Tag Archives: Twitter

The Drum: Newspapers ‘could introduce football Twitter reporter role’

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The Drum is reporting that national newspapers “could introduce football Twitter reporter role”. That’s according to Henry Winter, Daily Telegraph football correspondent and columnist for the Sunday Telegraph.

@henrywinter has more than 100,000 Twitter followers.

“I think each sports desk could have someone solely concentrating on Twitter,” Winter said. “They’d talk to the fans about what’s happening during the game and report on the match as it is happening.

“I did an experiment where I spent a whole match not writing a report for the paper but just talking to fans on Twitter. The response was incredible.”

Speaking at the MPA’s National Newspaper Debate in Manchester, Winter said the thousands of messages he receives online had begun to inform his reporting.

Winter goes on to discuss how Twitter brings him closer to his audience but warned of the dangers or entering disputes with readers.

The Drum’s full article is at this link.

Twitter starts to roll out new site for mobile browsers

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Twitter has started to roll out a new version of Twitter.com for mobile devices. Most people who use Twitter on a smartphone opt for one of the official apps or a third-party app such as TweetDeck rather than the browser, but the the new mobile site promises to improve the experience for those without an app.

The new mobile browser is currently only available to a limited number of iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android smartphones, Twitter announced on its blog, but there will be a full roll out “in the coming weeks”.

Judging from the pictures released by Twitter, changes include the black navigation icon bar along the top.

‘Consider the risks’ warning over super injunction Tweets

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Many of you are likely to have heard by now about the Twitter account which appeared on Sunday featuring a series of allegations about public figures taking out super injunctions. The allegations, which received widespread coverage in the press, have since been denied by some of the individuals who were named, again using Twitter.

Since then there has been much debate about what this means for the future of this type of court order in an online world.

Yesterday on the International Forum for Responsible Media blog, Judith Townend collected together a number of opinions on the legal implications. One media lawyer, said to be a specialist in privacy law, told Townend that both social media users and mainstream media organisations should consider the risks.

But according to Danvers Baillieu, a senior associate and social media specialist lawyer at Pinsent Masons quoted in this article by the Telegraph, when it actually comes to the likelihood of someone taking action, “pragmatism prevails”.

…already thousands of people have either tweeted or re-tweeted protected information in the last few weeks alone. He said there was “no way” the authorities have an appetite to take action against swathes of Twitter users.

Similarly in such situations Twitter, for example, could say it is a US-based company and therefore not subject to European laws, the article adds.

It can also argue that its users are responsible for their own tweets and not the company. Furthermore, Baillieu said that Twitter can also defend itself on the basis of freedom of speech, under the First Amendment of the US constitution.

But while the legal issues remain cloudy, as Jon Slattery usefully illustrates in this blog post today, much of the national press continue to show the clearness of their feeling on the issue, claiming recent actions have “humiliated” the courts and resulted in a “legal crisis”.

YouTube founders buy Twitter and Facebook analytics client

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Two of the founders of YouTube who bought social bookmarking site Delicious less than a fortnight ago have announced that they have now acquired Tap11, a service that measures what is being said about a brand or business on Facebook and Twitter.

AVOS is a new internet company set up Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who started YouTube, selling it to Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion, and it appears its two acquisitions will complement one another as they see “strong synergy” between the two platforms.

“Our vision is to create the world’s best platform for users to save, share, and discover new content,” said Hurley in a statement. “With the acquisition of Tap11, we will be able to provide consumer and enterprise users with powerful tools to publish and analyse their links’ impact in real-time.”

So what is Tap11?

Tap11 has a similar layout to other third-party Twitter and Facebook clients, such as TweetDeck. When users post messages using the platform Tap11 analyses the reaction. You can monitor your brand, competing brands, plus individual campaigns and tweets and sort those reading your tweets by Klout score, a measure of online influence.

It is currently free for a trial period but your are required to register and users will later have to pay a monthly subscription.

According to AVOS, Tap11 currently works with more than 500 major brands, media companies, and agencies. Twitter selected Tap11 as a top six app at their Chirp conference. The platform is also a Webby Award winner.

How is it useful to journalists?

News websites could use Tap11 as a way of measuring what is being said about them on Twitter and Facebook, how many click-throughs, retweets and mentions each story gets and per-tweet analytics shown in easy to read graphs and charts.

