My Michael Jackson blog post
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in Michael Jackson, feed, news, Twitter, Facebook on
It was getting late and I was surfing around the web on my Macbook as I usually do, and suddenly i picked up a few tweets that concerned Michael Jackson…
It was probably the first time I’ve really been involved in using social networking to see up a news story progress to such a degree. I’ve written before on the power of social networking when it came to events in Iran, I’ve used Tweetdeck to pick on the odd news story, and I’m in charge of looking after our Twitter feed.
But yesterday was different. It was TMZ.com that first picked up on Michael’s death at 5.20pm, and it took a while for the internet to fully comprehend and confirm that he did indeed die.
Of course it was Twitter that had the buzz as people tried to figure out what was going on from various news tweeters,and Twitter users used each other to find out what was actually going on.
As confirmation and more info came out then Facebook started to get buzzy as people I knew suddenly came out with real-time status updates about how they felt about what was going on and commented one each other’s statuses.. Exactly what Facebook was looking for when it first implemented real-time.
Then it was the news websites like Guardian and BBC, which you couldn’t help notice seemed very behind, as of course it’s easier to come out with a one-line statement than to confirm and write copy, especially that late at night.
Being the security hound for IT PRO I also noticed that the security tweeters were also coming out with their usual ‘beware of Michael Jackson spam’ - before they actually came out with confirmation of his death!
I’m not naming names and I’m not your biggest MJ fan, but I thought that was a little low. Maybe wait a bit longer to push your anti-spam agenda? In my head it seemed they were doing exactly the same thing - trying to promote themselves on the back on somebody’s death.
Anyway personal feeling? I felt sadder when Heath Ledger died because he was young and it was like potential was snuffed out. Michael Jackson had his time and we will always have his legacy. Of course, any death is tragic.
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Why Twitter is a better news tool than Digg
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in journalism, news, Digg, Twitter on
Hitwise has posted data that Twitter has overtaken Digg when it comes to marketshare for the first time, and from a news and journalism point of view this is very interesting to see.
When Digg first came on to the scene it was the hot new thing, with its ability to allow people from anywhere on the internet to submit links and stories. Its popularity was part of the reason why story submissions and voting system are so important in the web.
The trouble now with Digg is that it doesn’t seem so interactive anymore. There are a few big criticisms from my point of view. The first is that the site’s form of user moderation has made it very difficult for an outsider to feel like they have any impact when it comes to story submissions.
This means that the site is at very high risk of companies paying for stories to be submitted to the site, and I believe that there are people on the site being paid to have their ‘friends’ digg stories simply because they have already built a network of followers who will digg every story that they have.
This is corrupt - and it also means the average user has little or no impact on what most users will see as a news story on the front page. It defeats the aims of inclusion and social networking which is the very point of the site.
Twitter has been around for less time, and it is only now that internet news organisations and bloggers are beginning to see the benefits of having followers and people interested in reading stories looking at the tweeting of news.
The BBC, Guardian as well as other nationals have their own news feeds which users can follow of their own choice, without having to be forced by the pack like Digg to read a particular type of story.
This means that it is the quality of the news coverage that usually matters when adding followers and increasing traffic, rather than a user’s particular popularity on the site or the amount of friends they have.
However Twitter’s ability to post news is not the only reason why it has grown in popularity in the year. It’s a lot easier than Digg for the the news source and the reader to communicate thanks to the speed in which messages can be passed.
Traditional newspaper journalism usually worked on the basis that the person who was first to break the story got the reward. Thanks to Google News this has now become a matter of luck and algorithms on what news we will see, while Digg has made a user’s popularity the main factor.
Twitter is different because it is a great way of finding news as it happens - better than RSS feeds which are often delayed from the time a journalist posts a story. It opens the possibility of tweeting ‘at the scene’, which news organisations are only just now discovering the uses of.
The fact that third party applications are available for Twitter is absolutely crucial when it comes to its use as a news tool. When I first used Twitter I thought having more than a few followers would soon make it confusing as posts often appeared every minute of the day.
It was only when I discovered Tweetdeck when I realised that you had the ability to filter tweets depending on which twitterers you wanted to take notice of. For instance now I have a tech news filter on which allows me only to see the IT tech news that is relevant to me and my job. If you wanted to filter tweets for just your friends you can do that too.
I had my doubts about Twitter when it first came out, but now I am discovering why so many people are starting to use it and why it can be such a useful tool - whether you want to market something or break the first news story. Digg? For news there’s absoultely no reason I would want to use it anymore.
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