Tag Archives: Twitter

“How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live”

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That’s the title of an article by Steven Johnson in this week’s Time Magazine. Here are a few snippets:

  • “This is what the naysayers fail to understand: it’s just as easy to use Twitter to spread the word about a brilliant 10,000-word New Yorker article as it is to spread the word about your Lucky Charms habit.”
  • “Instead of being built by some kind of artificially intelligent software algorithm, a customized newspaper will be compiled from all the articles being read that morning by your social network.”
  • “It used to be that you compulsively checked your BlackBerry to see if anything new had happened in your personal life or career: e-mail from the boss, a reply from last night’s date. Now you’re compulsively checking your BlackBerry for news from other people’s lives.”

But the real money-shot of the piece (at least for me) is Johnson’s prediction (is it still a prediction if it’s already happening?) on Twitter’s influence on advertising.

“Today the language of advertising is dominated by the notion of impressions: how many times an advertiser can get its brand in front of a potential customer’s eyeballs, whether on a billboard, a Web page or a NASCAR hood. But impressions are fleeting things, especially compared with the enduring relationships of followers. Successful businesses will have millions of Twitter followers (and will pay good money to attract them), and a whole new language of tweet-based customer interaction will evolve to keep those followers engaged: early access to new products or deals, live customer service, customer involvement in brainstorming for new products.”

This is the best thing I’ve read on Twitter to date.

Twitter coverage of execution

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Missourinet (a Learfield network) News Director Bob Priddy covered last night’s execution of Dennis Skillicorn. Reporters and witnesses can’t take cell phones past a certain point, but Bob was planning to use Twitter to file updates before and after the execution (he was a witness).

The wifi he expected wasn’t available so he took notes and posted to @missourinet when he got back on line (at the motel, I assume).

As I expected, Twitter was a very effective tool in the hands of good and experienced reporters. Here’s a screen shot from early this morning.

 

Had reporters been allowed to keep their Blackberrys and iPhones, this is probably as close to live coverage of an execution as we’re likely to get.

And in the hands of someone as responsible as Bob Priddy, I think this might be a good idea. As I understand it, the rationale behind having witnesses is to insure the people of Missouri “see” this ultimate punishment. Twitter might be the least sensational way to accomplish this on a mass scale.

I’ll make a prediciton here: If not in Missouri, some state will allow or provide this coverage.

TweetSpin: “set it and forget it”

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TweetSpin, a new Twitter application designed by a radio programmer named Rico Garcia. Among other info, TweetSpin can post "now playing" data from a station's website.

Here's a couple of snippets from a review in R&R, a radio trade publication:

From KHOP PD MoJo Roberts: "TweetSpin allows us to constantly have 'what's playing now' on our status and set appointment tweets to go out so we can set it and forget it."

In addition the "now playing" feature, Garcia is more excited about built-in scheduling that allows stations to set up hourly, daily or weekly messages to encourage listening appointments.

Hardly surprising that an industry in the process of automating itself out of existence would look for a way to automate social media, too. Of course, if there's really no one at the station…

Tweetie

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Since installing Tweetie, I keep it running on the left side of my desktop. The clever folks who designed Tweetie must have anticipated this is how folks would use it. I can see at a glance when someone tweets; mentions @smaysdotcom or sends me a direct message.

Earlier tonight, William Gibson tweeted about a new movie coming out this summer, describing it as “must see” and included a link to the trailer. Well, when my favorite author says he “must see” the movie, you can bet I’ll see it, too.

When I saw his tweet, I thought: “Cool. William Gibson is online, at this moment, doing basically the same thing I’m doing.”

Now, I can’t direct message Mr. Gibson because he doesn’t follow me and I’d like to think I would not intrude if he did. But, with what other form of communication might I have such a real-time experience with one of my heros? Not email. Probably not a blog post. I’m not sure I can describe the feeling. Not quite personal, but almost.

Twitterize listeners to your radio station

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Long ago, in a galaxy far away, I worked at a radio station that served a lot of small communities. We did our best to get news from as many of these little towns as we could. I remember one of the things we did was give away little plastic rain gauges (with a sponsor logo). On a morning following a big rain these “Weather Watchers” would call in and report how much rain they received.

I was reminded of this today when I came across @reportstorms, the Twitter page of ReportStorms.com. (“Almost 2″ of rain in Rockford, IL area”)
If I worked at a radio station that was trying to serve a regional audience, I think I might set up a Twitter page for each community and recruit a few people from each burg to feed them. I might even provide a mobile phone with minutes so they didn’t have to use their own. Bet you could build that into a sponsorship.

