Editors' Blog | Journalism.co.uk » malcolm coles

Tweet Rewinder, a promising mobile app to allow you to rewind Twitter

Sarah Marshall — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:45:40 +0000

SEO expert Malcolm Coles has helped to create Tweet Rewinder, a nifty idea to help you rewind Twitter, according to this post on his blog.

The video below explains how this new mobile web app, now in private beta, allows you to catch up on the tweets sent by people you follow in real time. This could mean catching up on a news story, journalism conference or a TV show. Indeed one of the promoted uses is to follow a hashtag, such as #bbcnews, and replay the Twitter conversation while catching up with the programme on the BBC iPlayer, 4OD, or similar.

Coles, who developed the app with Raak, details which parts of the service are free where users will require a subscription. There are also screenshots to provide a taster. There is also a write up on The Net Web.

Rewinder from Adriaan Pelzer on Vimeo.Similar Posts:

The LA Times on the role of its SEO chief – ‘the key is feedback’

Sarah Marshall — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:44:12 +0000

The Los Angeles Times has reported some pretty impressive traffic figures recently – in fact LATimes.com managing editor Jimmy Orr says it is the only major newspaper website in the US to be increasing in traffic.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk Orr reported that for the six months from March to August 2011 the site saw a 33 per cent increase in page views, a 30.1 per cent increase in unique users and a 74 per cent rise in traffic from Google, when compared with the same period last year.

Nieman Lab has written about what it sees as several contributing factors to this success, such as the integration of Facebook’s commenting system, “a full embrace of blogging”, plus the addition of a new SEO chief, Amy Hubbard. In an interview with Journalism.co.uk Orr explained exactly what Hubbard’s role entails, which is overall to ensure journalists’ work gets read.

We do ourselves a disservice if we’re not identifying the content correctly so we are being very aggressive about correctly labelling it.

But he added that Hubbard’s role is more of an educational one than adding an additional subbing stage for articles.

She is on the front line in the morning so she is able to catch stories and headlines as they come in and work with the copy desk and the bloggers.

If she sees something that needs to be changed she’ll send an email or walk over and explain why changes could work in the LA Times’s favour.

Another part of Hubbard’s day is to review headlines and the information entered into the various fields. She will then “kind of give them a grade”, Orr said.

The key is feedback. She can’t just be the one changing things. She has to go around and talk to other people and say “your headline was too long” or “you forgot to identify what the story was about” or “it was a print headline”.

In Orr’s view a web headline must stand alone and tell the reader exactly what the story or the post is about. It should be “short, punchy and descriptive”, he said.

A quick browse found several examples of headlines that do just that. Take “Man impaled with garden shears through eye socket recovers” and “SUV crashes into home; driver tries to flee on skateboard“, for example.

@latimes
Los Angeles TimesMan impaled with garden shears through eye socket recovers http://t.co/eT4fSLX
Aug 31 via HootSuiteFavorite RetweetReply

Five headlines, not one

Writing for Journalism.co.uk SEO expert Malcolm Coles has previously explained that news sites need to think about writing five headlines for a story or blog post: the on-page headline, the HTML title headline (for the browser field), the headline for Google News, the headline for the channel page (such as the homepage) and a headline for Twitter.

Asked how many headlines the LA Times writes, Orr said there might well be four or five with one on-page headline, often a different HTML title headline and alternative headlines for Twitter and Facebook.

The one for Twitter can be much more engaging. The Twitter headline can be much more fun, much more dramatic, much more inquisitive. We often look to see if there is a hashtag for a discussion and include that.

A quick check found many of the on-page and browser headlines are different but that most Twitter and on-page headlines are the same.

Keyword research and influencing editorial

Orr explained that Hubbard is doing some keyword research to find out what is being searched for but explained it’s mainly a “common sense” approach to understanding how readers look for content.

Asked if editorial decisions are ever made based on what is being searched for – such as “labor day”, “bohemian rhapsody” and “wii u” which all make the list of hot searches on Google Trends in the US today – Orr explained Hubbard may make suggestions on this.

She might let a blogger know that the HP Touchpad is selling for $99 but she’s not assigning stories. It’s more of an informing process.

Here is some more from Journalism.co.uk on SEO:

#jpod: SEO success stories – the LA Times on its traffic hike (which includes parts of this interview with Orr)

#jpod: Does SEO kill the carefully crafted, clever headline?

How to: get to grips with SEO as a journalist

How to: write headlines that work for SEO Similar Posts:

#jpod: Does SEO kill the carefully crafted, clever headline?

