Tag Archives: Twitter

http://twitter.com/inauguration

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A week or so ago I got a ping that @inauguration was following my Twitter feed. I assume they just searched all Twitter feeds for "inauguration" and found me. As I always do, I checked the profile page and found:

"Get tips and helpful scoop as you plan for the Presidential Inauguration on January 20, 2009 when Barack Obama takes the oath of office."

There was a link to a website but I didn't click it.

@inauguration has been a great source for news about the upcoming event. With links to lots of news sources.

I finally checked the url on the Twitter page and learned that the feed belongs to WUSA-TV in D.C. Thinking back, a lot of the tweets have taken me to pages on the WSUA website.

We're they being sneaky by not clearly identifying the TV station? Doesn't feel that way since I now know they pointed me to a variety of sources for relevant news about the inauguration.

My point here is WSUA didn't just feed the latest news from the station website. They didn't just promote their coverage. Someone was smart enough to understand how Twitter really works and use it. Cost: zero.

This will be the norm for any big event. And it won't always be news organizations doing it. It will often be the event organizers. And should be since they will have the most information and have it first.

Yes, I could have set up a Google Alert for "inauguration" but adding @inauguration to my feed was just one-click.

Seasoned Twitter users will remind me there's a hash tag (#inauguration) that aggregates tweets from ALL Twitter users, not just one source. True, but there's a lot of noise in that stream. Takes too long to separate the wheat from the chaff.

And to bring it down to the individual level, I could set up a Twitter page just for my tweets from the event, so that my "followers" aren't drowned in my tweets from DC. Probably won't be posting enough for that to be a problem, however.

In conclusion… I quickly determined that the @inauguration Twitter feed had useful and interesting information. I didn't notice or care who was behind the feed.

Tweeting the legislature and state government

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There are several reasons why a reporter covering the state legislature wouldn’t use Twitter to complement their MSM work:

  • Don’t have time
  • Don’t have access to net
  • Against the House/Senate rules
  • Don’t see value
  • Don’t have laptop or text-enabled phone

…and I’m sure there are others. But with state legislatures coming back into session, I believe this is the year we’ll see Twitter used to cover floor debate, committee hearings, and general under-the-dome gossip.

And I’d look for a flood of Twitter feeds from special interest groups, putting their own 140 character spin on legislation and state government.

Our company has provided live audio feeds of floor debate from the Missouri House and Senate since 2001 (2000?). What we have NOT been able to provide was audio from the committee hearings which, I’m told, is where all the action takes place.

We’ve made repeated attempts to get a live audio stream out of those committee hearing rooms but could never get past the technical/political obstacles. (Translation: the folks in charge would rather NOT have live coverage of the hearings)

But this year there will be folks sitting in the back with iPhones and Twitter pages, clicking away. Initially, these will be savvy folks on one or both sides of the legislation being discussed. And, yes, they’ll be putting their own spin on what’s being said.

With-it news organizations will be using Twitter to cover state legislatures. I did a real quick search and came up with @matt_stiles, a reporter for the Houston Chronicle bureau in Austin, TX. The political parties are all over Twitter: @colosengop is the Twitter page for the Colorado Republican Caucus and @iahousedemocrat promises “short updates on what’s going on inside the caucus and with action on the floor.” @nebraskagov is the “official Twitter feed” for the state of Nebraska.

If you’re aware of others, hit the comment link because I’d like to see what others are doing with Twitter in this space.

UPDATE: In January and February of 2010 we began experimenting with streaming video from committee hearings.

I am not that smays

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I was trying out the new People Search feature on Twitter and discovered another “smays.” And he is also “Steve Mays.” There should be no confusion, however, because he appears to be very smart and successful.

“Steve Mays, Chief Technical Officer — Steve has over 15 years experience in senior technology development positions. His former roles include Director of Infrastructure Services and IT Security Analyst for Semaphore Partners, Chief Information Officer for Xamplify, Inc., Director of Technology and Founder of Gloss.com and Manager of Online Operations for Vivendi Universal. Steve holds a BS in Business Management and an MBA in Global Business Management from University of Phoenix.”

Couldn’t find an email but maybe he’ll see this. We could drive up to Seattle and have a beer with the other Steve Mays West

“a stats geek behind the scenes tweeting interesting stuff”

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I’ve been beating the Twitter drum ever since that digital light bulb came on for me. I did my best to offer some practical applications for our various businesses. But none were as spot-on as StatTweets. From the StatTweet website:

“Most sports-related media outlets that have a Twitter account simply blast everything through a single account. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find this very useful. I prefer Twitter updates targeted at just the teams I’m interested in. And I’m not talking about just a news feed. It needs to be as if each sports team had a twitter account and a stats geek behind the scenes tweeting interesting stuff.

