News goes social

CNN all a-twitter about Reuters NewsMaker

Last week's NewsMaker with Financial Services Authority Chief Executive Hector Sants in London was opened up to all-comers via the micro-blogging service Twitter and attracted the interest of CNN's 'International Correspondents' show. 

CNN knows a bit about Twitter -- the fast growing service that lets you broadcast SMS-length texts and which, with the help of 'tweeters' from President Obama to TV personality Stephen Fry, is rapidly entering the mainstream.

CNN's 'twitterstream' is top of the table when it comes to 'followers', according to Twitterholic.  And ever since last year's Hurricane Gustav, CNN anchor Rick Santelli has been harnessing Twitter to solicit news and views from viewers and contributors and has built up a huge following in the process.

So what could Reuters possibly show CNN when it comes to Twitter?  

What caught the CNN crew's imagination was our use of Twitter to create a live channel from Reuters readers to our NewsMaker.

Ahead of time we had publicised the fact that Hector Sants was coming in and had agreed to take readers' questions. We asked readers to add a question to our blog comments or to go onto Twitter and to use the askfsa tag.

As word got around about what we were doing dozens of Twitter users started sending comments and questions in. My role was to monitor them (most came in during the event) and to pick out the most interesting ones to put to Sants.

CNN wanted to know where was the journalism in that. Answer: same as it ever was -- filtering large amounts of information for the nuggets (there were more than 200 questions and comments) and trying to pull together any themes.

They also asked why the FSA couldn't have done all this by itself? After December's NewsMaker with David Cameron, I had asked a similar question of the Leader of the Opposition's social media advisor. The response: even if you have the skills to handle such events you'll be open to accusations of stage management if you don't outsource moderation to someone independent.

The CNN piece has yet to air. But, in one of those role-reversals that marks out social media, one of the bloggers invited into the event live-streamed part of the CNN interview via his mobile phone -- so you can see some of the raw material that may end up in the final report. 

Which news organisations are using Twitter best?

I got asked this the other day and didn't have an answer. Having thought about it a bit have now decided there are several different ways of defining 'best' and that Twitter is in any case only one example of 'micro-blogging' that probably ought to be extended to things like Facebook 'status updates'.No one organisation is yet dominant in this area (though CNN is prominent) so here's my wholly unscientific take on leaders in the various categories:

Best for followers: CNN
More on CNN below but is the clear leader. In second place is NYT with its headlines-based account serving up headlines as a kind of alternative RSS via Twitter. Unexciting but tells you something important about making your content available the way users want it.

Best for effort -- New Austen Statesman
Look at this page and you can't help wondering if all Statesman editorial staff aren't on Twitter. Interestingly, most of these twitterstreams are genuine micro-blogs rather than alternative RSS feeds.

Best use in journalism -- CNN
Anchor Rick Sanchez discovered Twitter during Hurrican Gustav last August and has been using it to great effect for viewer responses ever since gathering more than 50,000 followers in the process.

Best for events - CNN
If you extend this to Facebook status updates then CNN's integration of FB for the Obama inauguration, the Oscars and the first major Obama speech were stunning in terms of numbers of contributions. Though there has got to be a question about how useful this kind of volume is.

Best for making money - glam.com
I can't find any news organisations with commercial plays on Twitter but glam.com does news (sort of) and found a way of sampling Twitter content around the Oscars that appealed to at least one advertiser.

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