...what happens when technology and public relations collide
i was looking at the attendees to a a facebook event and where i showed up as an attendee the error message was quite explicit:
It’s you! But there’s like six other buttons that go to your profile, so fuck right off. Search
hmmm not sure if the facebook developers had inteded THAT particular message to actually appear, but that’s one hell of an an oops!
***update***
the message has been updated to:
this is a subjective evaluation based on what’s important to me, and how i use twitter.
| twhirl | tweetdeck | winner |
| multiple panes that can be moved around the screen | one big giant windows | twhirl |
| no groups | has groups | tweetdeck |
| keyword tracking | no keyword tracking | twhirl |
| very clean interface | cluttered | twhirl |
the new twhirl is a fantastic improvement but the winner is still tweetdeck because it has groups. as soon as twhirl gets groups, i will switch. at the time of writing twhirl version 0.8.8f was released and tweetdeck 0.21
if you have a bit more time or attention…
i started using twitter some time back as a complement to my blogging. there was a vast pool of interesting thoughts flying around in the twittersphere that were useful to draw inspiration from. i was still working as a systems architect at the time and did not need to be on twitter the whole day.
when i started working as a
i started to use twitter more extensively because it helped me get a feel for what the big issues were and to tune in to any issues my client’s customers were having. i’ve also found that many of the journos i engage with also used twitter so the use of twitter full time became a logical progression.
is fine if you are an occasional user or don’t follow more than 10 or maybe 20 people, but is impossible to use meaningfully if you follow more than than that. i’m following 462 at the time of writing and it’s hard to keep abreast of the conversations from the website. it would not be a viable work tool if i had to use the website! what i found especially difficult was that i could not be responsive enough to @replies and direct messages because there is no notification from the website when you get them.
so i started hunting around for alternatives and
i loved the clean interface and the fact that you get a nice little pop up telling you when you get an @reply and direct messages. of course as my twitter usage increased yet again with twhirl, i found that i missed important work related conversations during the day because of an interesting phenomenon:
so between 09:00 to 18:00 work related people were important:
whereas in the evenings it was more the:
whose biggest selling point for me is groups. i can add the people i’m following into different groups which means i can get a separate column for each group. very useful, i can tune into the different groups depending on what is important at the time and i am not simply at the mercy of a continuous tweet stream.
it gives you one massive screen that you have to scroll across all the time. this is a pain (pardon the pun).
which was announced by seesmic ceo, @loic yesterday. some of the useful stuff for me are:
which is all very good for me especially keyword tracking.
so i will have to stay with tweetdeck which is not the pleasure to use that twhirl is.
timing could not have been more opportune, there was some debate after my posting on citizen journalism.
so here’s the problem with selling twitter as a mainstream news source: without fact checking it’s just one big rumour mill.
see what happens when jonoh tells the world that there is a fire on a plane today in melbourne. the “news” spreads like wildfire and the twemes go crazy when in fact jonoh was not even on the flight!
twitter is a brilliant medium, but we need to still apply some rules to make it credible as a news source.
another well executed, smart, funny, and creative ad that happened to get viral.
somebody shook up a great big can of awesome sauce and busted it out here!
thanks to my colleague kate for this one.
this video is simply brilliant. reasons why i think it works:
compare it to another shoe company who gets a massive fail
thanks to @mspecht for tweeting about the blog council post
every time there is some horrible disaster the twitterati / blogosphere lights up with almost jubilant vindication. it’s starting to grate.
i was not conscious of this until i saw a Tweet by blogger @longzheng:
it’s a shame it takes an accident to “show off” the power of Twitter and community journalism. let’s just accept it works already.
first and foremost, let’s stop using disasters to sell and justify social media – it’s verging on ambulance chasing now: denver plane crash, mumbai terror attacks and most recently usair crash in the hudson to name a few.
furthermore, having had some time to watch all of these events unfold and evaluate what’s being said, i don’t think that citizen journalism is really journalism. i think at best they’re eyewitness accounts at worst they’re complete fabrications. the fact that someone captures something on their camera phone or tweets something doesn’t make it journalism.
