Archive for category social media
Your tweets give me a headache
Posted by Michal in social media on 12/05/2010
Today I unfollowed someone on Twitter. He is a relatively good journalist (no naming and shaming, sorry), but he is a rubbish Twitter user. Let me explain.
As those of you who use Twitter know, it only allows 140 characters per message. Many of us take Twitter for granted now, but even a couple of years ago questions were being asked about its relevance and usefulness. How can you express yourself in 140 characters? Well, we’ve learned pretty quickly how to be concise and informative at the same time; witty and useful. Some people shorten words, some manage to write very precise tweets and remain eloquent within the 140 character limit. There are URL shorteners, image uploaders and other tools which make it possible to condense so much information into 140 characters.
Yet some cannot really understand that Twitter is a different medium with different rules. The guy I unfollowed was one of them.
He’s a seasoned journalist, has been writing for newspapers for almost two decades, but is unable (or more likely – unwilling) to change his habits for Twitter. He posts very long thoughts which he splits into several, usually four or five tweets.
I dip in and out of Twitter and I suspect many others do too. So when I see a half-finished sentence I don’t really understand it, I don’t want to wait around for parts two, three, four and possibly five. It doesn’t make sense. If you follow even a couple of hundred of people, your Twitter stream is constantly changing, constantly moving. Trying to find a tweet that was posted earlier to combine it with the one that has just popped up on your screen doesn’t make sense. Following someone who posts multi-tweet thoughts persistently doesn’t make sense either. Hence the unfollow.
In case he’s reading, here are some other alternatives for those pesky longer thoughts which don’t fit into a tweet:
Tumblr – mostly meant for short updates, very conveniently built to allow users to post either just text or video or audio or image or quote or link – or a combination of those. Used to host everything – from image-focused mini-blogs to portfolios and fully-functional blogs. Just like Twitter it allows you to follow other Tumblr users and reblog their stuff.
Posterous – just like Tumblr, but allows posting on the go by email. A nice gallery functionality too. Many people use it as their primary blogging platform, but it’s good enough for shorter posts too.
Blogging platforms – erm, hello? WordPress, Blogger, Typepad – no, really, this is 2010.
Use any of them, really, and then just tell Twitter. It’s that simple, seriously.
Just. Don’t. Split. Your. Tweets. It gives me a headache.
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Sink the love boat, step back from Twitter
Posted by Michal in journalism, social media on 07/05/2010
There are many things I can write about yesterday’s Election night, but I really want to mention two.
First, the mutual appreciation society on BBC One. The Corporation made a huge effort to provide its viewers with comprehensive election coverage, yet spoilt it all with its celebrity love boat. The sight of Brucie repeating his very tired “Nice to see you…” routine for the zillionth time on a boat full of B-listers angered me beyond belief. I don’t care what Bruce Forsyth, Piers Morgan, Mariella Frostrup or even Ian Hislop have to say. I just want to see the results and hear commentary and analysis from people who know what they’re talking about. Mariella and Brucie didn’t.
If politicians are disconnected, so is the BBC. Can the Corporation honestly justify spending licence fee money on a bunch of usual suspects who stuffed their faces with canapés and champagne and contributed virtually nothing? Why not go a step further and use the election night to promote another Lloyd-Webber show or ask Anton DuBeke to perform the cha cha every time new results are announced?
The second thing is Twitter. Or to be more precise, one its many facets, the one commonly known as the echo chamber effect. Don’t savage me. I’m not criticising Twitter or denying its role in the campaign. I was simply looking at the stream of disappointed tweets last night and earlier this morning. No, they didn’t win. No, Nick Clegg is not the saviour. Despite what Twitter might have led you to believe.
And yes, I know that the hindsight makes things easier, but the echo chamber quality of Twitter has been discussed before. Many wiser and more knowledgeable people have written more convincing things about it than me. But in case you don’t know it yet, Twitter does not necessarily reflect what the wider world thinks. Take its “wisdom of crowds” with a massive pinch of salt.
Because if I was to believe in what trends on Twitter, I would have to conclude that Justin Bieber is the biggest artist this planet has ever had.
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Love the new Spotify
Posted by Michal in social media, software on 27/04/2010
A really smart move by Spotify this morning. The service allowed its users, even those using the free, ad-supported version, to create profiles and share their playlists with friends. Not just one track or album – the entire library.
