cnn

Twitter IS mainstream. Please move on…

February 4, 2009 By Dan Thornton

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!

@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!

How CNN and Citizen Journalism can move forwards…

October 5, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I’ve already covered why the fake Steve Jobs heart attack story published on CNN’s iReport shouldn’t be seen as a fault of Citizen Journalism as a whole, and why we should all be encouraged to verify and fact check articles before we take them as gospel, or reprint them.

The Silicon Valley Insider has published a defence of their repeition of the story, but for me, it does little to convince me that they did anything other than repeated the story quickly to grab page views.Especially when they appear to justify reprinting any rumour that is possibly credible enough to be worth publishing.

‘Sometimes this information is fact. Sometimes it is rumor or scuttlebutt. Sometimes it is speculation. Always it is information that we believe is credible or interesting enough to bring to our readers’ attention.’

In their defence, the original story did contain a disclaimer: ‘We’re making calls, but as yet we have no idea whether it’s true. Confirmation/denial the moment we get it.’

Anyway, in my opinion, as someone who has worked on websites with User Generated Content, and various levels of moderation, I think there are a few ways that sites containing Citizen Journalism can evolve.

Scott Karp covers one method. Rather than a totally open system that just requires an email address and solving a Captcha code – effectively meaning anyone can publish fairly anonymously, CNN and other site owners could actively search out anyone already publishing content, and select people who demonstrate a verifiable responsibility/ability. Increasingly this will be the role of professional Editors online, and although it goes against the ‘open ideal’, the main downside is that it costs organisations time and effort. Scott goes into more detail, and the restrictions he’s applied to Publish2 in a post well worth reading.
Sam‘s post on my previous article highlights the legal dilemma – moderate everything at a huge cost, or let it be a free for all. I disagree that we shouldn’t blame a company that encounters problems because they’re not willing to pay for the resources to moderate a service – but I think there is a third alternative – crowdsource the moderation. An effective rating and reputation system would indicate reliability and past success rates in the hands of fellow Citizen Journalists. And although it will be tough to make a system than cannot be ‘gamed’ to a large extent, it would have avoided an event like the CNN one – where an account is used to make one fake story then disapear. The better the system and the more effort it takes to game it, the smaller the amount of fraudulent users that will make the effort.
Increase the private identification of users. One easy way is to offer a small payment for articles, which requires bank details/paypal account details etc – or even some proof of identity before being allowed to post. It may add to the need for resources – but it’s less work than moderating every article, and would also weed out many of the fraudulent accounts.

That’s three possibilities with a bit of thought. I’ve actually been thinking about this problem for a while, and I’m working on some ideas which may help to increase the reliability of Citizen Journalism and Blogging, whilst also removing some of the barriers the citizen journalists and bloggers undoubtedly face – if I heard Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack, would I know who to contact for a fast response, and would they be likely to respond? Or would my attempts to verify the facts mean I get scooped by a larger site or mainstream media and miss out on the benefits of getting the news first?

In a 24 hour, second by second online world where every moment counts if you want to break a story first, we shouldn’t blame people for falling for the idea that accuracy can be discounted in the rush to publish before anyone else – especially as the result of it backfiring can be a loss of respect, authority and readers.

But I also don’t think we should excuse it as a necessary byproduct of online journalism which can’t be evolved and solved. That’s just laziness. And many of the comments on the Silicon Alley Insider story pick up on this. In our efforts to evolve online journalism, it’s just stupidity to disregard all that preceded us in ‘dead tree’ publications simply because the digital world offers new opportunities and challenges. In my next post, I’ll outline some of the things that should make the transition from ‘traditional’ to ‘digital’ journalism, if the online world wishes to base itself on solid foundations and be taken seriously in terms of reputation as well as numbers and revenue.

Re: Citizen journalism and the fake Steve Jobs heart attack

October 4, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I was going to make two points regarding the discussion of Citizen Journalism in the wake of the fake article posted on CNN’s iReport ‘Unedited. Unfiltered. News.’ The article falsely claimed Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack, and had a big effect on Apple share prices.

Tim Windsor beat me to one of my points, pointing out that the blame for this should lay more with CNN than citizen journalism in general. Many people seem to have ignored the fact that one bad article on one implementation of Citizen Journalism, does not mean the concept as a whole is flawed – even on the CNN site there’s going to be a good ratio of interesting, factual stories to the fake ones, let alone taking every instance of Citizen Journalism across the internet. After all, how many newspapers have ended up in court because of errors or false articles and images? Did that end print journalism?

My second point is around fact checking and reprinting and responding to articles. Increasingly we all get our news from a huge variety of sources, both mainstream and individual-generated. This means that as receivers, we need to be more proactive in judging all our inputs. Particulary if, as bloggers and content producers ourselves, we intend to republish and share that information. In a world where everyone is a potential news source for their friends and contacts, it’s damaging to our own individual reputations to spread something which is old and out-of-date, irrelevant to our contacts/friends/audience, or simply false.

