ON THE FLY How news media are making friends in the world of social networking

Newspapers to be able to add bylines to tweets

An example of how the 'Contributors' feature could look with a tweet authored by Twitter founder Biz Stone

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 testing. Tweets from the accounts of organisations will include bylines naming the individuals who wrote them bringing a more personal touch to feeds. Twitter say that the bylines will mean users know more about the real people behind organisations.

One of team developing the new feature wrote on the Twitter blog: "It enables users to engage in more authentic conversations with businesses by allowing those organizations to manage multiple contributors to their account. The feature appends the contributor's username to the tweet byline, making the business to consumer communication more personal."

The feature will bring more links between individual journalists and readers. Some news organisations have built up large amounts of followers to their Twitter feeds, but is has mostly only been star columnists that have attracted large-scale followings to individual journalist feeds.

'Contributors' is being tested with a limited amount of users before a full launch.