Tag Archives: Twitter

Why news sites should consider adding the LinkedIn share button

TechCrunch has revealed LinkedIn is now sending the site more referral traffic than Twitter.

Much of the traffic appears to be down to referrals from LinkedIn Today, a collection of articles shared by your connections – including via Twitter – but a quick look at the number of clicks a LinkedIn share button is acquiring suggests it is well worth adding.

TechCrunch’s post goes on to reveal this amazing fact:

The biggest stat of all is that a year ago, traffic coming from LinkedIn was 1/50th what it is today on a monthly basis.

So what changed? As far as we can tell, this is all about LinkedIn Today, the social news product the service launched back in March. It was around that time that was saw the first big bump in terms of traffic coming from LinkedIn. In March, it roughly doubled from February. Then April was pretty flat — it was still much higher than previously, but not growing. Then in May, traffic went up 5x. And in June, it more than doubled from that. The growth has been astounding.

Of course what’s perhaps most interesting about that is that LinkedIn Today is powered by Twitter. Twitter shared links determine what shows up on LinkedIn Today, but the traffic does not go back through Twitter.

Even more surprising is that the biggest traffic driver to TechCrunch is Facebook.

The truth is that if this were October of last year, you would have been right in thinking that Twitter was our top referrer in terms of social websites. But since that time, Facebook has far surpassed Twitter in terms of traffic coming our way each month. In fact, Facebook.com is now sends nearly double the traffic that Twitter.com does. This is probably due to the fact that last November, we added Elin, our excellent community manager, who curates and engages with people from our feed on Facebook. I also suspect it has to do with the rise of the like button. Ever since it was released last year, Facebook has been steadily referring more readers our way.

Speaking on today’s Journalism.co.uk #jpod on how journalists can best use Facebook pages Jack Riley, head of digital audience and content development at the Independent, explains how the Independent has seen an impressive growth in traffic to its news site via Facebook and how social referrals have overtaken traffic generated by search.

Riley states:

Just as we saw with the Google wave of the digital media revolution when everyone optimised their sites for search and SEO became a huge industry in its own right, now everyone is having to optimise their sites for social.

In the podcast Riley explains that this means adding open graph tags to articles so they are optimised for Facebook sharing.

But if your next step in social is adding LinkedIn share, here is how to add the button by copying and pasting a simple line of code.

TechCrunch’s post on its social traffic is well worth reading and is at this link.

Google +1 button is coming to AdWords – but how useful is it?

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Google is to introduce its +1 button to AdWords, the internet giant’s main advertising product, so users can recommend adverts to their friends and contacts.

The button was made available to news sites earlier this month and has been adopted some web publishers.

Google’s button was added to AdWords on Google.com at the end of March and is now coming to Google.co.uk, according to an announcement on the AdWords blog.

Users who are logged into their Google account can click the button and their friends and contacts will see that news story or page promoted in their search.

In its US announcement, Google explains how the button works for Google AdWords.

Let’s use a hypothetical Brian as an example. When Brian signs into his Google account and sees one of your ads or organic search results on Google, he can +1 it and recommend your page to the world.

The next time Brian’s friend Mary is signed in and searching on Google and your page appears, she might see a personalized annotation letting her know that Brian +1’d it. So Brian’s +1 helps Mary decide that your site is worth checking out.

But almost a month on from news outlets adding the +1 button next to Twitter’s tweet button and Facebook’s like button (including on news stories on Journalism.co.uk), the button is very much third in line in terms of generating clicks.

So why are readers not using Google’s +1 button?

Unlike Twitter or Facebook where users post a link, those who click the button get little out of it in the same way they do by tweeting or liking a story – although that could change with the launch of Google +, a new social network dubbed Google’s answer to Facebook.

Making a recommendation is not immediate and there are several hurdles to overcome. For a contact to see a recommendation it relies on them searching for a keyword that the +1 user has shown interest in and the contact must also be logged into their Google account.

The button’s less than lukewarm take up also suggests people do not want their searches sorted by the choices made by their friends and contacts, but organised by relevance to what the wider online community is reading.

