Tracking UK newspaper share prices with Twitter

With a little a lot of help from our friends (take a bow Headshift’s Tim Duckett) there’s a new Twitter kid on the block - @jocoukshares.

Following Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press’ exits from the FTSE 250, the aim is to provide almost real-time share price information for the newspaper and magazine publishing groups currently listed on the FTSE.

Below is a key to the company names:

FUTR - Future Publishing

CAU - Centaur

TNI - Trinity Mirror

INM - Independent News & Media

REL - Reed Elsevier

PSON - Pearson

JPR - Johnston Press

DMGT - Daily Mail & General Trust

INF - Informa

NWS - News Corp

Tim’s made stirling progress with setting up feeds of the share prices to Twitter and there’s no reason why this couldn’t be expanded beyond newspapers and mags in the future.

However, suggestions about a ‘front-end’ for the project are welcome. Building a newspaper-share-price-feed-tracking widget will probably be one of my Christmas Eve tasks - any suggestions?

Similar posts:

• Independent: Trinity and Johnston Press to merge?
• Johnston Press joins AOP
• Trinity Mirror Wales site renamed WalesOnline
• MediaWeek: Northcliffe will see major cuts as revenue falls
• Freesheet closures: axe falls on Johnston Press and Trinity Mirror titles

Local newspaper sees high traffic for online memorial

By creating an online version of the newspaper’s announcements page, the Limerick Leader has made its site the ‘focal point for entire community’s grieving,’ a press release from iAnnounce, the company which developed the page, said.

More than 17,600 people have now visited the Limerick Leader’s iAnnounce page for 28 year old Shane Geoghegan, who was shot dead in Kilteragh, Ireland, at the weekend.

Since the page was set up 36 hours ago, more than 8,500 ‘virtual candles’ have been lit and 2,000 messages of condolence written.

“The unexpected death of such a popular man as Shane has affected this very close community,” said Alex Stitt, the managing director of iAnnounce, in the release.

“It is a sign of the internet age that they have turned to online messaging to express their shock and sorrow at what has happened.”

iAnnounce is  used by various newspapers in the Johnston Press, Trinity Mirror and Newsquest newspaper groups, and was developed to make use social network tools for newspaper birth, deaths and marriages notices.

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• HTFP: Guardian Media Group to close six newspaper branch offices
• Journalism.co.uk: Spokesman-Review uses interactive map to help readers in weather emergency
• Newspaper Society Advertising and Digital Media Awards: the results on and offline
• CNET relaunches GameSpot website
• Express and Daily Star newspapers’ online apology to Madeleine McCann’s parents - comments turned off