Spalpeen

The Mirror.co.uk’s online team asked me to put a list of Twitter tips together, so I thought I’d open it up to the floor. Make sure you check out a similar list “What is Twitter?” that I made for Channel 4 News. Here’s what I have so far. Please add tips in the comments or @Coneee!

Twitter tips
Be useful. Help other people and they’ll help you.
Live tweet at events! Don’t just sit in the audience, tell people what you’re doing.
Be unique. Send links out to information that people can’t get easily or might not see elsewhere.
Ask for help. Tell people what you’re working on and ask them for tips.
Own your niche. Designate a large proportion of your tweets (50%?) to the niche that you’re writing about.
Don’t overdo it. Be selective about your tweets.
Be positive. Nobody like a Twitter moaner.
Make people laugh. Share jokes and funny observations about current events.
Give credit. People like helping other people, so thank them!
Find out what people are talking about. What links are being exchanged, what person is being talked about etc.
Find people at events and ask them for information.

Some great behaviour tips at Mashable and from one of @PaulBradshaw’s excellent presentations:

Technical tips
Get a simple, easy to read (and repeat) username
Put up a nice profile pic that has your face in most of the frame
Place a link to a list of your own articles, not to a homepage
Your profile should have your job description

Tools
http://www.tweetdeck.com/ (desktop/mobile software capable of multiple search feeds)
http://twitterfall.com/ (customisable feeds set by location)
http://tweetmeme.com/ (top links on Twitter)
http://www.helpareporter.com/ (might be a little US focused)
http://wefollow.com/ (search for people by hashtag)
http://muckrack.com/ (journalists on Twitter)
http://www.mediaontwitter.com/ (more journalists on Twitter)

Good examples (could do with more!)
http://twitter.com/BreakingNews

The other month I wrote a post about The Guardian’s poor linking practices. I’ve since heard that this issue has been raised internally at some level, but haven’t heard the results of this yet. Anyway, the issue hasn’t gone away, so I’m not going to stop writing about it.

Here’s a few more examples, similar to the ones I reported on last month:
-Note the link to The Telegraph’s homepage in the first paragraph. Rather than a link to the article that the sentence is directly addressing, there’s a generic link to the Telegraph homepage.
-No link to the house on Google Maps (even though the image in question isn’t there anymore).
-One internal link in an article thousands of words long. Not good enough. Where’s the link to Gawker’s amazing videos from inside Scientology?

The Guardian is getting better (see: a link to a press release, direct links to bank homepages), but they’re not quite there yet.

And actually, the issue about linking goes deeper than simply a lack of links to organisations. The Guardian shouldn’t simply be linking to organisations that it’s writing about (although that would be a good first step). For an idea of what I mean, take this article featuring an interview with The Wire creator David Simon.

About halfway through, there’s a sentence mentioning how David and his collaborator Ed Burns spent time hanging around rather inconspicuously on “the corner of Monroe and Fayette in west Baltimore.” My immediate thought here was to look up this exact location on Google Maps, and throw up the Google Street View service. Seeing the *exact corner* that Burns and Simon were hanging out on adds immense value to the article! So why the hell wasn’t there a direct link to this corner in the article? It took me 30 seconds to find it, copy the URL, and dump it in here. Here, I’ll even embed it!

View Larger Map

The Guardian has a huge staff of writers, rewriters, editors, subeditors, resubeditors (yes, I’m making up words here), so why can’t they add a bleeding hyperlink?

Disclaimer: I love love love The Guardian. I’m only writing this because I want to improve their product!

[Alvy addresses a pair of strangers on the street]
Alvy Singer: Here, you look like a very happy couple, um, are you?
Female street stranger: Yeah.
Alvy Singer: Yeah? So, so, how do you account for it?
Female street stranger: Uh, I’m very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Male street stranger: And I’m exactly the same way.
Alvy Singer: I see. Wow. That’s very interesting. So you’ve managed to work out something?

[Thanks, IMDB]

I was rustling through the attic and found these newspapers bought on September 12th, 2001, the day after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Interesting to see how the different newspapers approached such horrible news. Also, BoingBoing just picked it up, and there are some interesting comments.

Dick Cheney Hospitalized, reports BreakingNews on twitter.

In response to a question on the NUJ New Media email list. 

Professional blogging isn’t much different from ordinary blogging. Effectively, it is just a far more efficient and team-based version of the average blogger’s “I saw a link that is cool/new/interesting so I should write about it” ethos. The scale is just far larger.

In Engadget’s case, instead of one blogger, there is an extended team of writers. Instead of casually browsing the web to find links, we use lists of sources in group RSS readers and email tip boxes. Instead of just allowing anyone to blog, writers are trained for months before they are allowed to post on their own. There are strict guidelines regarding length, style, tone, and content of articles. There are guidelines on image sizes, comment moderation, and event coverage (especially event coverage). Our ethics policy is equivalent to the New York Times. It’s extremely hard work, often involving late hours (remember, I’m based in the UK and I write for an American website), OK but not great pay (the dollar is its lowest against sterling for 25+ years), and huge dedication.

So why do I do it? Because if you enjoy the topic and love writing, it can be extremely rewarding.

At age 19, I was flown out to Las Vegas to cover CES. I had on average 3-4 hours sleep a night, and had flu for a week afterwards, yet I got to work  face-to-face with a team of extremely intelligent people, cover new gadgets before half the mainstream media had woken up, and generally have a riot of a time talking about and playing with new gadgets.

Because of my blogging, I had the opportunity to ask Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, the first question at the Apple iPhone press conference last month. Have you any idea how exhilarating it is for a 20 year old student to be able to do such a thing? To be on an equal playing field with journalists from The FT, the BBC, the Guardian, Channel 4 News (all publications which I intensely admire)?

Those are only two of the many, many examples.

“On 24 September, Gordon Brown declared to the Labour conference: “I have no doubt that the best answer to disengagement from our democracy is to renew our democracy. And that means more change . . . change to strengthen our liberties to uphold the freedom of speech, freedom of information and the freedom to protest.” Three days later, Derek Pasquill, 48, an official at the Foreign Office, was charged on six counts of breaching the Official Secrets Act.” -New Statesman

” … it is crucial to understand that some kind of circle is being closed here by Labour.” Great column over at The Guardian by Henry Porter.

“The industry argues that exports are vital if Britain wants to retain the capacity to build its own weapons.” -The Guardian.

Bullshit. Look at Saab and the completely Sweden exclusive Viggen fighter.

Switch to a Prius dude!