http://www.ontheflyblog.co.uk How news media are making friends in the world of social networking Tue, 04 May 2010 10:38:07 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en [caption id="attachment_509" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image: Twitter notification screenshot"][/caption] Following on from the Guardian shifting back towards having humans in control of its twitter feeds, I was interested to see the Financial Times trumpeting its FT Companies twitter feed as not a robot. "This is not a robot!" it says in the bio. ... http://www.ontheflyblog.co.uk/2010/05/this-is-not-a-robot/ [caption id="attachment_476" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image: Islington Now screenshot"][/caption] On Wednesday I blogged about problems students at City University were having working with Islington Council. Since writing the post, the Council press office has been in contact again and we have negotiated a way to work together. Everything in the blog post ... http://www.ontheflyblog.co.uk/2010/03/islington-council-update/ [caption id="attachment_487" align="alignright" width="274" caption="Image: The Guardian"][/caption] The Guardian has been widely derided for its 'obsession' with Twitter. However, the site has been useful in delivering hits for the paper's website, not least in the field of technology (GuardianTech has over 1.5m followers). There are also now an impressive number of Guardian ... http://www.ontheflyblog.co.uk/2010/03/the-guardian-remembers-what-twitter-is-all-about/ The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has been under a lot of pressure from critics debating whether it is fit for purpose in the last few months. But its latest hit has not come from figures in the newspaper industry, but Twitter spam. Last night the PCC's Twitter account @ukpcc sent out ... http://www.ontheflyblog.co.uk/2010/02/filthy-chat-from-the-pcc-how-twitter-spam-can-damage-your-brand/ [caption id="attachment_418" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image: Daily Express screenshot"][/caption] The Sunday Express today ran a story questioning the value of using the licence fee for BBC staff to tweet. It is a valid point to question if the BBC should be investing time in tweeting if people are not following accounts. I ... http://www.ontheflyblog.co.uk/2010/01/is-the-express-run-by-a-bunch-of-twitters/ [caption id="attachment_546" align="alignright" width="214" caption="Ricky Gervais quit "pointless" Twitter. Image: see below"][/caption] Yesterday I wrote a story for the Guardian about Ricky Gervais quitting Twitter, branding the site as "pointless" and the adults who use it "undignified". The article has however illustrated why Twitter is more powerful than pointless, especially for the ... http://www.ontheflyblog.co.uk/2010/01/why-twitter-is-far-from-pointless/ As 2009 draws to a close there has been much talk about the growth of social media in the last year and also the last decade. There are many questions about how social networking will develop in the next few years. How long will Facebook continue as the predominant social network? ... http://www.ontheflyblog.co.uk/2009/12/what-will-the-trends-be-in-2010/ [caption id="attachment_314" align="alignright" width="584" caption="An example of how the 'Contributors' feature could look with a tweet authored by Twitter founder Biz Stone. Image: Twitter"][/caption] Twitter has announced that it is testing a new feature that will allow newspapers to add bylines to tweets. The feature called 'Contributors' is currently in beta ... http://www.ontheflyblog.co.uk/2009/12/newspapers-to-be-able-to-add-bylines-to-tweets/ [caption id="attachment_527" align="alignright" width="253" caption="Image: Danish Government"][/caption] Social media has been placed at the centre of many news organisations' coverage of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. Twitter lists have been popular for aggregating the tweets of both journalists and organisations at the conference, however it seems that the public are yet ... http://www.ontheflyblog.co.uk/2009/12/media-warm-to-twitter-lists-in-coverage-of-copenhagen-and-pbr/ [caption id="attachment_283" align="alignright" width="408" caption="Image: Twitter screenshot"][/caption] Sky News has apologised after it accidentally broke a two minute silence on Twitter that was backed by the Royal British Legion. Websites and newspapers, including Sky News, had promoted the #2minutesilence campaign. It was hoped that users would not post tweets for two minutes from ... http://www.ontheflyblog.co.uk/2009/11/sky-news-apologise-after-breaking-twitter-silence/