News sites get little out of +1 and although they may get a few more hits as a result, few would claim it has made any impact.

After a month on the article pages of news sites who opted to adopt +1, it is unlikely those who have not added the button will follow suit unless Google+ takes off in a big way. Those which have the button may decide to replace it with the LinkedIn share button, which has been gathering pace and is now coming in ahead of Facebook as a sharing mechanism on many sites, such as in this example from Mashable.

What do you think about Google’s +1 button? Let us know in the comments section below.

Digital Trends: LinkedIn launces aggregated news service

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

Mea culpa? Johann Hari apologises for ‘error of judgement’

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After yesterday’s storm, this morning’s calmer weather brings with it some reflection from Johann Hari about the scandal he has found himself caught up in.

Writing in today’s Independent, Hari has apologised for an “error of judgement” after being shown to have passed off unattributed material from elsewhere as direct interview quotes.

I did not and never have taken words from another context and twisted them to mean something different – I only ever substituted clearer expressions of the same sentiment, so the reader knew what the subject thinks in the most comprehensible possible words.

The front-page headline for his piece seems to have been changed at the 11th hour from “What I think about the attacks on my professional integrity” to “The lessons I must draw from these attacks on my journalism”.

Both have a certain amount of fighting talk about them. The second is softer around the edges and closer to Hari’s piece in the paper, which is an awkward mix of mea culpa and mea innocentia.

I don’t want to harp on about this. I’m not out to get Johann Hari, I don’t want to see him bullied or hounded, and some of yesterday’s frenzy left a sour taste in my mouth. But seeing people on Twitter call his piece in this morning’s paper “gracious” and “exemplary” and so on sticks in the craw a bit.

Hari is a very intelligent guy, intelligent enough for it not to wash that he was innocently doing something for the benefit of the reader. A “gracious” and “exemplary” response would be an honest one, which I don’t think this is. An honest response would admit that he knew then what he was doing was wrong, rather than sees now that it was. An honest response would admit that part of the reason he did it was to improve his own journalism. To make out that it was all about the reader is disingenuous, I think.

Commenting on my previous blog post on this, Guardian technology correspondent Charles Arthur disagreed with my claim that Hari was being disingenuous in his response. He says instead that a lack of proper journalism training is to blame. Arthur claims that the route up through King’s College, Cambridge to the New Statesman and on, didn’t give Hari the journalistic nous to know that what he was doing was wrong or the arsenal to defend himself against the allegations that followed.

It may be the case that Hari’s sentiments in the paper today are genuine, and bear out Arthur’s assessment that he didn’t know any better, but I don’t buy it. This was not about the readers. It does not do a disservice to the reader to give them an unpolished thought, the disservice is giving them one thing and telling them it’s another, and you don’t need to pass your NCTJs or come up the ranks of a local paper to know that.

Of course, phone hacking is worse, inventing quotes from scratch is worse, and there are probably plenty of other things that happen in our industry that are worse. But we don’t need to judge one thing by another, as if the worse of the two mitigated the lesser. Those other bad practices just serve to show that the reaction to this situation was way out of proportion. As James Ball pointed out in a discussion with me this morning, the fact of this 2003 Private Eye piece about Hari adequately demonstrates the amplifying power of Twitter today.

This is the last thing I’ll write about the issue, I hope, but I do think it merits further discussion. It’s a shame that the debate about the practice itself has been somewhat hijacked and deformed by the brouhaha on Twitter. I know these things aren’t black or white, and that Johann Hari is no Jayson Blair. There are shades of grey in between. And I don’t want to see a campaigning writer and someone who is a force for good in journalism end up on the scrap heap over something like this. But I’m just not sure that today’s defence stands up. As Samira Shackle notes in her New Statesman post today, Hari still hasn’t addressed the charge of lifting material from other interviews as well as from the writings of his subjects.

I’m sure that over the coming months Hari will vie with his Independent colleague Robert Fisk for the dubious honour of most-scrutinised journalist, and I’m equally sure they won’t find any new copy and paste jobs. The level of coverage of this has been sufficient to teach anyone a lesson.

It remains to be seen whether an inquiry into his 2008 Orwell Prize will find that his submissions are affected.