Sarah Marshall — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:53:26 +0000

For some time within the industry there has been an often lively debate about the impact of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) on online news. Just recently the Los Angeles Times took on a new SEO chief, whose job it is to build newspaper headlines fit for the internet, by ensuring they’re web-friendly and searchable.

The new role has been credited with contributing to a 65 per cent rise in traffic from search and a 41 per cent jump in traffic from Google compared to this time last year, according to a report by the Nieman Journalism Lab.

So does SEO’s demand for keywords really take the art out of headline writing?

Journalism.co.uk’s technology correspondent Sarah Marshall speaks to SEO consultant Malcolm Coles and Duane Forrester, senior product manager at Bing to find out more.

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Malcolm Coles: Four sites already implementing cookie law

Sarah Marshall — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:35:12 +0000

Malcolm Coles has posted four examples of UK websites already implementing the new EU cookie law that came into force on 26 May.

Websites were given a year to “get their house in order” by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and work towards getting web users to agree to accepting the dropping of cookies – small text files placed onto a users computer.

The ICO has warned companies, however, that they should not leave it until 25 May next year to start complying and has already written to some websites following complaints received since 26 May.

The independent body has received criticism for not telling websites exactly how to get users to agree to accepting cookies, but said sites do not necessarily have to opt for a tick box agreement and can instead find another way of getting users to take “positive action” in order to agree to cookies being dropped.

The four sites that Coles highlights as already implementing cookie law are: the ICO (they had to, didn’t they?), All Things D, the Radio Times and the Island Web Works website on the Isle of Man.

Here is the example from All Things D and Coles’ comment:

It reads: “Some of the advertisers and web analytics firms used on this site may place ‘tracking cookies’ on your computer. We are telling you about them right upfront, and we want you to know how to get rid of these tracking cookies if you like. Read more.

“This notice is intended to appear only the first time you visit the site on any computer.”

It only appears on your first visit to the site (I presume they use a cookie to do that!).

Malcolm Coles’ full post is at this link

Websites get a year to comply with new EU cookie laws Similar Posts:

Malcolm Coles: Why the Guardian’s future does look bleak

Sarah Marshall — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 14:32:30 +0000

Writing on his blog, SEO expert Malcolm Coles claims the disparity in price between the Guardian’s digital services and print product is a problem for the company’s revenue.

Responding to a comment piece by former Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie, which predicts the Guardian’s print edition will be dead in a decade, Coles asks the paper: “Please, let me give you more money”.

A newspaper buyer until he got an iPad, Coles now pays £3.99 a year instead of £230 to read the Guardian everyday in print.

The collapse in what I pay is because I read most of the news for the next day’s newspaper on the Guardian website on my iPad the evening before. And I read anything new on my iPhone on the way to and from work. The newspaper has nothing in that I need.

Read the full post on Coles’ blog at this link.Similar Posts:

Daily Mail hides SEO job ad in search crawler file

Joel Gunter — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:56:35 +0000

It’s possible that SEO types have a sense of humour. Evidence comes courtesy of the Daily Mail, which has hidden a job advert for an SEO manager inside a file that should only really be read by search engine crawlers.

The job ad was discovered by eagle-eyed SEO man Malcolm Coles in a robot.txt file, which blocks the crawlers from indexing certain parts of the site.

Disallow: /home/ireland/
Disallow: /home/scotland/

# August 12th, MailOnline are looking for a talented SEO Manager so if you found this then you’re the kind of techie we need!
# Send your CV to holly dot ward at mailonline dot co dot uk

# Begin standard rules
# Apply rules to all user agents updated 08/06/08
ACAP-crawler: *

Very clever. People who don’t read these kind of things need not apply, obviously.Similar Posts:

Is the BBC really falling out of love with blogging?

Judith Townend — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:57:24 +0000

From reading recent media news you might think the the BBC’s passion for blogging was cooling.

First off, we learnt (via the Times initially, and then confirmed by the BBC) that the corporation is to significantly cut back its web content and reduce the number of online staff.

Then on Tuesday evening, BBC political editor Nick Robinson said he no longer read the comments on his own Newslog. Rather than widening the political debate, commenters were “people who have already made their minds up, to abuse me, to abuse each other or abuse a politician”, he said at an Election 2.0 debate at City University London.

Finally, as academic and blogger Alfred Hermida flagged up, the BBC Strategic Review labelled the blogosphere as “vast and unruly”. The report says:

Above the vast and unruly world of the blogosphere, professional media power may actually concentrate in fewer hands. Individual plurality may increase but collective, effective plurality decrease – with societies around the world left with fewer reliable sources of professionally validated news.