That’s exactly what the StatTweets accounts are intended to do (but it is all automated). Not only can you follow just the teams you are interested in, but you can interact with each account to retrieve team and player stats dynamically.”

Online future of journalism?

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Here's what Mindy McAdams foresees:

  1. Breaking news will be online before it’s on television.  
  2. Breaking news — especially disasters and attacks in the middle of a city — will be covered first by non-journalists.
  3. The non-journalists will continue providing new information even after the trained journalists arrive on the scene.
  4. Cell phones will be the primary reporting tool at first, and possibly for hours.
  5. Cell phones that can use a wireless Internet connection in addition to a cellular phone network are a more versatile reporting tool than a phone alone.
  6. Still photos, transmitted by citizens on the ground, will tell more than most videos.
  7. The right video will get so many views, your servers might crash (I’m not aware of this happening with any videos from Mumbai).
  8. Live streaming video becomes a user magnet during a crisis. (CNN.com Live: 1.4 million views as of 11:30 a.m. EST today, according to Beet.tv.)
  9. Your print reporters need to know how to dictate over the phone. If they can get a line to the newsroom, it might be necessary.
  10. Your Web team must be prepared for this kind of crisis reporting.

She concludes by wondering "…whether the mainstream media are superfluous in these situations — or can they perform a useful service to the public by sifting and filtering the incoming reports from the center of the events?"

I hope Ms. McAdams will forgive my reposting here. She, like Seth Godin, is a blogger who deserves not to be edited or excerpted.

Twitter: 140 characters, 0 thought and effort

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TwitterlogoI haven’t said much about Twitter of late. In part because it’s just too exhausting trying to explain it. But I’m relying on it more and more. It’s the one social networking tool that seems to work for me.

smays.com (the blog) is where I think (a little) about what I want to say before I post it. http://twitter.com/smaysdotcom is where I poop out 140 characters without using any neurons whatsoever. It’s so easy, in fact, I’ve have twittered almost 2,000 times.

Increasingly, Twitter is how I keep up with many of my online pals. If you decide to give Twitter a try, let me know. But please don’t ask me to explain it or justify my interest in this tool. I wouldn’t know where to begin.

If you don’t have time or inclination to blog, you might consider giving Twitter a try. Do it for a week. If you’re a regular reader of smays.com, follow my Twitter feed for that week instead.

Hunt For Bin Laden Moves To Twitter – Podcasting News

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A draft US Army intelligence report looks at ways Twitter, social media and other new technologies could be used by terrorists. The report bases its concerns on the fact that Twitter has ”become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences.”

Hunt For Bin Laden Moves To Twitter

 

New look for Mizzou website

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MuoasBranden Miller tweets the new look for MUTigers.com, the website of the Missouri Tigers. Mizzou is one of the universities with which Learfield Sports works, but I have nothing to do with the websites.

But I’ve always thought most of them were cramped, too busy and impossible to navigate. This new design is a huge improvement. I haven’t poked around on the new site yet but plan to later today.

I hope similar make-overs are planned for our other properties.

In Praise of Political Tweets – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com

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NYTimes’ Saul Hansell thinks Twitter might well be the birth of a media form that combines talk radio, Digg and late-night comedians.

“Like talk radio, you get an unvarnished and largely real-time window into what a wide swath of people are actually talking about. Like Digg, you see people point to the articles and videos that they want to share. And like late-night TV (or a politician’s sound bite for the evening news), there is a premium on pithy one-liners that try to get to the heart of the matter.”

Kevin O’Keefe on Twitter

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“Just anecdotal evidence, but I find Twitter users a fairly affluent and upwardly mobile group. They tend toward being business people, as opposed to kids. I’ve not only met people I am now following, but I’ve been turned onto upcoming events of interest that I would have never known of but for Twitter. In one case I ‘direct tweeted’ a person who just moved to Seattle to head up a new group at Microsoft. On another occasion I connected with a leader in the Search Engine Optimization industry. And this doesn’t include the local Seattle lawyers I am making connections with via Twitter.”

It’s probably just frustration with trying to get some “hot new thing,” but I frequently encounter an almost angry tone on the subject of Twitter:“I don’t get it! This is bullshit! What a waste of time!”

I try to remember it took me more than a year for the Twitter to click [Twitterclick:  noun. Small, sub-audible sound in the frontal lobe associated with Twittercognizance]