do we call it cctv journalism when cctv footage is captured of a robbery by cctv?
it becomes journalistic when:
i don’t dispute the value of social media tools in recording an eyewitness account but let’s not engage in social media jihadism about it. twitter and twitpic are certainly useful for feeding information back in real time about an event. a journalist or blogger can then go back over this information and use it as part of the steps above to write a piece of journalism.
the intelligent consumption of media means that you constantly evaluate what you are reading and not merely accepting it as fact. this is less likely to happen if you are reading an established publication that you already trust because of their reputation. Calling a hashtag news does not fall into the “intelligent consumption” category, in fact I would call it indiscriminate gluttony of the social media variety.
finally, just from a purely consumer perspective i don’t want to consume my news in a fragmented piecemeal fashion over 50 different social media sites. i want a cohesive account – a story. i may read several stories to get differing viewpoints but i don’t want to read my news in 1000 140 character chunks.
eye witness accounts will always have a place – as will “citizen journalism”. will it replace the millions of talented individuals who pore over the information and tell us a story? not in the next hundred years.
there are possibly thousands of articles online on how to increase your credibility online. many of them are written by search engine optimisation types, others are by social media “experts”. i want to approach this from a journalism / blogger perspective.
journos as i have discovered come from all walks of life. some of them went to school, some of them did not (like my father). starting life out as a journo is hard work, if you’re good enough and lucky enough to land a cadetship for a major publication you get put through the rigours of the newsroom and start writing your first pieces. along the way you are mentored, fact checked and edited. eventually, you automatically do all those things yourself (and still get mentored, fact checked and edited).
when readers read your work they trust that the publication you are working for, by their reputation – the reputation they have worked hard to earn and maintain – means that your work is as factual as possible. when that journo has established a body of work that is credible, their reputation stands on its own.
what about a blogger?
putting aside the well worn path of tips and tricks, a search for “blogger credibility” will yield an enormous amount of results. Darren has a great series on this topic over at his blog.
the long and the short of is it has to be built up over time from a body of work. in the end, if your output is good (could mean interesting, factual or offer insight) you build a reputation. the difference is, unless you are already have an established reputation elsewhere, you have to work much harder. you don’t have the implied reputation of a major masthead earlier on.
of course, if you’ve made a name for yourself elsewhere because you’re already an established expert in another field and you blog about that field, you also bypass the extra time at the beginning.
once this reputation is established though, whether you are a blogger or a journalist is purely semantics.
it was this train of thought that led me to agreeing with @renailemay in the end.
at the cbs interactive christmas party in 2008 i had a conversation with sydney journalist @renailemay regarding whether or not there was a difference between journos and bloggers. renai was firmly of the opinion that both were one and the same. at the time i tended to disagree.
the debate has happened before and has even made it to court. my reason for disagreeing with renai was that there was a difference in the standard of credibility. journos are required to fact check and research or some editor somewhere unload an ugly red pen, whereas bloggers could be anyone churning out any kind of rubbish.
i’ve been mulling it over and examining my position a little closer and i now agree with renai. the heart of the issue for me was credibility. if credibility was not an issue are both not the same? i.e, is the function the same and only the medium different? both are writers breaking news or discussing current affairs, one writes for a newspaper and one writes online. journalists can be bloggers also. at the end of the day they’re still both writers.
it’s like saying a driver of a car is a driver, but a driver of a van is not.
the difference between a journo and blogger is therefore just the medium.
next post: what about the credibility issue?
this is what happens when a well funded brand sits down and says “let’s make a viral video”. you would think that it would work, it contains a celeb – taylor momsen of gossip girl fame – fancy running shoes and parkour. the acting is bad and it’s shot to look handycam when it isn’t at all. zero authenticity.
would benefit from a smaller budget.
make up your own mind though.
this ad uses john’s digitally manipulated voice and likeness to promote the “one laptop per child program“.
no doubt it’s a worthy cause but anyone else think that it’s a little weird to use dead celebrities?
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