UPDATE: A discussion on Twitter between myself and the Guardian’s Charles Arthur followed this post after he commented on it below. You can see the whole thing at this link, starting at the bottom of the page. The first tweet should start “Interesting comment from @charlesarthur…” and the last “@charlesarthur @jeremyduns Sobering. Threatening to escalate…” – if this is no longer displaying properly please let me know: joelmgunter@gmail.com.

Image by internets_dairy on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

#TfN: Twitter for Newsrooms launches – is it useful?

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Twitter for Newsrooms has launched a best practice guide for journalists. But do newsrooms need a guide? Is Twitter not preaching to the converted? Or as TechCrunch states, Twitter for Newsrooms!? Twitter is a newsroom, quoting Mediagazer founding editor Megan McCarthy.

Along the lines of Facebook for Journalists, Twitter for Newsrooms aims to help journalists by acting as a resource for research and reporting.

As Twitter’s announcement states:

We know you come from different generations. Some are native to the pilcrow, others native to the hashtag.

Mashable states:

The guide, titled “Twitter for Newsrooms,” is a little bit obvious for anyone who uses Twitter on a daily basis. There’s no new info here, just tips on how to report, engage with other users and followers and how to use tweets in the process of reporting. But the fact that Twitter has launched an official guide for journalists is indicative of the impact of social media on the news.

TechCrunch adds:

#TfN is Twitter’s official nudge to old school reporters, a heavy handed reminder to get with the program and embrace Twitter as media production and consumption device.

The 10,000 Words blog is a little more positive on its usefulness for all journalists:

While much of the information won’t ring fresh for reporters already knee-deep in social media sourcing, it’s a comprehensive and helpful resource for journalists of all levels hoping to gain some insight into Twitter’s potential for journalists.

So what does Twitter for Newsrooms involve?

There are four areas: #Report, #Engage, #Publish and #Extra.

As Mary Hamilton says on her blog:

This is basic stuff – tools, examples, glossary, links, support. That’s as it should be, I reckon. The newsroom denizens who understand Twitter well enough to build their own techniques are still vastly in the minority. This is about bridging a gap.

#Report gives advice to journalists on when and how to use the following four tools, plus advice on finding sources, and mobile tips.

On the subject of the advanced Twitter search, Hamilton writes:

I’m glad Twitter is making more of its advanced search tools. They’re immensely useful for journalists, but unless you already know about them they’re next to impossible to use. Including them here, prominently, is smart. And it’s wise to explain there’s a difference between Top and All tweets, even if it’s still not clear what “most relevant” means in this context.

#Englage has advice on effective tweeting, with good examples;

#Publish explains how to follow, retweet, favourite and reply, and how to use BlackBird pie, which displays tweets in WordPress;

#Extra, as you might have guessed, includes all the other facts a Twitter beginner may need to know (though can probably be worked out simply watching a stream and trying it out).

Another point well made by Hamilton is:

Twitter is protecting/building its brand. Some of these guidelines are about making sure the platform gets credit for quotes and information shared there. Others offer ways to embed Twitter functionality on news sites. It reminds me of Facebook’s Open Graph plugins, in a nascent and very specific way – proliferating its own platform while performing useful functions. Aiming to become needed, where it isn’t already.

Do you think Twitter for Newsrooms is needed and a valuable resource? Have you found Facebook for Journalists useful? Let us know in the comments section below.

Reuters: Athletes can tweet at 2012 as long as ‘not in manner of journalists’

Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk: brand your tweets using a WordPress plugin

Reuters: Athletes can tweet at 2012 as long as not in manner of journalists

comScore: Social media accounts for one out of every six minutes spent online in US

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New figures from comScore, which measure digital use, show that Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Tumblr “reached new heights” in the US in May.

comScore’s blog on the “network effect” shows social networking accounts for almost 14 per cent of the time people spend online – or one in every six minutes.

The new stats show social blogging site Tumblr has grown by 166 per cent in the past year, reaching 10.7 million visitors in May, its first month surpassing the 10 million visitor mark.

