Filthy chat from the PCC: how Twitter spam can damage your brand
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 the tweet "hey, i've been having better sex and longer with this here" followed by a link in a Direct Message and on its Twitter feed.
It is obvious that it is spam, but it is nevertheless embarrassing for an organisation to have their account hacked into.
However, I fear that Twitter hacking could become an easy excuse for anyone who 'shoots from the hip' and tweets something they later regret. MPs Harriet Harman and David Wright have made claims their accounts have been hacked in just the last couple of the weeks. While there is no reason to doubt they are telling the truth, could Twitter hacking soon become an excuse for any embarrassing tweets, especially as the election battle becomes more heated?
Is the Express run by a bunch of Twitters?
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 would agree that Twitter is still not widely used by normal people - I cannot think of a single one of my friends not involved in politics, journalism or that media that regularly uses the site. However, the article is pretty embarrassing. It repeatedly refers to Twitter feeds as sites, and instead of quoting the amount of followers the BBC accounts have, they have used the figure for how many feeds the accounts follow. So while the article claims 5 Live's Victoria Derbyshire only has two followers, she actually has 3,641 followers but only follows 2 feeds herself. A pretty feeble error. Unsurprisingly the article does not mention the number of followers Derbyshire's 5 Live colleague Richard Bacon has, 1.3m.
UPDATE 18/01/2010: The article has been removed from the Daily Express website
Why Twitter is far from ‘pointless’
Ricky Gervais quit "pointless" Twitter
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 media. The story did ridiculously well on the site- it was the most viewed news story of the day on the site and received 250 comments (not all positive I must say, my favourite: "an utterly rubbish story").
Part of the reason for the success of the article, which admittedly is far from groundbreaking journalism, promotion on Twitter. It was linked to by several of the Guardian's Twitter feeds, including Guardian Tech, which has over 1.5m followers. In turn these tweets were retweeted, leading to over 600 people linking to the story on Twitter.
It is too easy to exaggerate the effects of Twitter. For example, in practice it has not yet significantly changed the engagement of voters with politicians. However, it can be a useful tool. It is a shame that Gervais did not follow anyone on his account, he might have found out that it is great for two way communication as well as self-promotion. But if he doesn't think it is for him, fair enough.
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.
Media warm to Twitter lists but public remains cool
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 to warm to them.
News organisations, such as the BBC, have set up special Twitter feeds to promote coverage from the conference. The Danish hosts have set up an official Facebook page and Twitter feed and the US Department of State have launched their own conference Facebook page.
However with thousands tweeting with the hash tag #cop15 it can be difficult to find sound among the noise. Twitter lists are a great feature that help to do this. The Guardian and Huffington Post are among those with lists aggregating the tweets of key organisations at Copenhagen, such as Greenpeace and the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The Huffington Post also have lists for news organisation and journalists tweeting from Copenhagen.
However the amount of people following these lists is still relatively low. The Huffington Post only has a handful of people following its lists. The more popular Guardian list only has 350 followers, a small proportion of the 10,000 people who follow GuardianEco on Twitter.
Sky News today ran a Twitter list for coverage of the Pre-Budget Report, but it only attracted 16 followers.
While more people seem to be turning to Twitter to follow news organisations, it seems that Twitter lists are yet to take off with the public.
Sky News apologises after breaking Twitter silence
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 11am on 11 November.
"2 minute silence on Twitter 11:00am GMT on 11 November #2minutesilence RT plz" was re-tweeted thousands of times in the run up to the silence and #2minutesilence became a top trending topic.
Sky News and BBC Business both sent out tweets during the silence. The tweets from @skynews, which had been sent out by automatic feeds, were deleted and an apology issued.
Some Twitter users say they are now boycotting the @skynews feed. Sky News have contacted some of the complainants individually to say they will take measures to ensure it does not happen again.
Times journalist Caitlin Moran also apologised after she accidentally tweeted during the silence. She tweeted: "Argh I tweeted during the two-minute silence! I just literally didn't know what time it was. I am very, very sorry. I am the new Jan Moir."
Who needs a news channel in the Twitter-age?
A week after ITV News launched its social media strategy, the editor of the News at Ten has questioned the need for news channels when breaking news is distributed through the internet and Twitter.
Jason Mills, who is leading ITV News' move into social networking, said that they were developing a four-pronged web-strategy that will include the website, Facebook, Twitter and a YouTube channel. He asked why they would want a news channel when people can get the latest news from them via the internet.
"Do you sit at home watching news channels?" asked Mills. "No. Having a website is more important than a news channel. Why would you want a news channel?"
ITV News presenters and correspondents started tweeting last Monday as part of a brand re-launch with the tag line "Bringing the facts to life." A Facebook page has been created, with a YouTube channel and new-look website planned for the new year.
Mills said that the web strategy is important in reaching viewers outside of the four main bulletins. ITV News closed its 24 hour news channel in 2005.
