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Sometimes it’s better never than late…

January 10, 2010 By Dan Thornton 2 Comments

I don’t mean to be too hard on the BBC news technology show Click (iPlayer link). After all, the broadcast television show does a reasonable job of displaying and explaining technology to a mainstream news channel. And there’s always an occasional something for those more technologically savvy.

But today’s episode highlighted the problem with broadcasting schedules. At the end of the show, they plugged their CES coverage which will run over the next two weeks (on iPlayer on Jan 16 and Jan 23 I believe).

Now the 2010 International CES ran from January 7-10. Which means it started last Thursday, and finished today. And being the first major show of the year, and just about the biggest, there’s been coverage absolutely everywhere. Previews, videos, interviews, analysis – on almost every single website under the sun.

Indeed if you manage to find the actual Click section of the BBC website, there are already features on many of the big CES gadgets on video, and an interview with Steve Ballmer.

And almost everyone attending CES has a device capable of recording decent video content – whether it’s quick mobile footage, a handheld like a Flip Mino HD or Kodak Zi8, or something higher up the professional recording level ladder like the Canon 5D. As an example, my friend Angus shot 30 fully-produced videos available on Youtube, and 11 Qik videos, plus a combination of iPhone and hi-res still photos for Which? magazine which are all already online. (Find out more @angusfarquhar)

Put simply, if anyone in the world wants to see absolutely anything from the CES, they’ll have seen it. Even if they’ve got a passing interest in technology, someone will have sent them the link on Facebook or by email. And if they’re not that interested, they’ll struggle to find out Click exists, check the scheduling, and be watching at the fairly unsociable hours at which it’s broadcast.

It’s something I come across every day with the sheer weight of microblogging stories I could cover on 140char.com if I had infinite time available.

Probably the rule of thumb is to assume that everything becomes available to almost anyone as soon as it’s public anywhere, and you should make as much available as you can as soon as you can. And if there’s going to be a delay for non-exclusive content, you’re better off forgetting about it and moving onto the next thing.

(Incidentally, in terms of BBC CES content and coverage, I’d recommend following the likes of @ruskin147 and @maggieshiels on Twitter.)

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Filed Under: Digital Publishing, Digital Television, news, video Tagged With: bbc, broadcast, ces, click, coverage, exclusives, scheduling, timing

Which newspaper mentions Twitter the most? (UK)

October 23, 2009 By Dan Thornton 4 Comments

Although Ashton Kutcher has people following him on Twitter than the entire UK news industry, in terms of online readership, the UK news industry has pretty good reach, with The Telegraph, The Guardian and The Daily Mail all attracting over 30 million unique users in September 2009.

So I thought it would be interesting to see exactly which ones were mentioning Twitter the most – and to keep it simple and relevant for everyone, I decided to only use their search functionality to work it out:

So which newspapers have mentioned Twitter the most?

The Telegraph: 5180 results.
The Guardian: 3779 results.
The Financial Times: 1887 results.
The Times: 1033 results.
The Daily Mail: 825 results.
The Sun: 579 results (inc: The Scottish Sun)
The Mirror: 100 results (Search total limited – site:themirror.co.uk twitter = 82,000 results)
The Daily Star: 87 results.
The Daily Express: 78 results.
The Independent: 56 results (Note – their Google-powered site search is limited in some way! A general google ‘site:theindependent.com twitter‘ reveals 1400 results)

Key thoughts from this simple experiment:

Most people would probably have put The Guardian top if asked.
The fact Twitter search returns and ABCe results are closely linked suggests the effectiveness of site structure and search functionality, rather than Twitter mentions being integral to driving readers! (I’m sure Martin has much more in-depth information on this as part of the team at The Guardian).
At least a couple of sites have seriously wonky search functionality, despite being two of many with search powered or ‘enhanced by’ Google.
It’s definitely skewed towards the ‘middle-class’ broadsheets regardless of political leaning, which is what most people would expect.
There’s a power law in full effect, with two/three sites providing most of the coverage.

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Filed Under: twitter Tagged With: british, coverage, daily, mentions, most, national, newspapers, often, twitter, uk

Twitter IS mainstream. Please move on…

February 4, 2009 By Dan Thornton 4 Comments

I think it’s time for anyone writing about Twitter to realise and accept that the endless debate about becoming mainstream has become redundant – it’s mainstream, please accept it, move on, and let’s talk about something else!

There are 2,360,000 Google results for ‘Twitter + mainstream’, and 144,000 for ‘curing + illness’. Make of that what you will!