Once you create your profile you can decide which playlists to share and which should remain private (some of mine will certainly remain private, no doubt about that). The same applies to the most popular artists you listen to and the most frequently played tracks.
And in a really clever move Spotify also allowed importing your music library from iTunes and Windows Media Player. In fact, any “legally purchased” mp3 track can be added to your library and synchronised across multiple devices.
And I think that bit actually excites me the most. I’m getting tired of iTunes and its restrictive policy regarding sharing and using music I paid for.
Subscribing to others’ playlists is easy, and so is sharing – you just drag and drop. The shared tracks end up in the newly created ‘inbox’.
And if that’s not enough, you can stalk your friends through The Feed, which collects information on all tracks your contacts share on Facebook. Marvellous.
Spotify still hasn’t addressed the issue of navigation though. I don’t have that many playlists, yet I find it really annoying scrolling up and down the page trying to find something. Can’t imagine what it’s like searching through hundreds of playlists.
Now, should I consider paying for their premium service? It may even make sense…
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1pound40 unconference – a couple of after-thoughts
Posted by Michal in journalism, social media on 15/11/2009
This week I managed to get to Thomson/Reuters’s swanky headquarters in Canary Wharf to take part in an unconference called 1pound40.
Some great minds – from journalists to social media specialists – spent the afternoon discussing the impact of social media on politics and news, among other things. Not surprisingly, Twitter became the main focal point of most of our sessions.
Whether we discussed the power of social media in changing politics or whether Twitter and social media in general can curate news, the discussions always became more general as we were all trying to define the influence of Twitter and other tools on our lives.
It’s impossible to summarise all our discussions and thoughts, but I’d like to mention two keywords that cropped up several times during the session and which will be quite important in our future discussion about social media. I list them here in no particular order of importance:
- transliteracy: not a new term, but an increasingly important one. I was lucky enough to share the table with professor Sue Thomas of Leicester University, who has been writing about transliteracy for years. Transliteracy is in my opinion a pre-requisite to a successful engagement with social media – or media in general. The ability to write, read and communicate across a wide variety of mostly digital, but also analogue platforms, and the ability to create value using the most appropriate tools and platforms for your needs is absolutely crucial. It’s surprising how many people who should be transliterate – journalists, for example – are still reluctant to embrace another medium and turn it into their advantage. Such approach is unsustainable and short-sighted. Period.
- curating content: in other words, trying to embrace the wealth of knowledge and information social media offer us. But how? Richard Sambrook asked whether Twitter and social media can curate news and provide a framework for trust. Yes they can, but with (sometimes severe) limitations. Should news companies like the BBC even curate content from Twitter? If so, how do you approach the issue of trust (by sticking to journalistic principles, I’d say – check, cross-check, verify – don’t just republish)? Curating content might be the way forward, but the biggest issue – after trust – is the volume of information. How do you cope with that? How do you filter it out? Twitter lists might be one solution, but Twitter is just one tool among hundreds available.
I’m hoping to explore the issue of content curation over the next few months, but your thoughts on it – or any of the above issues – are welcome.
(There are some pictures from 1pound40 over on my Posterous blog)
Do we control the tools?
Posted by Michal in journalism, social media on 08/11/2009
If you’ve ever used your mobile camera to photograph an event – be it a gig, somebody’s birthday party or a fellow passenger on the bus – and then subsequently posted the picture online for everyone to see, you must have asked yourself a question: is this morally ok to do that?
‘Cause if you haven’t, you might want to read this brilliant and rather shocking piece by Paul Carr, “After Fort Hood, another example of how ‘citizen journalists’ can’t handle the truth”. Whether you like Paul Carr or not, he’s made a few very valid points around the issues of privacy and morality of social media – and citizen journalists in particular – with two videos to back them up (warning: one of the videos contains graphic images of the final moments of Neda Agha-Soltan, killed during the Iranian election protests earlier this year). I won’t summarise the post here, please read it and draw your own conclusions.
Just don’t interpret Paul’s words as a sweeping statement which has little to do with reality. It isn’t. And I was reminded of it while reading this article about a man in south London, who brought traffic to a halt by threatening to jump off a building.
The incident lasted for hours and obviously attracted a large crowd. Some people shouted for him to jump. Others, as is obvious from the picture that accompanies this article, were filming or photographing the man.
