How useful can communication limited to 140 characters be for serious journalism? It turns out that the short messages you find on Twitter have proven wildly useful for some writers penning larger pieces.
Here at ReadWriteWeb we've been leveraging Twitter heavily for some of our most important news writing. While cynics dismiss twitter as frivolous, we've got stories to share that should make anyone reconsider their doubts about the microblogging medium.
Josh Catone wrote here in January about the rise of Twitter as a platform for serious discourse and discussed the way that a handful of mainstream journalists are using the tool. Charles Cooper did an informal survey earlier this month that found a definite majority of journalists old and new to be absent from Twitter.
I did an interview on the BBC last week with some traditional journalists about Twitter and they scoffed at the idea that it could be useful. "Well," one said after I talked about how we've used it, "I certainly won't be checking it out." Hmph!
The scoffers can scoff all they want, but here at RWW our use of Twitter so far has included:
One of the defining characteristics of Twitter is its ease of use. While getting engaged enough to find value in the service does require some initial investment of time and energy - on a day to day and minute by minute basis, Twitter is remarkably easy to post to. As a result, people often post things they discover to Twitter before or instead of posting it to a blog.
Whether it's natural disasters, political developments or breaking tech news - it's common to discover items of interest first on Twitter.
Robert Scoble wrote a year ago about how Twitter users reported a major earthquake in Mexico City several minutes before the USGS did. Zolie Erdos chronicled last month how Twitter users beat government agencies and the world's (formerly) leading news organizations in reporting on March earthquakes in both China and Japan.
We discover tech news tips on Twitter first on a regular basis. When Google bought Twitter competitor Jaiku, for example, we learned about it on Twitter. That early news tip lead to our covering the news before any one else and getting our story on the front page of Digg - good in this case for tens of thousands of pageviews.
When we got to interview Mark Zuckerberg at SXSW this year, we solicited interview questions via Twitter. If was quickly evident that many people wanted to read his thoughts about data portability, but we got some other good question suggestions as well. That's becoming an increasingly common tactic for us and other writers, as it's so easy to supplement our own questions with those of a larger network.
We've also found lately though that Twitter itself is very useful for performing public interviews. By putting out single or multiple questions into our Twitter networks in a call-and-response fashion, we've gathered piles of rich research in far less time than it would have taken to try and call people on the phone.
Some Twitter users reply to our questions with single line answers, others with a few tweets in a row and still others send us paragraphs by email when they see we've asked an interesting question.
The questions we asked for our post titled "APIs and Developer Platforms: A Discussion of the Pros and Cons', for example, recieved answers via Twitter from people like Esther Schindler, senior online editor at CIO.com, Ray Valdes, Research Director of Web Services at Gartner Inc, Chris Saad, co-founder and chairman of the Data Portability Workgroup and Raju Vegesna, of web office suite Zoho. In addition to people of such stature that we'd have to take a deep breath before being so presumptuous as to call them on the phone - our questions get interesting replies from a diverse group of people we would never have thought to ask personally.
We recognize that people using and replying on Twitter may not be generally representative of the population at large, but for qualitative interviews it's a tool that's hard to beat.
When Sarah Perez wrote a post here titled "Real People Don't Have Time for Social Media" she found a wide range of respondents for her questions. Some were hardcore early adopters and others reported that they just dabbled in tools like Twitter.
As Kevin Anderson wrote about Sarah's post at Corante, "No, it's not a random sample. But since when are 'man on the street' interviews?"
I'm not ashamed to admit that I do QA via Twitter. We often get feedback on misspellings, missed links and other publishing faux pas very quickly via Twitter. It's an easy way for readers to offer quick feedback.
Twitter can work really well for tech support or for finding quick answers to small tech questions. That makes it great for filling in details you can't quite remember. "What is that technology that does the toast-like popups on Mac desktop?" I asked when writing an article last week. Within minutes several people reminded me it's GROWL. Thanks!
There's a general sentiment of giving on Twitter, but a journalist's opportunity to perhaps provide later coverage can't help but further incentivize people to provide help.
Promoting your online articles over Twitter is probably the crassest way a journalist can use the medium. Some people like getting an RSS feed through their Twitter account, but not very many. Here in Portland, Oregon our local daily paper feeds headlines through Twitter and that works real well. When bloggers post links to their posts, or post pleas for votes on Digg, it can feel a little dirty. We try to post either particularly interesting articles or to add a little extra value to each link to our own content we send out. We also try to make sure that the clear majority of our Tweets aren't about our own content.