Everybody Knows by Harvard Avenue on Flickr (CC Licence)

@SarahM‘s post for O’Reilly, isn’t a bad post, but the two examples against accepting Twitter as mainstream did start me thinking.

The reasons for Twitter not making televised Superbowl coverage were probably the scale of the televised coverage of the event, and gaining media passes/internet connections etc to moderate a live feed for broadcast – I’ve only ever covered much smaller events, but the manpower required can be surprising, and it can be a battle to get enough staff access.

Meanwhile the lack of TV adverts carrying Twitter ids isn’t surprising – most companies will see their main website as the hub of their activity and will want to keep the list of web address down to one simple name to remember – not supply details of the website, the Facebook page, the Myspace page, the Twitter account and the Get Satisfaction page! Being UK-based, there may be TV adverts promoting Facebook pages in the U.S, but I haven’t seen any yet…

But for mainstream, I’d state the following:

CNN and BBC cite Twitter for Mumbai updates.

@wossy and @stephenfry discuss Twitter on the BBC. @schofe discusses Twitter on ITV.

The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Washington Post, USA Today, LA Times, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Channel 4, The Guardian, New York Times, New Scientist, The Independent.

All in the last 2 or 3 days, and just the most mainstream titles I saw in a quick Google News search.

Meanwhile:

On Something for the Weekend, Working Lunch, On Jonathan Ross, This Morning, Channel 4 news. (I didn’t do the U.S TV channels because I have no way to tell which ones are more notable than others, and didn’t want to try and list every single use, but here’s CNN for some balance.

And of course – Twestival‘s 140+ global events (with LiveEarth as broadcast and video partner!)

And to finish off -

‘If you want to know what technology will change the world, watch young mothers…and don’t watch teenage boys – young mothers have no time for any technology that isn’t useful and doesn’t work.’

Clay Shirky in 2005, via Broadstuff.

So – Twittermoms.

Can I stop yet?

No it hasn’t got the scale of TV, print media or Facebook – yet. But it’s never been about scale for anyone except those wanting eyeballs for the same old display adverts.

But social networks are built for exponential growth (in theory, if not in scalability of the backend!). And after growing 974% in 2008 (Hitwise) it’s not going to slow down now. I’m seeing more and more non-technical friends and family appearing, just as happened with Facebook – and more and more people asking me questions without trying to hide the shame of using a silly-sounding word like ‘twitter’.

So can we all accept it’s not going to get any smaller, and it’s reached the mainstream now. In a bit of time the audience will be in a similar range to the biggest social networks of the moment, and we’ll be discussing something new – maybe nano-blogging!

Obama Wins! by annethelibrarian (Flickr CC Licence)

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Filed Under: twitter, Uncategorized Tagged With: adverts, bbc, channel 4, channel 4 news, cnn, coverage, daily mail, guardian, jonathan ross, mainstream, new york times, superbowl, telegraph, televtions, this morning, twestival, twitter, twittermoms, working lunch

Snow hits UK, but train travel information arrives via Twitter

February 2, 2009 By Dan Thornton 1 Comment

The best way to get reliable UK train travel updates during the current light covering of snow appears to be the excellent uktrains service, which publishes updates to Twitter for 25 rail companies. Especially when the official website for some companies appears to be as reliable as the trains themselves.

'No trains' Pic by aburt on Flickr (CC Licence)

Once again Twitter is showing itself as an excellent mechanism for information, following on from the #uksnow mash-up in my last post.

But although it’s still new enough to get coverage on mainstream media such as the BBC, (@bensmith is talking about UKtrains at the BBC as I type), it’s not without precedent (Not to diminish the great work by Ben Smith (uktrains) and Ben Marsh (uksnow).

Back in October 2007, Twitter users @nateritter and @viss used the hashtag #sandiegofire to distribute information on fires in California.

And then there were the earthquakes. US, UK and China.

There was the tragedy in Mumbai, and the use of Twitter to start alerting people about the status of hospitals and need for blood donations.

And some emergency services have a Twitter account, such as the LA Fire Dept.

The interesting thing about #uksnow and uktrains is how the interpretation and use of data pulled from, and pushed into Twitter is evolving to make more effective services for information.

Plenty of people have talked about how Twitter is moving into the mainstream, or how Facebook made an offer to purchase the microblogging service – but in many ways the mainstream are being sucked into Twitter – exactly as happened with Facebook en route to 150 million+ global active users.

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