Image: Twitter notification screenshot

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. "Live human source for all those interested in UK and International Companies News and Markets (Financial Times)"

I was slightly bemused then when I got an automated direct message thanking me for following it. "Thanks for following FT Companies - the non-automated Twitter home of the UK and International Companies and Markets section of the Financial" [sic]

Image: The Guardian

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 journos tweeting, but it has become noticeable that most have had twitter feeds set up for them and are not actually engaging with anyone. Each time a story is published by an author a link is automatically added to their feed. Have a look at most journalists' feeds and you will simply find a long list of bit.ly links. It was becoming a bit dull and seemed as if the paper that seemed to understand the site first was beginning to forget why it was different to an RSS feed.

It was a great revelation therefore today when that the Guardian announced it was "putting humans" on the Guardian Politics feed for the election "to tweet, retweet and do some talking". It seems all is now back right with the twitterverse.

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.

Image: Twitter screenshot

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?

Image: Daily Express screenshot

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

Ricky Gervais quit "pointless" Twitter. Image: see below

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.

How long will Facebook continue as the predominant social network? Has Twitter reached its peak or will it become a mainstream tool used by more than just the political and media elite? How long will our social media addiction last? Will social media have a net positive or negative effect on journalism in the long term? Will the benefits of promoting content and helping to engage with readers outweigh the costs of social media taking a larger share of ad revenue and replacing some of the roles of newspapers?

UPDATE: It appears the advert linked to above has been removed. Obviously the company did not value it going viral.

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

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.

Image: Danish Government

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.

Image: Twitter screenshot

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."

Image: ITV News

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. Image: Twitter screenshot

"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."