Professor Hermida, who specifically researches the BBC, was surprised by the language and suggests reminding director general Mark Thompson that the BBC is part of the blogosphere itself:

Perhaps Forrester analyst Nick Thomas when he says that “Mark Thompson does not ‘get’ digital in the way that even his much-maligned predecessor John Birt did.”

But before we get carried away with the BBC’s blogging / web apathy, let’s take a step back. Malcolm Coles’ easy-read guide to the Strategic Review comes in handy here.

For one, as Coles notes on Econsultancy, halving the number of sections on the site is not quite the same as halving the size of the site. “The overall quality will be improved by closing lower-performing sites and consolidating the rest,” he reports.

And proactive web interaction will be developed. From Coles’ post:

The BBC also plans to open up its programme library (outside the areas with high commercial value) “over time” within BBC Online as a publicly accessible ‘permanent collection’.

The review says it will make programmes available on demand “alongside the component parts of those programmes (segmentation), programme information (full catalogue) and additional, complementary content (programme support”. And the site will look to deliver audiences through propositions like the BBC’s Wildlife Finder “which maximise the public value of archive programming”.

(…) It’s pledged to “turn the site into a window on the web” by providing at least one external link on every page and doubling monthly ‘click-throughs” to external sites: “making the best of what is available elsewhere online an integral part of the BBC’s offer to audiences”.

Anyway, read the report – or Coles’ summary – for yourself. PDF at this link.Similar Posts:

Who are you calling Twitters?

Judith Townend — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:34:20 +0000

It looks like an Express.co.uk story about the BBC and Twitter has been removed. Originally available at this link http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/152233/Is-the-BBC-run-by-a-bunch-of-Twitters-, it now shows as a missing story.

The story, ‘Is the BBC run by a bunch of Twitters?’ can, however, still be found via the cache. As Malcolm Coles noted on his blog yesterday, the Sunday Express claimed that some BBC Twitter accounts, such as Radio 5 Live’s Victoria Derbyshire, were being followed by only one or two people.

But does the Express understand how Twitter works? Coles first suspected that the journalists muddled the account names, and now claims they’ve mixed up ‘follower’ and ‘following’ numbers.

So Radio 5 Live’s @vicderbyshire actually has 3,692 followers but only follows 2 people (in fact, perhaps thanks to the story, her number of followers seems to be on the rise).

Oops. Journalism.co.uk tried to clarify the situation with Express.co.uk. But it’s no comment for now, and we’re waiting a response from the legal department who deal with all enquiries about missing stories.

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Top five UK journalism blogs and Tweeters in 2009 (and who to watch in 2010)

Judith Townend — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:35:33 +0000

With the proviso that journalism blogs and bloggers come and go, we have selected our own personal favourite journalism bloggers and tweeters. These are our absolute must-reads. We realise this is a somewhat subjective exercise, so please add your own in the comments below, or via Twitter to @journalismnews.

Top five UK journalism blogs and Tweeters of 2009

As chosen by John Thompson, founder, Journalism.co.uk:

Best to follow on Twitter:
@GordonMacmillan, @malcolmcoles, @adamwestbrook, @paulbradshaw, @mikebutcher, @marcreeves

Best blogs:
Malcolm Coles, Jon Slattery, Adam Tinworth, OJB, Adam Westbrook (pictured below, left to right)

As chosen by Laura Oliver, editor, Journalism.co.uk:

Best to follow on Twitter:
@georgehopkin, @nigelbarlow, @MrRickWaghorn, @gordonmacmillan, @psmith

Best blogs:
Sarah Hartley, Alison Gow, Adam Tinworth, Martin Belam, Jon Slattery (pictured below, left to right)

As chosen by Judith Townend, senior reporter, Journalism.co.uk:

Best to follow on Twitter:
@gingerelvis, @samshepherd, @badjournalism, @jowadsworth, @digidickinson

Best blogs:
Jon Slattery, Martin Moore, Charlie Beckett, The Media Blog, Sarah Hartley (pictured below, left to right)

As chosen by the Journalism.co.uk team:

Five blogs to watch in 2010

The Media Blog: Fairly new on the blogging scene and quick off the mark.

Psmithjournalist.com: the former paidContent reporter has gone freelance. Watch this site.

Angry People in Local Newspapers: very funny and simply done.

Marc Reeves: former Birmingham Post editor, with new projects on the go.