A post states:

Today Facebook is the fourth largest US web property in audience size with 157.2 million visitors in May, representing its all-time high and a gain of 3.2 million visitors vs. the previous month. While other reports have been circulating that Facebook witnessed a pronounced user decline this month, comScore data shows quite a different story. Given that Facebook now reaches 73 per cent of the total US internet population each month, one thing we should anticipate is that the site’s audience cannot grow forever. The law of large numbers says that once a site has penetrated the majority of a market, each incremental user becomes that much more difficult to attract. So given its size, Facebook’s future US growth is likely to come more from increasing usage per visitor than its ability to attract new users in perpetuity. One impressive stat to note is that Facebook’s average US visitor engagement has grown from 4.6 hours to 6.3 hours per month over the past year, so it appears to be succeeding in that regard.

The author states:

Upon the release of comScore’s May US data, I immediately noticed that it was not just a banner month for Facebook but also for several other leading players in the social networking category who also reached all-time US audience highs: Linkedin (33.4 million visitors), Twitter (27.0 million) and Tumblr (10.7 million).

Twitter also had a particularly strong month in May with 27 million US visitors, representing an increase of 13 percent in the past year. (Note: while much of Twitter’s usage occurs away from the Twitter.com site, past comScore research has indicated that approximately 85-90 per cent of Twitter users visit the website each month). Twitter’s success in May can likely be attributed in part to the exceptionally buzzworthy news story of Osama Bin Laden’s death, as well as ongoing discussion of the Royal Wedding.

The full post is at this link

‘Like’ and ‘tweet’ buttons – what news sites need to know about dropped cookies

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What is not to like about the buttons that drive traffic to your site from Facebook and Twitter? Quite a lot if you consider a study commissioned by the Wall Street Journal published in May.

‘Like’ and ‘tweet’ widgets, which appear on one third of the world’s 1,000 most-visited websites, enable Facebook and Twitter to track and follow the sites a user visits by dropping cookies – small text files placed on a user’s computer.

New EU cookie law, which came into force in the UK on 26 May, requires websites to confirm they accept cookies before they can be dropped. So what is the legal position of websites that use ‘tweet’ and ‘like’ buttons, how should they act responsibly and can anything be done to stop this happening?

How Facebook and Twitter ‘follow’ your readers

The WSJ article explains how the ‘tweet’ and ‘like’ buttons on your site track readers:

For this to work, a person only needs to have logged into Facebook or Twitter once in the past month. The sites will continue to collect browsing data, even if the person closes their browser or turns off their computers, until that person explicitly logs out of their Facebook or Twitter accounts, the study found.

Kennish’s study examined more than 200,000 web pages on the top 1,000 sites. He found Facebook obtained browsing data from 331 sites, and Google obtained data from 250 sites, some of it from its Buzz widget. Twitter got browsing information from about 200 sites.

This all may sound a little ‘big brother’ to some Facebook and Twitter users but cookies are dropped by almost every website you visit and collect all sorts of data. One of the major uses of cookies by news sites is to gather audience data and display targeted advertising. They can also be dropped by any third-party with links on your site, such as Facebook and Twitter buttons.

So what can news sites do to prevent their readers being tracked by Facebook and Twitter?

Nothing, according to Julian Evans, an information security expert with his own blog on online security, who said all ‘tweet’ and ‘like’ buttons, even if they are made by third-parties, drop cookies.

The legal position of ‘tweet’, ‘like’ and cookies

However, websites are not liable for cookies dropped by third-parties, such as Facebook’s ‘like’, Twitter’s ‘tweet’ or other buttons and links on your site, according to the Information Commissioner’s Office, an independent public body which polices the new EU cookie law and can fine websites up to £500,000 for non-compliance.

Katherine Vander from the ICO told Journalism.co.uk that websites must, during the next few months, concentrate on getting their houses in order to make sure they comply with the new EU directive that came into force in the UK on 26 May which states users have to confirm they accept cookies before a website can drop them. Before that date internet users merely had to opt out of receiving cookies if they did not want their data collected.

What should sites do to act responsibly?

