“We are putting a massive amount of trust in one platform here. Twitter is throttling this mechanism obviously for its own commercial ends (…) If we put so much of our newsgathering onto one platform we’re in real danger,” said Mike Butcher, TechCrunch UK editor, yesterday as part of a panel on the ’140-character story’.

While much of yesterday’s Media140 conference focused on best practice and how journalists can use microblogging tools such as Twitter, Butcher and his fellow panellists comments were a warning to news organisations tempted to jump on a social media bandwagon.

As journalists, ‘we always want the next big thing, because it validates the fact that we’ve written about them’, said fellow speaker Bill Thompson, referring to his own experience as a freelance technology writer.

But, added Thompson, if ‘old media’ rules are applied too readily to new media, organisations will ‘miss the essential quality of what Twitter is doing’.

Some ‘old’ guidelines still apply, suggested BBC technology editor Darren Waters: “We cannot get into a world where the real-time web means the ‘not wrong for long’ era.”

Listening to yesterday’s panel the issue of the personal/professional divide when journalists enter social media or online communities – indeed how ‘social’ they can be on these platforms – is still a work in progress.
The BBC is still working on its editorial policy towards personal social media use by journalists (and after all ‘social media’ is not some fixed, homogenous lump) – it has set out some guidelines at this link – the corporation must consider its relationship with its audience and to what extent personal content is seen as representing the BBC.

But – as panellist Jon Gripton, senior editor at Sky News Online, suggested – in terms of following up reports on Twitter and social media, for example of breaking news events, the same journalistic attitude towards fact-checking and verification apply.

A mantra from Thompson: “I don’t believe anything I see or read on Twitter, it tells me where to go.”

• Financial Post apologises for reporter’s Twitter outburst
• BBC Internet Blog: ‘Microblogging – the Editorial Policy Meeting’
• Reuters Handbook of Journalism: Don’t scoop the wire
• Media140: Follow the event where microblogging meets journalism
• DNA09: Twitter – a few more questions for the panel

A couple of crowd-sourced questions were taken by the Twitter panel, but some were missed. We’ll post them here and hope the panelists will answer them via Twitter or in the comments below.

• Noodlepie: @jamierussell be interested to know if the panel are looking at ways to increase “retweetness”. Very big traffic driver, no? #dna09 #dna140

• gemmanewby: #dna140 do you think it possible to make an entire news programme using only twitter and first person tweets as your source?

• ernstpoulsen: Question: What’s the difference between the conversation on twitter and facebook’s status-updates? #dna140 dna#09

• hatmandu: #DNA140 The question should be: “why *can’t* you tell the news in 140 characters?”

Journalism.co.uk’s very own @lauraoliver was on a panel led by Wired UK’s associate editor @benhammersley at Digital News Affairs 2009. The others were Jeff Jarvis, blogger at BuzzMachine (@jeffjarvis); Robin Hamman, senior social media consultant at Headshift (@cybersoc); Darren Waters, technology editor at BBC News website (@darrenwaters); Bert Brouwers, editor-in-chief of Sp!ts (@brewbart); Katharina Borchert, editor-in-chief of Der Westen and MD of WAZ media (@lyssaslounge).

• DNA09: Twittering – is it possible to tell the news in 140 characters or fewer?
• Robin Hamman: Why I’m joining Edelman as digital director
• Who’s a-Twittering at Digital News Affairs 2009 #dna09?
• JEEcamp: Audio from the event
• #followjourn: @cybersoc – Robin Hamman/journalist #newsrw

Journalism.co.uk’s very own @lauraoliver is joining a panel led by Wired.com associate editor @benhammersley at Digital News Affairs 2009. The others are Jeff Jarvis, blogger at BuzzMachine (@jeffjarvis); Robin Hamman, senior social media consultant at Headshift (@cybersoc); Darren Waters, technology editor at BBC News website (@darrenwaters); Bert Brouwers, editor-in-chief of Sp!ts (@brewbart); Katharina Borchert, editor-in-chief of Der Westen and MD of WAZ media (@lyssaslounge).

Watch live video from johncthompson’s channel on Justin.tv

Tag your tweets for this session #dna140 and follow here when it kicks off at 13.30 (Brussels time):

• DNA09: Twitter – a few more questions for the panel
• Who’s a-Twittering at Digital News Affairs 2009 #dna09?
• DNA09 – Economically distressed but making the most of it
• #Outlook2010: Germany’s WAZ media – learning from bigger players and going open source
• Follow Beet.TV’s Online Video Journalism Summit

Google has launched App Engine – a service allowing web developers to test out their applications on Google’s infrastructure.

By using Google technology developers will be able to see how their applications fare ‘under heavy load and with large amounts of data’, says a post on the new blog for the service.

“The goal is to make it easy to get started with a new web app, and then make it easy to scale when that app reaches the point where it’s receiving significant traffic and has millions of users,” writes Paul McDonald, product manager.

There are certain restrictions on the applications, namely: maximum of 500MB of storage, 200M megacycles of CPU per day and 10GB bandwidth per day. The tool will remain free when used within these parameters and, as it’s developed, users will be able to purchase extra resources.

Donald says most applications are expected to be able to serve approximately 5 million pageviews per month.

The App Engine is at the ‘preview’ stage – meaning only the first 10,000 subscribers can play with it for now. The list is already full:

According to Darren Waters on the BBC’s dot.life blog there were no more places within 24 hours. Waters points to the launch as a signal of where Google is headed as a company:

“There’s no doubt that hosted services, from web applications to programs we associate mainly with desktop computing, are the future… more interesting will be what Google says it will be able to do with the applications and resultant data that it will host on our behalf, on the behalf of developers and companies.

“Google could help drive standards not just for the web as we understand it today, but for each and every device that is being connected to the net now and in the coming years…”

TechCrunch has already used the service to build an application and says it took four hours from sign-up to deployment – its speed and simplicity being the main attraction to developers. However, questions will need to be asked about the scaling process, writes Henry Work.

While making it quick and easy is undoubtedly a positive for developers, Thomas Claburn at InformationWeek urges caution:

“[D]evelopers looking to travel the path of least resistance should pay close attention to the risks of depending on someone else and to the limitations imposed by terms-of-service contracts. We’re talking about outsourcing your infrastructure, after all.”

Is this Google offering developers a helping hand or offering to buy them up?

• CNET: Facebook and Google still not ready to connect friends
• TechCrunch: Data portability is the new walled garden
• Press Gazette: Telegraph developer weekend: The possibilites of Google Earth
• YouTube videos now available in Google Maps
• Mashable: Reuters frees content with new API