Hannah Waldram: recently trained at Cardiff; experimenting with hyperlocal news and online technology.

Five Tweeters to watch in 2010

@timesjoanna, for her excellent social media and online journalism links.

@michaelhaddon, former City student with an interest in political online media; now working at Dow Jones.

@joshhalliday, at the centre of the UK student journalist blogging conversation; lots to look at on his own blog.

@coneee, the NUJ’s first full-time blogger member, currently completing an MA at City University.

@marcreeves, for the latest on what the former regional editor is up to.

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Malcolm Coles: Gordon Brown letter – Sun misjudges readers’ mood

Malcolm Coles — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:52:48 +0000

This is a cross-post from Malcolm Coles’ website www.malcolmcoles.co.uk.

Update: There are suggestions on a Guardian story that the Sun moderators haven’t been putting through comments that are critical of the Sun’s position …

Is the Sun censoring pro-Brown comments?

Original post
The Sun is running a campaign against Gordon Brown. But I’ve analysed the comments on its website – and readers disagree with its stance by a ratio of more than 3 to 2.

Gordon Brown letter story in the Sun

The paper has exploited the grief of Jacqui Janes over her son Jamie’s death in Afghanistan to attack the PM – because his handwritten letter of condolence was supposedly disrespectful due to sloppy writing and (disputed) spelling errors.

It’s loathsome journalism that ignores the effect of his disability (the PM is blind in one eye).

And it seems Sun readers are mostly on the Prime Minister’s side.

Of the 100+ comments on the story (don’t worry, I’ve nofollowed those links) when I checked, 111 expressed a view for or against Jacqui Janes or Gordon Brown (the rest commented on other issues or corrected people’s spelling errors). Of these:

42 were anti Gordon or pro the Sun’s stance.
69 were pro Gordon or anti the Sun’s stance.

So that’s more than 60 per cent who don’t agree with the Sun, and less than 40 per cent who do.

Sample comments from those who agree with the Sun’s stance:

Comments agreeing that Gordon Brown is “discusting”

Some comments from those opposing it:

Comments defending Gordon Brown

Conclusion
The Sun is channeling this woman’s grief into a personal attack on the Prime Minister.

It’s refusing to make allowances for his disability (maybe we could next attack the war wounded for being workshy benefit scroungers?).

And it’s facilitating her breaking data protection laws by releasing a recording of a private phone call.

The whole thing is sickening – let’s hope that observing its readers’ reactions will lead to an end to this (not that this happened in the Jan Moir case) – and preferably prosecution of the Sun over the data protection offence.Similar Posts:

Malcolm Coles: Growth of newspaper Twitter accounts running out of steam

Malcolm Coles — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:07:51 +0000

This is a cross-post from Malcolm Coles’ personal website. You can read other posts by Coles on the Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog at this link.

UK national newspaper Twitter accounts are continuing to grow – but at an ever slower rate, according to the latest figures for the 130 accounts I’m tracking:

July to August growth: 17 per cent
August to September growth: 17 per cent
September to October growth: 13.1 per cent
October to November growth: 8.3 per cent

The detail
These 130 accounts had 1,801,811 followers on November 2, up by 137,568 from 1,664,243 on October 1. Of that increase, 95,007 (or 69 per cent) was for the @guardiantech account (which benefits from being on Twitter’s suggested user list).

(NB – the Telegraph seems to have deleted its badly spelled @TelegraphScienc account, so I’ve restated October’s figures to be for 130 accounts, rather than the 131 I used to track).

The biggest mover was @MirrorFootball, up 11 places to 81st (from 455 to 809 followers), suggesting the Mirror is finally making some use of Twitter (most of its other accounts are near the bottom – and only appear to have moved up a place because of the demise of the Telegraph’s Science account).

As ever, the full spreadsheet is here or you can see the iframe below.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – ‘nofollow’ links

Judith Townend — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:00:34 +0000

Want to write about something but don’t want to send more traffic to the site? Malcolm Coles has some suggestions at this link. Tipster: Judith Townend.

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

How the Guardian and Telegraph overtook the Mail in latest ABCe traffic report

Malcolm Coles — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:30:55 +0000

This post originally appeared on Malcolm Coles’ blog at this link.

June 2009 saw the Mail Online unexpectedly overtake both the Guardian and Telegraph in the ABCes with the most monthly unique users partly on the back of US traffic and Michael Jackson stories, a position it held for both July and August.