That said, Twitter is a remarkably good traffic driver to our posts. A healthy little group of people click through our links on Twitter, some more via FriendFeed and they often give us great early feedback.
If we're working on something we think will be of interest, sometimes we'll prime the pump a bit and let people know what's coming up. So far, we've heard almost entirely positive feedback on these practices. That's probably based largely on the relationships we've got with our readers, many of which were developed using Twitter. If you had 20 to 50 people that consistently offered feedback on your articles, wouldn't that be great? That's what it feels like we get on Twitter.
When I first saw Twitter I thought it was the stupidest thing ever. Now, despite the length of this post, I find 140 characters plenty of space to communicate about almost anything. You can scoff all you want, we're using the hell out of this tool here at RWW and it's treating us very well. Others are starting to do similar things and it will likely be downright common very soon.
You can add RWW Editor Richard MacManus, Josh Catone, Sarah Perez and myself as friends on Twitter to join in the reporting fun! Thanks to Scott Macdonald for the reporter birdy pic.
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Great post, Richard. You and your team have done a great job leveraging an emerging technology. I really like the focus on Twitter for business. Sure it's fun to be part of the Twitter community but you've made it pay off in a big way.
Thought I'd post here so people don't forget there's a conversation going on here too.
Posted by: Kevin Heisler | April 25, 2008 3:32 PMWhat's especially interesting to me is that Twitter is moving out of tech sector and becoming a critical tool for mainstream journalists and politicos. I'm now following several NPR reporters, Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, probably numerous others I can't recall at moment.
The backchannel function Twitter plays during live events -- political debates, elections, any truly major news event -- is priceless. Even in small cities like mine -- Asheville, NC -- there are now scores of locals on Twitter, and increasingly they're not tech folk so much as media elite.
It's absolutely a serious tool for journalists. In fact, I don't know how much longer it'll be before Twitter attains "if you don't know, you better aks someone" status.
Posted by: Ian Wilker | April 25, 2008 3:42 PMhttp://crowdstatus.com/rwwcrowd.aspx :D
Posted by: Darren | April 25, 2008 3:51 PMDarren, that output looks really nice. Good service you've got there. Reminds me a bit of Tweetpeak.com
Posted by: Marshall KirkpatrickThanks Marshall, I was a little worried that the tweetpeek guys had beaten me to it but when I saw it I was glad they were different. I plan on going outside of twitter when I have gone as far as I can with the twitter side.
back to the article. I use it for catching breaking news and getting blogs articles, rss reader is becoming redundant for me these days.
Posted by: Darren | April 25, 2008 4:26 PMI think you guys at RWW are doing a great job showing what Twitter can do for journalism! I agree that a lot can be communicated in 140 characters, which is surprising to many.
For a smaller blog like mine (where posting has gotten less frequent lately due to work pressures), I'm actually finding that micro-blogging via Twitter can be a form of journalism in itself. It forces me to be succinct...as hell! And is much faster and immediate. I will often do 30, 40, 50 tweets from a single event, in rapid-fire. It just makes blogging so much easier.
On another note, speaking of journalists or major bloggers using Twitter -- just this morning, I saw a tweet from Tim O'Reilly, saying he was prepping for his on-stage interview of Jonathan Schwartz at the Expo, and he wanted questions from his Twitter followers. I replied right away with one, but unfortunately Tim tweeted this afternoon that he didn't have his settings correct on his phone, so he wasn't seeing anything except from people /he/ was following -- so he apologized profusely to the rest of us peons... :-)
cheers,
Posted by: Graeme Thickins | April 25, 2008 4:32 PMGraeme
www.tech-surf-blog.com
Hah! You added the stuff about the Schwartz interview while I was writing my comment. I got interrupted by a phone call in between... So, you were there, Marshall, I assume -- how many questions did Tim ask that he said came via Twitter?
Posted by: Graeme Thickins | April 25, 2008 4:40 PMFeel free to continue posting your blog notices straight to Twitter (in spite of gratuitous complaints today).
There are those of us who follow certain people just for that priviledge...because we pay more attention to the filtered content on Twitter than we do to RSS feeds.
Posted by: Paula Thornton | April 25, 2008 5:04 PMI like the notion of twitter journalism. I ran across a post proposing a kind of micro markup for twitters which could formalize different intents. Very interesting. http://timwolters.blogspot.com/2008/04/twitter-micro-markup.html
Posted by: j0hnny98 | April 25, 2008 9:34 PMI hate it when people link to their own stuff on Twitter, I have done it a few times but completely stop doing it once I realized how annoying it was to other people.