Although there is no legal requirement for news sites to get readers to opt in to agree to allowing Facebook and Twitter to drop cookies and track their reading habits, the ICO is encouraging news sites to act responsibly and inform readers what is going on.

“If you’re encouraging people to come to your site to use those facilities and you’re making a deliberate link there – which obviously [sites which have ‘tweet’ and ‘like’ buttons] are – you may well feel some sense of responsibility in terms of, at the very least, providing people with information about what might result in that happening,” Vander told Journalism.co.uk. She also asked news sites to keep up-to-date with Facebook and Twitter’s privacy policies.

She suggests sites which want to be really responsible should “put a note next to the link” to tell readers this button drops cookies.

That may not sound like an attractive solution to many as it may scare or confuse readers, many of whom think a cookie is just something to dunk in a cup of tea.

“Consumers don’t understand what cookies are. People don’t want to know what [a cookie] does, they just want to know it’s safe and their privacy is safe online,” security expert Julian Evans said.

He also pointed out that news sites should remember users willingly share their own information through login authentication sites like Facebook and Twitter.

What users can do to prevent cookies

Log out of social networks when you are not using them. Use a separate browser to log on to Facebook and Twitter;
Amend your browser’s privacy settings (preferences > privacy);
Clear out your cookies;
Clear out your ‘evercookies’, a persistent JavaScript API, which you can learn how to get rid of here;
Use a service like Disconnect;
Security expert Julian Evans, who runs ID-Theft Protect, recommends Firefox users install No Script, a script blocker that shows where your data is going.

Twitter photo sharing service Zuu.li to pay citizen photographers

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Citizen journalism agency Citizenside has launched Zuu.li, a photo sharing service that offers those who take a newsworthy photograph to be paid a minimum of 50 per cent in commission.

“Conventional image-sharing services don’t give photographers a fair deal,” said Citizenside editor-in-chief Philip Trippenbach. “If you take a photo and share it through a conventional sharing site, you could see that picture published around the world, and not get a cent in fees or even a named credit.”

After a citizen photographer (if we can call them that) uploads a photo to Zuu.li and ticks a box saying “scoop”, the Citizenside newsdesk, which is based in Paris, monitors the feed and seeks to license any newsworthy pictures.

Citizenside carries out picture verification to ensure a photograph of an exploding volcano, crashed plane or train on fire is authentic. The agency then tries to sell the photographs on, including to the agency AFP, which it has a relationship with. Trippenbach told Journalism.co.uk they are working on ways to improve the speed and process of verification and hoping to use the community.

The citizen photographer is paid 65 per cent of the money Citizenside sells the picture for if it is published in the same country where the picture was taken; the photographer gets 50 per cent if it appears in a different country.

Philip Trippenbach on Zuu.li by Sarah Marshall

Trippenbach told Journalism.co.uk that Citizenside will “fight to get credits” for photographers so they are named by news outlets publishing their newsworthy photos.

We cannot be responsible for the publishing practices of newspapers or websites that we have no control over. However, credits are very, very important and it is our objective to make sure every picture that is published will have a named credit.

Zuu.li was due to be launched later this year but bosses decided to bring the beta launch forward after Twitpic, a photo sharing service, changed its terms and conditions resulting in some users believing Twitpic could sell on users’ photos without crediting or paying royalties to the person who took the picture. That took place shortly after Twitpic signed a deal with entertainment news agency WENN. Twitpic responded by apologising for any confusion and seeking to limit the damage to its brand by assuring users that the photographer always retains the copyright.

Android and iPhone apps are planned for Zuu.li, which will be launched after version two of Citizenside’s app, which will include a photo request service from editors looking for citizen journalists to provide specific photos.

Zuu.li launched on the same day as Twitter announced its photo sharing service. Trippenbach said it offers something different. “The thing that sets us a side is that we’re dedicated to a community of people who want to share images in a fair way,” he said.

“You take personal pictures and if you share them with your friends and contacts, you should be able to trust that they should stay personal. If you do want to see where they can go, see if they can get published and get paid for them then you should deal with the experts and Citizenside are the experts,” he said.

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Twitter photo sharing service Zuu.li to pay citizen photographers