Tag Archives: Twitterfall

Audio reporting tool Audioboo experiments with paid-for account for ITV

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Since its launch in March, Audioboo, the service which allows users to record and upload short audio recordings, has notched up 30,000 registered users and been taken up by both hyperlocal and international news media.

This Saturday ITV.com is planning to use the tool as part of its FA Cup Final coverage: fans using the Audioboo iPhone app will be able to submit their audio reactions to the site.

Significantly this seems to be the first foray into running a paid-for version of an Audioboo account.

As CEO Mark Rock explains in this blog post, there will always be a free version of the tool, but the firm is developing a range of paid-for options intended for media organisations.

Audioboo Pro will be the version used by ITV tomorrow, ‘which will contain a series of web tools which make it easy for companies, particularly media companies, to manage content coming from their audiences’.

Key to these tools are ‘magic tags’ – a private tag that the account use can apply to any Audioboo content creating a specific feed for use in a player on their site. ITV are using this system to help moderate the ‘boos’ left by fans.

The use of Audioboo by ITV marks a focus by the broadcaster on capturing the online buzz about the match alongside the roar of the crowd within Wembley Stadium. As such, the site will use Twitter aggregator Twitterfall to stream relevant updates to the microblogging site.

In addition, using a tool developed by thruSITES:

“The players’ names and faces will appear alongside bars which will move up and down to reflect the buzz around players during the game. The tool will be available after the match so that fans can scrub along a timeline to see which players caused a buzz at crucial moments.”

TBC at high noon? Telegraph-Guardian spats

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The latest ‘Twackdown’ seems unlikely to be the end of the Telegraph-Guardian or, to be absolutely fair, Guardian-Telegraph frictions.

After all, in just under an hour we’ll know who is top of the ABCe pops for this month…

So, this week’s Twitterfall spat from Malcolm Coles: ‘That Shane Richmond / Charles Arthur Twackdown in full’.

Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur has the last word [to date] in a comment beneath the post: “I’d only point out that this was a far more multidimensional discussion than this portrays.”

Another row a’brewing with this? The Guardian reports ‘anger’ at the Telegraph over Guido’s Spectator article.

(And while we’re on Guido, it’s interesting to note that Guido himself was in the Guardian building this week – via Jon Slattery)

Update: In the March 2009 ABCe audit, as released at midday, the Telegraph tops the table of six national newspaper titles with the highest number of unique users, followed in second place by the Guardian.

Twitter users play with Telegraph’s Twitterfall #Budget feature

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Good old online altruism eh? Twitter users have seized upon the opportunity to get their uncensored Tweets published on the Telegraph’s Budget page.

A Twitterfall feature – which now seems to have been removed – embedded on the side of the Telegraph.co.uk Budget 2009 page, picked up Tweets which referred to the UK Budget 2009.

Funnily enough, the Twitter masses seemed more interested in expressing opinions on the Telegraph’s editorial content, or saying hello to their mums, than adding to the economic debate.

@DarkPhnx perhaps sums it up best.

A sample from earlier below – we seem to have captured it at a cleaner moment. Or check out this grab from @Noodlepie.

telegraph

Telegraph uses Twitterfall for live football pages

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Appropriately enough a Twitter update from @BenLaMothe alerted Journalism.co.uk to an innovative new use of Twitter on Telegraph.co.uk’s sport pages.

After displaying Twitterfall, which can be set up to aggregate tweets containing multiple terms, on its big news screens, a stream of relevant Twitter updates are displayed in a widget on the right-hand side of the site’s live Premiership football match report pages.

Developed by a team of students, using Twitterfall could provide a neat way of following the conversations around certain players, transfer gossip or matches as they’re played.

Telegraph.co.uk's live match report page

Ian Douglas, head of digital production at Telegraph.co.uk, explained to Journalism.co.uk that list of club names and key player names are currently being tracked, but if new trends or keywords emerge they can be quickly added.

Certain tweaks to avoid irrelevant updates have been made – #chelsea is being used as opposed to Chelsea to avoid tweets about nights on the Kings Road, for example.

The Telegraph wanted to trial Twitterfall on pages that have ‘a lot of activity and a lot of people talking’, said Douglas, but is being considered for other areas of the site and potentially topic pages. The appropriateness of the widget to a given page, because it updates so rapidly, must be taken into consideration, he added.

The title is happy to look outside of its own development team to third parties when necessary, said Douglas, with other recent collaborations including this interactive guide to new Formula One cars.