Tag Archives: Twitter stream

140conf: Follow the event here

Following on from last month’s UK event on microblogging, Media140, a new event dedicated to all things Twitter takes place today and tomorrow.

140Conf or ‘The 140 Character Conference’ features sessions on Twitter and TV; Twitter and newspapers; and Twitter for newsgathering, with contributions from BusinessWeek.com editor John A. Byrne (@johnabyrne), Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) and Andrew Keen (@ajkeen) amongst others.

You can watch a livestream from 8:45am (EST) today – you’ll need to register and download the player. There’s also a great backchannel site hosting video, tweets, speaker profiles and latest coverage of the conference.

Alternatively, follow the Twitter stream of #140conf tweets below:

Media140: Follow the event where microblogging meets journalism

Updated May 20: There’s a great line-up of speakers at tomorrow’s today’s Media140 conference and Journalism.co.uk is proud to be involved as a media sponsor.

Panels featuring, amongst others, the Guardian’s blogs editor Kevin Anderson, Sky News Online senior editor Jon Gripton and TechCrunch editor Mike Butcher, will discuss how Twitter and social media work as tools for journalists and news organisations.

A full agenda can be viewed on the Media140 site.

If you’re not attending there are plenty of ways to follow online including: a Flickr group, a roster of bloggers (including Mike Atherton, Vikki Chowney, Dan Thornton and Kate Day) and – in the spirit of the event using the hashtag #media140.

You can watch the livestream below:

If you’re an Audioboo user – why not tag your boos with #media140 too?

Sky News will be running a liveblog on the event and you can see a Twitter stream of updates with hashtag below:

FT Digital Media and Broadcasting conference Twitter stream (no need for refresh)

Journalism.co.uk will have to watch from afar on this one, the FT Digital Media and Broadcasting two day conference, but here’s the Twitter conversation for your enjoyment, keep this post open and you won’t even need to refresh to follow:

Who’s a-Twittering at Digital News Affairs 2009 #dna09?

The news team of Journalism.co.uk is currently in Brussels covering the Digital News Affairs 2009 conference
We will have a live updating Twitter stream on this site, but you can also watch a prettier and more inclusive stream here and a special one based on the Twitter hashtag #dna140 for the Twitter panel on Thursday here.

If you are Twittering from DNA200, please remember to add #DNA09 to all your Tweets.

In the meantime, here is a list of Twitterers we’ve clocked if you want to follow them individually. This list is by no means conclusive, so feel free to add your own Twitter handles in comments if you will be at the conference and have been missed out.

@benhammersley
@benteka
@bertiebee
@brewbart
@cybersoc
@darrenwaters
@edial
@ernstpoulsen
@hochstenbach
@jaapstronks
@jacqwess
@Jer00n
@johncthompson
@jtownend
@kjmarsh
@kosmopolit
@lauraoliver
@lyssaslounge
@NEurope
@nmcintosh
@nwalrave
@paulvereijken
@Rosenblumtv
@SanneBrand
@theonehitwonder

How to publish Twitter streams on news sites?

socialplumeAs covered earlier on this blog, there are various tools for tracking and engaging in conversations on Twitter, especially where hashtags are used. But how do you publish a themed Twitter stream on your news site or blog, and what other issues are there to consider?

We have experimented with various tools on this blog in order to stream hashtag-themed Tweets (a post on Twitter) into a blog post. The last attempt used a heavily modified WordPress plugin from Monittor. None have been completely satisfactory.

But why would journalists want to do this? Well, imagine if there is an event on your local beat like a football match or other sports game. People are already Twittering from these events. If they could be persuaded to use the same hashtag, then you have the potential of creating a live Twitter stream on your website – a live commentary but from the point of view of several fans, not just one reporter.

Similarly, it could be used to cover breaking news events, basing the Twitter stream on keywords, rather than a hashtag.

For this to work really well though, we decided several functions needed to be in place:

1. The ability to place a stream of Tweets, based on keyword(s) and/or hashtag(s), onto a web page and for that stream to dynamically update (ie not require a page refresh). Ideally the output to be called by <div> tags, rather than a Javascript insert, to cope with content management systems that reject JS in article bodies.

2. Access to legacy Tweets using pagination. The current tools we use only display the last 10 or so Tweets, with no access on our pages to what has been Tweeted before.

3. The ability for administrators to tag certain Tweets within a themed stream and create a new output on another page. The purpose of this is to allow an editor to easily create a summary of the best Tweets for archive purposes.

4. The ability for moderators to manually exclude certain Tweets from a Twitter stream (for moderation purposes).

5. The ability for users to login and post directly to a Twitter stream, from the page on which that Twitter stream is published.

6. Threading based on @replies (probably the most complex proposition in this list).

There did not seem to be any existing tools that covered even half these bases, so we put out a call on a local developer’s email list. Amazingly, it transpired that a local company in Brighton, Inuda, is currently working on a tool that will eventually tick almost all of the above boxes.

Called SocialPlume, the product aims eventually to become a modestly priced subscription service. Jonathan Markwell of Inuda was keen to stress that they are still some way off a public launch, but in the meantime they are keen to hear from publishers and journalists who might be keen to trial the service alongside ourselves. DM @journalismnews or @johncthompson if you are interested.

