The tweeting elite

The explosion in commentary and coverage of the Twitter phenomenon is great for the fledgling website. As technology and media commentators alike continue to debate how the website can ever make money, the increase in users is testament to its popularity as a social media tool, regardless of whether it is turning a profit or not.

But one thing I have noticed, which has coincided with Twitter's rising star, is a wiff of twitter elitism. In the spirit of Charlie Brooker's (@CharltonBrooker) recent new media dictionary, we'll call this tweetism.

Tweeitsm can be defined as a certain level of snobbery about who is joining Twitter, and most importantly, the quality of their Tweets. This could be a reaction to celebrities jumping on the band wagon (see here for a great summary of influential Welsh Twitter users). In line with this, my first inckling this was happening was when, sat at my desk 10 days ago with Twhirl pinging away in the background, Jonathan Ross (@wossy) informed his 60, 047 followers disgraced comedian and fellow BBC exile Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) would be joining Twitter. Keen to see how this would pan out (some might call it schadenfreude), I signed up to the @rustyrockets fan club. Within 10 minutes, Brand had almost 10,000 followers. He now has 21, 218.

And what were his first words into this most trendy of new media spaces? "I have come to join you please be gentle with me, I have been feeling vulnerable...yet implausibly, sexy." Typical Brand, not many surprises there. But some of the tweets in reply, on my feed at least, expressed a cyncism about what people like Brand could bring to the forum, and, I felt, an inherent assumption about what Twitter should be about. That assumption was twitter was for those 'in the know' on subjects relating to new media, and not much else.

Firstly, I agree with the notion of good Twitter etiquette. And I will freely admit the majority of the 113 people I follow are in some way linked to journalism. This is not something I should, or will, apologise for; social media forums are primarily platforms for creating groups of shared interests. But it got me thinking about what we, as journalists, are using Twitter for. Is it just a case of journalists tweeting at other journalists about all things, well, journalism? If so, this is a very closed space.

If the purpose of forums like Twitter is to network, then this should be extended beyond our own colleagues, and could provide great opportunities for communication with your audience and public. In fact, this is what Jonathon Ross is doing by "following back" and engaging with a huge proportion of the people who follow him. If Twitter continues to grow at its current rate, and you get the readers of, say, a regional paper to contact their district reporter in this manner it could build up a much more personal service. Applications such as TwitterLocal can help to facilitate this.

Typing "business card twitter" into the site's search function brings up a whole host of conversations about whether it's appropriate to give your Twitter address out to clients etc. Some are forging ahead and doing so (picture taken from here). I say yes- it's another way to connect to your community- plus it can help combat the increasingly tight time constraints journalists are under.

Of course journalists will be early adopters for this kind of technology, and I would be interested to know whether others are in fact connecting with "client" commuities for business purposes. But I look forward to a time where my network at least, isn't quite so inward looking. Tweetism is on its way out.

"If there is a flaw, it's human. It always is."

Shane Richmond, communities editor at the Telegragh, told us this week the internet is causing newspaper readers to become increasingly fragmented. People no longer want to be pigeon-holed as a particular kind of 'reader', be it Guardian, Telegraph, the Sun, whichever. And this is essentially a good thing. On balance stereotypes are always unhelpful and it tackles the notion of straight forward poltical affiliations. People may hold a range of opinions and ideas; left is not simply left, right not only right.

So the fact reader loyalty is on the wane and people are selecting their material not just by topic but down to the individual article is giving them more choice. You might not buy multiple newspapers but you probably will click on a couple of websites to get your politics at the Times or your reviews at the Independent. And it has also made RSS central to many web users' daily routine.

Really simple syndication, or rich site summary depending on what you read, has taken off in a big way. Microsoft acknowledged its arrival in 2005. In the same year a white paper produced by Yahoo predicted the number of RSS users in the US and UK was 72.8 million. And that was three years ago.

Although I am a relative late-comer to RSS, I am a fan. But one thing concerns me. No matter how many different view points you source on a subject using feeds, you still have particular interests. Whether it's British politics, American sport, or Brazilian film, one advantage of RSS is:

"It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in".