Posted by: Michael | April 25, 2008 10:15 PMThere's a large group of new media and tech folks here in Shanghai using Twitter. Postings from these folks have sparked story pitches, new reporting angles, and suggested interview subjects. It hasn't replaced my RSS reader, but it's certainly replacing Facebook and LinkedIn because of the immediacy of interaction.
It's a little like being in a giant chatroom populated exclusively by the people you like and respect. Or, at least, are amused by.
-- Maria Trombly, Shanghai
Posted by: Maria Trombly | April 25, 2008 10:28 PMTwitter is great for pre-post working.Picking the facts,conversating with colleagues,feeling the audience...
Posted by: Scabr | April 25, 2008 10:51 PMGreat post, Marshall, thanks.
Much of what you say is also valid from the other side of the fence, ie, public relations. Marketing too. Twitter is a legitimate communication channel if used with common sense.
Some complementary ideas re Twitter for journalists came from Journalism.co.uk earlier this week -
http://www.journalism.co.uk/7/articles/531439.php
And for marketers, from MarketingVox -
Posted by: Neville Hobson | April 26, 2008 1:21 AMhttp://www.marketingvox.com/how-to-using-twitter-to-build-brand-integrity-038162/
Great analysis Marshall.
Posted by: Jeremiah Owyang | April 26, 2008 7:38 AMHere's what I don't get. How do you separate signal from noise? For instance, who do you follow? If you're following, say, 100 people, and they tweet regularly, how do you keep up with the flow? It'd be like clearing your spam filter 5 times a day. Much of what you'd find would be useless, but it takes awhile to find that out.
Then there's the question of who follows you. If you post a question that's of no interest to your followers, it'll be ignored. How do you ensure that you're being followed by people whose opinion really matters to you?
Posted by: Jesme | April 26, 2008 7:58 AMI've been banging the twitter drum in education circles since Jan 2007. Like many, you have climbed the Twitter Life Cycle curve:
http://cogdoghouse.wikispaces.com/TwitterCycle
C'mon over and sign the summit log of others who taken the path from "This is the stupidest thing I have ever seen" to "I cannot stop!"
Posted by: Alan Levine | April 26, 2008 8:15 AMFor breaking news you can go to twist.flaptor.com.
Posted by: Jorge | April 26, 2008 9:15 AMTwitter is everywhere, my god it is popular. But I think it lacks more important features and that’s why I don’t find it that good service if you dont have to shout for help when police arrest's you. :-D
Posted by: Siddharth | April 26, 2008 9:44 AMthis is so great
Posted by: Dance Lady | April 26, 2008 10:26 AMhttp://www.i-guide.ro
Twitter is both the perfect journalist tool for being first with breaking news, and the best relief from the tyranny of breaking news.
I did my first twitter journalism a couple of weeks ago at a Norwegian search conference.
It was both fun and interesting. I published the main points and the most interesting quotes instantly, and then afterwards I wrote the whole complete story without having to rush it.
The main advantage with this approach is that you can give the readers the most important part of the story without giving the entire story away.
This has become a major problem with internet based reporting. People read the first story to be published, and then it becomes less important to do the thorough research and give the readers the full story. News organizations "only" gets rewarded for being first.
This may drive journalism into a dangerous downwards spin.
With only 140 letters, Twitter messages only wet the readers appetite. They will still be hungry for more.
This can perhaps drive the focus over to other benefits of internet reporting:
- Unlimited space
- Interaction with readers
- Links to relevant content, such as previous stories and background information
- Available everywhere
- Availability in different formats
I've written more about this on my blog:
Posted by: Anders Brenna | April 26, 2008 10:56 AMhttp://blog.abrenna.com/twitter-journalism/
I don't get why it's so evil to link to your own stuff via Twitter. Can someone explain?
Posted by: bflora | April 26, 2008 11:56 AMHi Marshall,
outside of the tech journo community, there have been a number of interesting conversations going on at Poynter's E-Media TidBits Column (where I sometimes contribute) about the use of Twitter as well as apps like CoverItLive for journalism. Several members of the TidBits team love to take stuff out, "test drive" it, and then report back on how it does/doesn't work. Our conversations have been going on for the past year or so on these apps. And there is much agreement that Twitter, if it becomes more stable, would be a very good to excellent tool for journalism. This includes its use for local newspapers, if there is enough awareness of the product in the community. When it comes to local, there's still a bit of a gap in what adults consider useful and worth their time vs. what's perceived as "kid stuff."