"My own personal belief is that people don’t want news when you give it to them now," he said. "They want to be part of the newsgathering process, they want to be able to comment on it and they want to get it when they want it.
"The internet allows us to talk to viewers outside of the traditional bulletins. Twitter is useful for us in giving us the chance to put news out there before our bulletins."
He highlighted the example of International Editor Bill Neely who has been tweeting from Afghanistan. His coverage of the death of five British soldiers last week was picked up by other news sources.
ITV News International Editor Bill Neely has been tweeting from Afghanistan
"There are not many people who are able to tweet from Kabul and he had some good lines in relation to the deaths," said Mills. "It helped to exploit us before our bulletins at 6:30 and 10 o'clock at night. It was good for us."
Mills said that the social media launch is hopefully just the start for ITV News. "We're initially starting small, but eventually who knows where this will go. Five years ago we had not heard of Facebook or Twitter. It might be that at some stage it becomes vital for a bulletin," he said.
ITV News has appointed a web producer to run its new strategy and staff are being invited to train on how to use Twitter.
Mills said, "Tweeting is pretty simple, if you can use a mobile phone you can tweet, so the training is not that difficult. We have only been doing it with correspondents who have come forward and say they would like to do this. We are growing it organically.
"We have produced some advisory notes reminding people of how tweets might be perceived. The only real guideline that I would stress is that we are only tweeting what is broadcastable. It is important that we have the same standards of accuracy on Twitter as we would in our bulletins."
Get ready for more re-tweeting
The quantity of people 're-tweeting' Twitter updates looks likely to increase as Twitter starts to roll out a new feature that will make it easier for people to copy people's status updates.
The site has announced that it is starting to trial a 're-tweet button' on a small percentage of accounts. If it is rolled out across all accounts it is likely that there will be much more 're-tweeting' of news and opinion, which could reach levels even higher than in the recent Jan Moir and Trafigura cases.
At present users have to manually copy and paste status updates, but the feature would allow users to do this at a click of a button. This could mean that re-tweeting becomes much more widespread, with a higher volume of re-tweets and even bigger 'Twitter uprisings' than we have seen so far.
Twitter founder Biz Stone said on the Twitter Blog: "The plan is to see how it goes first with this small release. If it needs more work, then we'll know right away. If things look good, we'll proceed with releasing the feature in stages eventually arriving at 100%."
He added: "We hope interesting, newsworthy, or even just plain funny information will spread quickly through the network making its way efficiently to the people who want or need to know."
Screenshots of the new feature that is being tested can be found on the Marketing Shindig blog.
Twitter's new re-tweet feature is being tested on a small percentage of accounts (Photo: Marketing Shindig)
ITV News: Big Ben out, Twitter in
ITV News presenters, including News at Ten anchor Julie Etchingham (right), have started tweeting as part of a 'brand-alignment' (Photo: ITV)
The new-look ITV News is using Twitter and Facebook as part of its attempt to put 'human experiences at the heart of their news coverage'. ITV News revealed new titles and a new set yesterday alongside a promotional campaign using the tag-line 'Bringing the facts to life.'
ITV News editor Deborah Turness wrote: "Putting real, human experience at the heart of what we do helps connect the viewer to otherwise seemingly distant national and international news events. It has been a long, proud tradition over decades to deliver stories that reach out and touch people, news that has the power to make them stop, watch and think. Now we have a set and a title sequence that reflects and embodies our USP."
The most talked about change has been the removal of Big Ben from the News at Ten titles after ITV executives decided the imagery was too London-centric. However, another interesting development has been ITV News' jump into the world of social media. Correspondents now have individual twitter accounts, alongside an overall ITV News account and a Facebook page.
Several members of the ITV News team were already using Twitter - Angus Walker started tweeting in July 2008 - but now at least 10 correspondents, including News at Ten presenter Julie Etchingham, have accounts with co-ordinated ITV News branded backgrounds. Unlike other news organisations, the tweeting seems a very top-down initiative - despite now having accounts, James Mates and Tim Ewart are still yet to tweet at all. However, News at Ten's editor yesterday afternoon tweeted, "getting inundated with the number of itv correspondents now wanting to twitter!"
So far the team's tweets have largely been teasers trailing reports to be screened on TV, although yesterday we did learn that strangely ITV News had bought the Rooney's newborn baby an adult-size Liverpool shirt with his name on. The new Twitter users are yet to build up large numbers of followers - News at Ten anchor Etchingham only has 21 - but their tweets are being regularly re-tweeted by colleagues and the overall ITV News account, as well as being aggregated using the new Lists feature.
On Facebook, ITV News launched a fan page on Monday. It has been a slow start with no comments as yet on the discussion topic about childhood obesity, but to their credit when the changes to News at Ten were criticised on the fan page, ITV News did respond.
UPDATE 04/11/09: ITV News editor Deborah Turness this morning sent an all staff e-mail to highlight this blog post
John Stevens
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- Is the Express run by a bunch of Twitters?
- Why Twitter is far from ‘pointless’
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