It’ll take time, and better tools, but increasingly people will be looking for more ways to verify information. When I see breaking news on Twitter or Facebook etc I check it against mainstream news via Google News etc. When I read mainstream or non-mainstream websites and blogs, or microblogging etc, I measure it against what I know about the sorurce, whether it’s a friend who might have discovered exclusive news, or an organisation I know has generally been reliable. And that’s just basic fact checking.

After all, Reader Reception Theory has been around since the 1960s, meaning that the understanding of a text is shaped by the interpretation of a reader based on their own experiences and culture. Journalists have always been trained and told to question everything and check all the facts. And there have been enough cases where rumours and fictitious articles have been well publicised.

On the plus side, the debate around Citizen Journalism has not only reminded me of a planned blog post which never saw the light of day, but also helped further ideas for a couple of applications I’ve been thinking about. And Steve Jobs is OK, which is good!

‘Famous for 15 people’ – A response

June 27, 2007 By Dan Thornton

Inspired by a comment on my recent post about the myth of User Generated Content, I figured colleague and fellow digital person David Cushman deserved a fuller response than my reply…And hopefully this might inspire more people to get involved.
David has talked at length on his blog, Faster Future, about his concept of people becoming ‘Famous for 15 people‘, rather than ‘Famous for 15 minutes’. And in some ways, it makes a lot of sense.
After all, if you can reach the people most obsessive about a particular interest, whether you call them early adopters or obsessives, then you’re going to accurately target those most likely to engage and respond.

But this does miss some of the reasons for UGC creation, and some of the reason why certain UGC sites maintain an advantage. it’s also why I believe that there should be a bridge between ‘old’ media and new, rather than discarding the old.

To start with, I’d split UGC into two types. The first is that which comes from small groups of friends chatting, for instance on a forum, with high levels of interaction.
This is the type of UGC which most directly works with the ’15 people’ model, as posts to these key people will have a big effect.

But there is another type of UGC creation, which I’d call ‘formal’ or ‘broadcast’ UGC. This ranges from blogs to live webcam shows, and includes user radio shows, user videos etc. Many of these are not simply created in a desire to interact with users who share an interest, but are an attempt to gain fame and respect from the largest possible audience. It’s the only equivalent of appearing on Big Brother, or sending a story into a newspaper, and is part of human nature for those reared on the cult of celebrity. Those people will actively pick Youtube over a niche site, in order to get the widest possible audience for their video/photo/blog. While they’d be happy with interaction from a small number of people, they’d be happier still with a huge number of people. In the same way, I value the small and growing number of blog readers I have, but I’d be happier if they were part of an audience far larger, if only to gain leverage for getting stories.

There is also another aspect which i think the ’15 people’ concept appears to overlook, and I’ll hope Dave will forgive me if I’ve missed the explanation somewhere.

If I’m looking for content on a subject on which I have no previous interaction, I have a number of ways to find it.

A search will bring up those sites who have the best search ranking, or have paid, and I’m unlikely to go through more than a few pages of results.

I’ll post on a site I already use, and hope that another forum member shares my interest, and can recommend something. But I have no way to guage their knowledge of that particular subject.

I might spot a mention or link to a niche site recommended somewhere else, and go and visit. But even with a passionate niche site, I have no way to verify the information I’m given. Or I can choose a ‘traditional’ site, and hope that their professional journalists have integrity.

Those sites with huge audience figures and a mix of both professional and user news, reviews and opinions will win out, because they will have the highest ranking, the most familiar name, and the biggest implied trust on the first visit. And it’s perfectly possible for them to allow their audience to self-niche into smaller groups of interest.

It might seems paradoxical that a web 2.0 fan is debating such a web 2.0 concept, and coming out on the side of the internet and print monoliths, but I think it’s important to keep stating that there is a middle ground being ‘old’ and ‘new’ media which offers the best of both worlds, without any detriment to the user. Social news sites provide good examples of how a site with little or no editorial judgement can skew the news, with Digg, and Fark offering some strange views on the world on any given day.
For instance, Fark today has a ranking of 37 for a story from the Telegraph regarding Tony Blair’s last day in office, and the same ranking for a story about a man who wanted to see his dead girlfriend topless!

A UGC advocate could argue that it demonstrates both stories have equal appeal for readers, and to some extent that’s true. But if you were simply looking for topical stories of the day, there’s no reason why the site would even be this balanced.

Whereas a mix of a respected news source, such as the BBC, CNN, or whatever flavour news you fancy, combined with the UGC predeliction for the oddball stories you’d have emailed your friends in the old days, would have the best of both worlds.

I realise that some of these issues are perhaps wandering away from the original ‘famous for 15 people’ concept, but I really do feel that user needs are intertwined so much with new media that it’s hard to separate the issue into bie-sized chunks without missing the big picture.

And while I’d welcome comments from a small number of eloquent, intelligent regular readers, I can’t see a day when, as a writer, I wouldn’t want my work to be read by the widest possible audience.