Fast forward to September and the story is the same as earlier in the year – Guardian 1st, Telegraph 2nd and Mail 3rd. So what changed from June to September? To find out, I’ve compared the ABCe figures for UK and foreign visitors in June and September. The difference between the Guardian’s performance and that of the Telegraph and Mail is revealing.

Analysis: The Guardian has seen significant growth in the UK AND abroad.

Table: September unique visitors (millions) and percentage change since June

	Total	Change	UK	Change	Overseas	Change
Guardian	33m	14%	11.9m	17%	21.1m	12%

The Guardian’s total visitor numbers grew 14 per cent from June to September (up from 29m to 33m). There was a 17 per cent increase in UK visitors and a 12 per cent increase in visitors from abroad. This makes it the most popular online newspaper in the UK by some way (it’s 2.4m ahead of the Mail in second place).

UK visitors accounted for 36 per cent of the total in September (barely changed from 35 per cent in June).

Analysis: Telegraph sees growth overseas

Table: September unique visitors, percentage change since June

	Total	Change	UK	Change	Overseas	Change
Telegraph	31m	14%	9.1m	-1%	21.9m	22%

The Telegraph has also seen a 14 per cent increase in total visitors from June (27.2m) to September (31m).

However, the geographical breakdown is revealing – its UK unique visitor numbers are down one per cent from June to August but its overseas visitors are up 22 per cent (from 18m to 21.9m). It’s now the most visited UK newspaper abroad – but only the 3rd most visited inside the UK.

As a result, the proportion of its visitors that comes from the UK has fallen from 34 per cent to 29 per cent – the lowest of any UK newspaper (the Mail held this honour back in June).

The Telegraph saw the biggest increase in overseas visitors of any newspaper – but because its UK traffic fell, the Guardian beat it into 2nd place.

Analaysis: Mail Online records UK growth only

Table: September unique visitors, percentage change since June

	Total	Change	UK	Change	Overseas	Change
Daily Mail	30m	2%	9.5m	15%	20.6m	-2%

The Mail’s traffic stood fairly still between June and September – it had 30m visitors last month, up just two per cent on three months ago. But its story is the reverse of the Telegraph’s.

The Mail saw strong UK growth – up 14 per cent to 9.5m visitors in three months. Overseas visitors, however, fell by 2 per cent to 20.6m. As a result, it now gets 32 per cent of its visitors from the UK (up from 28 per cent in June).

And the rest …

As for the others:

The Sun is down to 23m visitors in September, an 8 per cent fall over 3 months. A 15 per cent collapse in overseas visitors couldn’t make up for a 3 per cent increase in UK users.
The Times is a story of decline – 13 per cent down overall, with a 10 per cent fall in the UK and a 14 per cent fall from overseas.
The same is true of the Mirror Group (down 5 per cent overall) and the Independent (down 6 per cent overall) but to a lesser extent.

This table has all the stats. If you can’t see the iframe, you can see the full spreadsheet here.

The Express doesn’t take part in the ABCes. The FT does not participate every month.

Journalism.co.uk ABCes coverage at this link…Similar Posts:

#JanMoir: Where have the adverts gone?

Judith Townend — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:06:40 +0000

Now this is odd: some of the adverts have disappeared from Jan Moir’s infamous-in-one-day Stephen Gately article, originally titled ‘Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death’. Could it be blogger and SEO consultant Malcolm Coles’ campaign rallying the Twitter troops to bombard the various advertisers on the page, that persuaded the Mail to remove the ads? Journalism.co.uk will seek the answer…

Update: NMA reports that the Mail has indeed pulled the adverts, according to Mail Online MD James Bromley; we still await a response. We should also note, as indicated in the comments below, some other factors contributed to the pressure: urban75, @stephenfry and Newsarse.com, and a Facebook group. Please add any more examples below.

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Malcolm Coles: Rate of growth slows for newspaper Twitter accounts

Malcolm Coles — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:50:17 +0000

This is a cross-post from Malcolm Coles’ website www.malcolmcoles.co.uk.

National UK newspapers had 1,665,202 followers for their Twitter accounts at the start of October – an increase of 193,266 on September 1 (when they had 1,471,936).

The rate of growth has slowed, however. This is a monthly increase of 13.1 per cent, compared with 17 per cent from August 1 to September 1, and also from July 1 to August 1.

What’s more, 151,555 of the increase (or 78 per cent of the total) is down to just one account – that of @guardiantech (which owes its popularity to its place on the Twitter Suggested User List). Indeed, of the 131 accounts I’m tracking, 51 have fewer followers than me!

You can see the full table here, or below.

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