Even without Paul Carr’s article I didn’t doubt for a moment that had the man jumped, the video would have been uploaded to YouTube within a matter of hours. Do you?
People in photos – Flickr's new function
Posted by Michal in photography, social media on 26/10/2009
Do you remember what you felt every time you realised your friend had tagged a picture of you on Facebook? And do you remember how you felt when you couldn’t do anything about it?
Luckily Facebook later added a bit of new functionality, which meant you could untag yourself.
And luckily Flickr has learned from Facebook’s initial cock-up. Its newest function is called “People in photos” and – much like its Facebook equivalent – allows you to tag someone by typing their name or drawing a box around their face and adding their name.
Luckily, the fact that you’ve done it will display in their Recent Activity stream, so they’ll be able to remove yourself from the photo. What’s more, once you remove yourself from an image, only you will be able to tag yourself in that image again. Nice touch.
Obviously, you can now set your preferences and define who, if anyone, can tag you.
Flickr has also updated the layout of your profile page, which now also features all the images, in which you’ve been tagged. There are also your favourites from other people’s photostreams.
Privately I will not be using the new tagging function at all – I’ve never used it on Facebook either. But if you’re using Flickr to share your entire social life (and many of us do), this will come useful.
Until, that is, someone tags that super-uncool picture of you from last year’s work’s Christmas do.
Posterous, here I come
Posted by Michal in social media on 29/09/2009
I’ve been using Tumblr for several months now as an alternative to a proper blog. Tumblr is a micro-blogging platform which allows you to write quick, short mini-blogs, usually focussing on multimedia, photography, etc.
I’m happy with my Tumblr, which I’ve been using as a replacement for this blog, which I’m hoping to relaunch soon on dzierza.com. But I also noticed many of my friends have been using Posterous, which in many ways is very similar to Tumblr, but its unique selling point is the fact that it allows you to post from everywhere via email and then repost to other services.
In other words, you can populate all or most of your social media properties by sending just one email. Send it and Posterous will take care of the rest by distributing the contents of the email to the sites you’ve defined on your profile. You can also select the sites you want to update/notify by simply modifying the email address, for example posterous+flickr@posterous.com, which will post a picture on your Posterous profile and add it to your Flickr photostream. Sounds clever.
Posterous has also quite a few other nice features, which I’m keen to explore, like automatic galleries created from individual email attachments. I’ll be experimenting with those and hopefully will post an update soon, comparing both services.
So for the next few months I’ll be using both Tumblr and Posterous, you can follow me on Tumblr here: michald.tumblr.com and on Posterous here: http://michald.posterous.com/
Don’t forget about the content
Posted by Michal in social media on 09/03/2009
In all our conversations about how to use Twitter, we seem to forget about one crucial thing – the content.
What you say says a lot about who you are. Granted, not everyone is on Twitter to spread groundbreaking ideas, analyse the world in 140 characters or offer you solutions to your problems.
But some people’s use of Twitter reveals a distinct lack of content. Or at least any meaningful content.
So maybe this totally unscientific list of my observations from using Twitter might give you some idea as tho what to expect – or who to avoid – when the following happens:
- when someone keeps saying ‘uh, oh – another 1000 followers, well thanks, but not sure why you’re following me, I’m so boring’ they probably are. Unfollow.
- then again some people will only talk numbers – numbers of followers, tweets, retweets, their position in the most retweeted charts, etc. Unless you’re an accountant and/or define your life by the number of people you follow, avoid.
- if the person you follow keeps talking about their cat only – perhaps they should get their cat a profile. Unfollow.
- Twitter is full of specialists. Or ‘specialists’. To become a specialist and to gain and share specialist knowledge takes a while. Or at least longer than ‘since last Tuesday’
- if someone follows you and they follow 2,000 other people, but have only one update: “Cheap Viagra/laptop/iPod” – do what you would do with an email with the subject line ‘Cheap Viagra”
- retweeting is useful, in fact that’s what makes Twitter uniquely fast. But retweeting absolutely everything all the time is like reading a newspaper aloud on a packed train. A bit unsocial.
- Twitpic is for sharing pictures. Drunken, fuzzy shots you took with your mobile while covering the lens with your finger make for great content only once in a while. Don’t overdo it.
Totally unscientific, purely empirical. Agree to disagree.
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