We would also love to hear other ideas and applications for this service that you might have (please leave a comment).

How to: Track a conversation in Twitter

Twitter is increasingly being used by journalists to make contacts and track news events, but the Twitter user-interface (UI) itself is pretty limited making it difficult to track conversations. Fortunately its open API structure and the ability to subscribe to various types of RSS feeds from Twitter means there are a number of ways to track a ‘buzz’ around an event or specific conversations.

Hashtags are one way to identify conversations based around particular subjects or events. If you don’t already use them, you might have at least seen them being used by others in your network. Basically it’s a keyword that you use in your Twitter post to associate it with a group, topic, or event. For example, every Monday night there is debate on Twitter ‘hosted’ under the hashtag #journchat, aimed at public relations professionals and journalists. If you consider that an unholy mix, then there is a tag just for journalists #journ plus other, less popular, variants such as #mediachat and #journalism.

Another common usage for hashtags is at events. For example, our senior reporter Laura Oliver recently attended the Oxford Media Convention and was one of several journalists Twittering using the hashtag #omc09 (Journalism.co.uk has a dedicated Twitter channel for live event coverage – @journalism_live).

So if you want to monitor posts with those hashtags, one simple way is to create an RSS feed based on a keyword search of Twitter or, better still, Twemes. But there are also a number of other tools you can use to track conversations.

Tools:

TweetDeck – This desktop application (still in beta) enables you to split all the Tweets you receive into topic or group specific columns. The default columns can contain all tweets from your timeline, @replies directed to you and direct messages. You can also make up additional, live-updating columns using the ‘group’ (to create a sub-group of just your favourite Twitterers, for example), ‘search’ and ‘replies’ buttons. You can also filter each column to include or exclude items based on keywords or users. Unfortunately it does not support multiple Twitter accounts (otherwise I would definitely prefer it as my main Twitter client to Twhirl).

Tweet Grid – This is a browser-based application that allows you to search for up to nine different topics, events, conversations, hashtags, phrases, people, groups, etc. As new tweets are created, they are automatically updated in the grid. One particularly neat feature is that it can automatically add hashtags if you Tweet directly from their web page.

Monitter – A browser-based application that is very similar to Tweet Grid except it is prettier and you can search for Tweets made within a certain distance of a chosen location. A widget is available for your blog or website but you would need to know a little html to install it.

Roomatic – A browser-based application that creates an output page of Tweets based on a keyword or hashtag. Unfortunately it does not seem to do much else but could be handy if you need to direct readers to a page containing live updates on a particular event or topic.

TwitterThreads – A browser-based application that threads your twitter feed, making it easier to follow conversations or connected Tweets. However, it does not seem to keep the threads together for long, or in quantity.

Tweetchat – A browser-based application that allows you to monitor and chat about one topic. You can tweet directly from the page and it will automatically add the hashtag of whatever ‘room’ you are in. The Twitter stream live updates.

Tweetree – A browser-based application that puts your Twitter stream in a tree so you can see the posts people are replying to in context (but does not properly thread them). It also pulls in lots of external content like twitpic photos, youtube videos etc.

Can you recommend any other tools? Let me know in the comments.

Live Twittering from the Oxford Media Convention

Follow this Twitter stream for the chat surrounding today’s Oxford Media Convention (refresh the page to see new Tweets). Keep an eye on our main site and on the blog for more OMC ’09 coverage. And don’t forget you can follow live, via @journalism_live on Twitter.

[carpwp:feed{http://www.twemes.com/omc09.rss}][/carpwp]

Mumbai online: the attacks reported live (updating)

A look at where the news has unfolded. Please post additional links below. Journalism.co.uk will add in more links as they are spotted.

Washington-based blogger and social media expert, Gaurav Mishra talks to Journalism.co.uk in an interview published on the main page.

One of the few on-the-ground user-generated content examples, Vinu’s Flickr stream (screen grab above). Slide show below:

How it has been reported:

Photography:

  • Flickr users such as Vinu, have uploaded pictures from the scene (images: all rights reserved).
  • A Flickr search such as this one, brings up images from Mumbai, although many are reproduced from a few sources. People have also taken pictures of the television news coverage.
  • But before you re-publish your finds beware: an advanced search which filters pictures by copyright and only shows up images opened up under Creative Commons, limits the results.

Blogs:

Breaking news:

Social Media:

Microblogging:

Mapping:

Video:

  • The Google video seach is here. YouTube videos are mainly limited to broadcast footage, with one user even filming the TV reports, for those without access to live television coverage. YouTube videos seem to be all second-hand broadcasts from mainstream media.

Timelines:

  • Dipity timeline here:

Campaigns / Aid:

https://bmmagazine.co.uk/business/us-government-asks-max-polyakov-to-sell-firefly-shares-for-safety-concerns/

links for 2008-06-30

TechCrunch: Ads coming to Twitter?

It was only a matter of time before Twitter looked to cash in on its volumous community of users – and if rumours are to be believed that time is now.

TechCrunch is reporting that Twitter was suffering service difficulties yesterday and that during those interruptions some users spotted ads in their Twitter stream (could the users be mistaking Twitterrific ads if they are using those services?).

Click through if you want to take the TechCrunch poll on whether Twitter should carry ads.