But this could be limitng. Is there a danger that RSS is the virtual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "I can't hear you!" to the stuff you're not interested in? Science is not really my thing, but the advantage of reading a newspaper or using a news homepage is whilst heading for the stuff you would normally go for, you might come across an important story that catches your eye. A recent example for me would be CERNs large hadron collider. This would probably never come through on my RSS because its not covered by the sort of feeds I subsribe to, but it's a pretty significant scientific event. And while I understand RSS feeds are probably rarely used in isolation, Amy Gahran points out the effect they are having on websites as well as newspaper sales:

"Web sites are becoming less important for online content distribution as RSS feeds are enjoying increasingly mainsteam usage."

Although Gahran provides a great discussion about how online entities can market and forward traffic from RSS feeds, my point is that there are things people should know which could be missed using RSS. When Shane Richmond speculated about Web 3.0 as a mass of free floating information tailored especially for your needs I was reminded of everyones' favourite Scientologist, Tom Cruise (no offence to Shane). In sci-fi thriller Minority Report, advertisements are specifically tailored for you. Spyware on Amazon and iTunes already use this kind of technology with "others like you bought..." mechanisms. If this happens with the internet at large, where does this leave exploration and discovery?



RSS is an extremely useful tool and there are some really interesting discussions about its advantages regarding privacy and control. Rob Alderson flips my argument on its head looking at what My Telegraph bloggers are talking about- many of their posts centred on topics that weren't making the news. But I think Anthony Mayfield's point from last week can be used here too: utilise the technology, don't be lead by it. The technology is great, but it presents the very human temptation to be lazy. Keep thinking outside the RSS box.

From Gatekeeper to Facilitator

The possibilities for modern networked journalism seem baffling to me. But looking at the Alison Gow’s very logically constructed blog, I had to agree when she said “I had no idea how thin the ‘old’ opportunities for investigating stories would look compared to the tools at our disposal now.” With this in mind, I decided to ‘investigate’ this post using networked journalism resources. I deleted google from my tool bar, and got comfortable.

Using Delicious, I searched for anything tagged “networkedjournalism” and the first thing I came across (which I managed to “Mento”) was a Buzz Machine article by Jeff Jarvis. Jarvis is something of a pioneer for networked journalism and has been pushing hard to promote its virtues. The article was great for those struggling with networks, giving a really basic definition that I would recommend reading before looking at the likes of Alison Gow. Although I disagree the idea of networked journalism in itself is new (journalism has always been about people) certainly the possibilities the internet provides for its expansion are promising.

Journalists might feel that they’re traditional roles are threatened, but this interview with Jeff Jarvis suggests that while it would be foolish not to move forward with the networked journalism, we do still have a role.



This is perhaps explained more clearly by Charlie Becket (also found on Delicious, also “Mentod”) when he says “The networked journalist changes from being a gatekeeper who delivers to a facilitator who connects.” I like that sound of that.

One criticism of networked journalism is that journalists barely have time to do journalism in the traditional manner let alone use all the options listed by Alison Gow (check out the comments under her blog for a discussion of this). But the Florida example discussed by Becket actually shows networked journalism as time saving. And with tools such as Ping.fm which let you act across multiple forums, there are perhaps less hurdles for journalists to get over than people think. The most difficult part of realising the potential here is getting everyone, but most importantly the public, to look at news in a different way. This is exciting, not frightening. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Dipity is another time saving tool, particularly for research. Acting as a content aggregator it creates a timeline from multiple sources on any topic. Typing in “Jeff Jarvis” brought up a Roy Greenslade article presenting the various sticking points for getting networked journalism up and running in a newsroom when there is little support from owners or proprietors, perhaps something our generation of journalists can hope to change. A few of us created a Cardiff Journalism Dipity channel- I’ve put the Kate Adie lecture on there just to start it off, but people could perhaps link their own blogs or any material they want to share.

I’ve found researching using these tools to be a lot more focussed than simply using a search engine. The material I found was much more likely to be relevant and this demonstrates the advantages of having quick access to active communities with shared histories and causes. For my part I've created a networked journalism channel on Mento if people fancy adding resources to see what people are using.