So when Holcomb, MO gets a down-pour, you get up-to-the-minute reports. Even pix. Nobody covering the Holcomb Hornets basketball game? Twitter away.

Pull the RSS feeds of all of these community Twitter pages into a branded and sponsored page on the radio station website. Maybe feature a different community feed on the station home page every hour.

Can’t find good news people to work at your station? Why not have hundreds? Once you get some traction, I bet you’ll have people waiting in line to join up.

Oh, and one more thing. The new iPhones coming out this summer are rumored to do video.

PS: As far as I know stations are already doing this. If you know of any, link me up.

Claire McCaskill news conferences will never be the same

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Good post by Post-Dispatch reporter Tony Messenger on how social networks like Twitter are changing the game.

“While covering the Democratic lovefest last weekend, I put a note on Twitter (I’m @tonymess, by the way) about how Republicans were exchanging nasty news releases about the Senate race in 2010 while the Democrats were uniting behind Robin Carnahan. Within minutes, the note had been passed around by countless Twitterites. The next day, Gov. Jay Nixon made the Republican infighting a central point in his speech to the group. Coincidence?”

Yeah, that must be it.

Man, all of this is SO painful for the old hands who can’t or won’t understand what’s happening and how to make it work for them. And so exciting for those do.

UPDATE: Here’s a screen grab of McCaskill’s most recent tweet. Call me naive, but I’ll be she gets some suggestions and I bet you reads them.

Sen. McCaskill Flips and Twitters Missouri reporters

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“After finishing a serious interview with a trio of reporters on various topics, Sen. Claire McCaskill suddenly whipped out her own mini-cam to turn the tables. McCaskill apparently wanted to put Tony Messenger, Jo Mannies and I in the uncommon role of answering questions. Then, I begin filming McCaskill’s experiment shooting us. The Senator asked for quick soundbites and hit me with a tough criticism about my own blog — that it’s video heavy.”

— Springfield TV reporter David Catanese

 

We know where you are… and we’re glad you’re here

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Pal George flew into San Antonio for a meeting today (yes, his arms are tired). Shortly after checking into his hotel –and before posting a single tweet– he received the following email:

> From: Twitter
> Date: March 3, 2009 4:44:23 PM CST
> To: [George’s email address]
> Subject: Visit San Antonio is now following you on Twitter!
>
> Hi, georgekopp (georgekopp).
> Visit San Antonio (VisitSanAntonio) is now following your updates on Twitter.
> Check out Visit San Antonio’s profile here:
>  http://twitter.com/VisitSanAntonio
> You may follow Visit San Antonio as well by clicking on the “follow” button.
> Best,
> Twitter

Others will figure this out before I do, but it would seem that the VisitSanAntonio (CVB?) folks were able to access the hotel’s dB of guests as they register. Then search Twitter and start following any successful hits.

Anyone see another way this could be accomplished? Not sure I’d be okay with the hotel sharing even the fact of my registration. Reminds me of something similar that happened to Barb and me on a visit to Las Vegas.

UPDATE: The mystery has been solved.

Hi Steve,

I hope that your friend George was pleasantly surprised with our follow today. When he mentioned that he was “heading to San Antonio today. Waiting in the airport,” I thought he might have a few questions about what San Antonio has to offer.

As a part of SACVB’s efforts to engage individuals who are considering or on their way to San Antonio, I monitor Twitter daily. Through this monitoring, I have been able to help travelers find great margaritas on the River Walk, recommend which historic sites to see on a quick trip through town, and help one visitor find where a not-so-popular soccer game was going to be shown on TV.

We’ve really enjoyed the interaction that Twitter has allowed us to have with our visitors.

Hope you consider visiting us soon. You too can find out about all of San Antonio’s great sites by contacting me @VisitSanAntonio.

Have a great night,
Taylor @ SACVB

Why didn’t it occur to me that someone with the San Antonio CVB was monitoring the Twitterverse for references following? It was just coincidence he checked his Twitter feed when he hit town and got the message.

This is a great example of how to use Twitter and and the blogosphere. Taylor found my post and commented. Wonder how many other CVB’s are this clued in?

Tony Messenger (aka @tonymess)

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I’m one of a few hundred (but growing fast) “followers” of Tony Mesenger’s Twitter feed. Tony’s a reporter and columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and covers the Missouri Legislature and state government. He clearly gets Twitter and blogging and makes great use of both.

Tony joined me at the Coffee Zone for an el grande mocha latte doodah where I got him to put down his cell phone for half an hour to talk about his life as a Twitter junkie.

AUDIO: Listen/Download interview MP3

Before going to work for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tony was a metro columnist and city editor for the Columbia Daily Tribune and the editorial page editor at the Springfield News-Leader.