#J100: The UK’s 100 most influential journalists online

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Hundreds of suggestions and countless tweets later and we have finalised our PeerIndex list of the most influential UK journalists.

We have used PeerIndex, which ranks social capital. It does this by algorithmically mapping social networks, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

We decided to go one step further and put the list of top journalists into Klout, which also ranks by overall online influence. Klout only allows 10 names in a list so we entered the top 10 names in our PeerIndex list. Klout has reordered them. You’ll will need to sign in with Klout to see this link (no embeddable code so a screen grab instead).

Klout top 10

Azeem Azhar, founder of PeerIndex (and formerly of the Guardian and the Economist) explains that PeerIndex calculates social capital using “maths very similar to that which Google uses to calculate its page rank”.

“And the thing that we like most about it is that it’s driven by what other people say abut you rather that what you say about yourself.”

You can hear more from Azhar, including why technology correspondents tend to get a higher ranking than fashion or politics correspondents, below.

Listen!

Our PeerIndex top 100 list certainly had some response. Here is a Chirpstory highlighting some of the tweets.

MediaGuardian: PCC to regulate press Twitter feeds

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Guardian media and technology editor Dan Sabbagh reports this afternoon that reporters’ and newspapers’ Twitter feeds are expected to brought under the regulation of the Press Complaints Commission later this year.

According to Sabbagh’s report, Twitter accounts that include the names of publications and are clearly “official” – he cites @telegraphnews and @thesun_bizarre as examples – are likely to come under regulation, but reporters’ individual work accounts could also be brought under the commissions’ ambit.

The PCC believes that some postings on Twitter are, in effect part of a “newspaper’s editorial product”, writings that its code of practice would otherwise cover if the same text appeared in print or on a newspaper website.

A change in the code would circumvent a loophole that – in theory – means that there is no form of redress via the PCC if somebody wanted to complain about an alleged inaccuracy in a statement that was tweeted. Last year the PCC found it was unable to rule in a complaint made against tweets published by the Brighton Argus.

Full post on MediaGuardian at this link.

Peer Index: The top 100 UK journalists on Twitter

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Peer Index has ranked the 100 most authoritative UK journalists on Twitter. The ranking platform uses resonance, reach, activity, and other metrics to tot up a number for tweeters.

In first place is Telegraph fashion and style writer Hilary Alexander, who currently commands a Peer Index of 78 and a following of 176,238.

In second place is Bad Science blogger and Guardian writer Ben Goldacre, who has an index of 76 and a following of 105,885.

Journalism lecturer and founder of helpmeinvestigate.com Paul Bradshaw, who will be speaking at Journalism.co.uk’s upcoming news:rewired conference, is in 7th place, and fellow news:rewired speaker Kevin Anderson is 10th.

See the full list at this link.

TechCrunch: Google Realtime Search adds Facebook

Journalists can now search for keywords and get second-by-second updates on topics of interest from a wider range of sources. TechCrunch is reporting that Google Realtime Search, which allows real-time updates from social media sites including Twitter, has added results from Quora, Buzz, Gowalla and Facebook.

The really interesting addition is Facebook. Before you get too excited, it appears that only Facebook Pages data is surfaced. So it’s not actually personal profile data. And obviously all of this Pages data is public, which is how Google is getting it. But previously, Google has distanced themselves from crawling the content of their big rival, even when it is available.

Our Google Realtime Search for “royal wedding”, pictured below, revealed only tweets.

Royal wedding search

However, site search of Facebook for Journalism.co.uk’s event news:rewired did yield a result.

Google Facebook news:rewired search

See the full post on TechCrunch at this link.

BBC: West Midlands Police Tweet from court

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The BBC reported today that West Midlands Police sent members of staff to Birmingham Magistrates’ Court to Tweet cases during the course of the morning.

Ch Supt Stephen Anderson said there had been a decline in court reporting in recent years.

He said the initiative was designed to make the public more aware of the cases police deal with.

The force sent its own staff into court for a morning on Tuesday to cover the cases and post them online minutes after they had concluded.

See the full BBC report here…

Are newspapers still sending people to cover court on a regular basis or are only the high profile cases covered?