content, according to News International head of marketing Katie Vanneck-Smith, although no date has been set for its introduction.

Speaking last night at a panel debate about paywalls and digital journalism models at City University London, Vanneck-Smith’s admission seemed to mark a shift in News International’s ‘iron-curtain’ approach to paywalls on it’s news sites.

She told the audience at the debate:

I think we all said that the models are mixed. So there are no plan at the moment, there’s no date, for when the Sun will have paid as part of its model for it’s digital website in terms of its news access.

When questioned by Media Guardian editor Dan Sabbagh about whether this marked a change in News International thinking, Vanneck-Smith replied: “We will introduce paid for content and services on the Sun in the future, I couldn’t tell you what the date is.” She would not confirm whether this would be in the form of a paywall, but earlier in the event she said that the newspaper was “of the view that mixed models and blended models are right and the best way to pursue, I think, a very vibrant and exciting journalism future for this country”.

Almost a year on from the Times and Sunday Times going behind a paywall, Vanneck-Smith said both were making more money digitally from their 79,000 subscribers than pre-paywall, when they had 20 million browsers.

Dan Sabbagh, the Guardian‘s media editor, revealed the newspaper would pursue a free content model and would move towards becoming an aggregator of news and opinion.

We want to become, as well as a provider of content, a content aggregator. People are very keen on participating with the Guardian, they want to be re-published on our site and they’d like us to sell their advertising.

We think it’s critical that we’re part of the conversation that people are part of.

And while I don’t have any big philosophical rejections to what the Times and Sunday Times are trying to do commercially, it seems like a perfectly proper strategy to pursue, I’m less convinced by the severity of their paywall model. In effect, the Times and Sunday Times journalism is outside the journalistic conversation

Sabbagh also revealed the Guardian site had its best day ever had best ever day when Osama Bin Laden died, resulting in 4.5 million unique hits compared with a daily average of 2.4 million uniques.

According to Geordie Greig, the editor of the Evening Standard, the paper is on course to make a profit by 2012, and would consider a paywall if he saw it worked elsewhere.

I think we will probably be on the verge of profit next year. Now I’m not saying that to say we’re better than them [other newspapers], I’m really it because we’re in a very difficult industry to make money.

I think everyone applauds the attempt by News International to make money, we really, really hope it works. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong in saying, if it does, we’re all going to copy it, that’s what happens in industry where there are leaders.

The Standard has experienced a huge turnaround in fortunes since going free back in 2009. Greig revealed the move had allowed the paper to charge 150 per cent for advertising space compared with old prices. Greig explained:

By changing our economic model, we were able to survive and thrive. Suddenly we become bigger and by bigger meant we could earn bigger sums of money.

We were losing a ton of money, we were losing between 10-20 per cent of our readers every single year and our debt was running into tens of billions potentially a year and this was unsustainable.

We made a decision to go free and the great thing was that made two competing papers in the evening leave the market so that made us in a more dominant.

Grieg also revealed prior to going free, the Evening Standard sold 700 copies at Oxford Circus. Now, it distributes 32,000 copies from that location on a daily basis.

Stevie Spring, chief executive of Future Publishing, suggested the problem with charging for content online was that it involved a change in mindset for users used to not paying for news, likening broadband access to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

The difference in a digital world is fewer and fewer people brought up in a world where everything online is free, there is an expectation of free. Or it’s not an expectation of free, but everybody has grown up believing that once you’ve paid for your broadband access, that’s an all-you-eat-buffet, that’s my library card, everything else is free.

You have a real disincentive to pay once you disaggregate the content from it’s packaging. When you have a physical artifact, a real DVD or real magazine or a real piece of paper, once I disaggregate the content from its pack, people aren’t sure what the value of the content in isolation is.

They expect it to be much cheaper because of course there is a marginal cost of distribution. However, what people aren’t seeing is the increasing cost of creation because actually it costs more to fulfill expectations in a digital world when people want 24/7, up the second with audio visual adapted and amended for every screen. So cost of production goes up.

Dominic Young, former director of strategy and product development for News International, said it was up to media organisations to innovate and find a solution.

The challenge for the industry and for everybody is to identify new models and pursue them with gusto. In that sense, I think what the Times and Sunday Times are doing is really important.

It’s no surprise to me that the companies making the most money out of the internet are companies which invest nothing in content. The companies which make the most money out of journalism directly and companies which tend to be parasitic aggregator, many of them just straightforward feeds.

On suggestion put forward for the Sun by Roy Greenslade in his Guardian column today, in response to last night’s debate, was charging for the newspaper’s popular online bingo games while keeping the rest of the site free of charge.

Similar posts:

• Independent: Ten years of FT’s metered pay model
• Clay Shirky on the Times paywall, commodity markets and a ‘referendum on the future’
• Martin Moore: #futureofnews is ‘not so bleak, but not so rosy either’
• Should we ‘pay the wall’ to maintain quality journalism?
• ‘Completely different ideas of size, scale, ambition’: Rusbridger compares his paper with the Times