You can find the Poynter column here:
http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=31
Take some time to explore it. We've got some sharp people over there :-)
Posted by: Tish Grier | April 26, 2008 11:58 AMTwitter is CB Radio for Blogstars and their groupies.
Looking back in two years it will have morephed into something integrated to common IM or SMS.
I was struck that in one Qik cast out of PodCamp in NYC that the entire session on Twitter was one big ego trip - with people debating how to follow and be followed.
There's no business model in ego trips. Maybe it breaks the boredom but unless you're making money with it -- the newness will ware off --- and you'll be forced to find a real job.
Twitter stinks at following whole conversations (both sides) and your arguments about the usefulness of "polling" people for articles is only applicable to writers with 2,500+ followers.
I look forward to the day when Twitter becomes a real tool and not an ego trip for underemployed writers.
Posted by: Wayne Schulz | April 26, 2008 5:37 PMInfo-Snacking with Twitter....
http://tinyurl.com/2r8wbt
Posted by: Sach | April 26, 2008 6:34 PMWhen you use the word scoff, you automatically denigrate the purpose of your article. I agree with you about the discovery of news stories but your argument about any story being explainable in 140 words is hilarious. Have you ever explained the true complexity of a story in 140 words. I doubt it. Real journalism is concerned with the issue and not with the speed that a word can be said... I have no problem with twitter , but journalism needs to match technology and at the moment it is very poor quality ....
Posted by: LIam | April 26, 2008 7:27 PMI've written about Twitter as a journalistic tool on several occasions:
de.licio.us/ojezap
Posted by: Julio Ojeda-Zapata | April 27, 2008 9:03 AMInteresting that people aren't keen on bloggers dropping their links. I only follow people of interest and therefore when they write a post I want to see it.
It's much easier to be aware of a link from 1 out of the 50 people I follow than it is to find their post in my 100+ feeds.
Posted by: Total MacBook | April 27, 2008 9:23 AMVery good article!
And writing about twitter will get you more readers & influencers from twitter to recommend your site, smart ;-)
Posted by: Brian Carter | April 27, 2008 9:52 AMIt took me a while to warm to Twitter. There's an awful lot of 'I'm going to bed now, goodnight Twitterverse' on there, but, at the moment, I don't mind panning for gold, sieving out the silt.
This could change. As Twitter becomes more popular, the gold will become harder to find.
Right now, though, I know I can do a page of editorial real quick by pumping out questions to my followers (I hate that term!). It broadens my interviewees. I get answers from unexpected quarters, a real boon.
Posted by: Carlton Reid | April 27, 2008 10:34 AMI still don't totally understand twitter, but I like it. It grows on you, like a fungus. Once it gets a grip, it is hard to shake.
In the meantime, great post. and useful ammo for me. Was trying to convince some radio and tv reporters to twitter the other night. And I think they'd like the idea of using the wisdom of twitter to generate interview questions.
Posted by: juliepower | April 27, 2008 10:49 AMThere are a number of British papers using Twitter - the Birmingham Post and The Plymouth Herald, to name but two.
Posted by: egrommet | April 27, 2008 1:02 PMA lot of outlets are using it to notify on website updates, but others are doing more.
There was also a good article written about this earlier in the week from Paul Bradshaw http://www.journalism.co.uk/7/articles/531439.php
also have a look at the reportwitters site http://reportwitters.com/
Thanks for the perfect article! I'll be showing all my friends who think Twitter is "stupid."
Posted by: Sues | April 27, 2008 6:13 PMYou hit the nail on the head - people post to Twitter before they do in their blogs because it is so easy to do it. Who has the time to write a full-blown blog post when the same thing can be conveyed (and must be conveyed) within 140 characters!
Twitter might have started as a fad, but there is a curious genius behind it which its authors possibly never intended.
Posted by: Geexoo - The Geek Feeds Hub | April 27, 2008 7:19 PMGreat post.
Any journalist that dismisses Twitter is really being closed-minded and missing out on a great opportunity.
I'm a tech reporter and I've used Twitter to find local people for stories I've written. It's also a great way to make sure you are aware of what's happening in your community.
Here is a post I wrote about why journalists should use Twitter.
Posted by: Etan Horowitz | April 27, 2008 7:24 PMhttp://snipurl.com/263fe [blogs_orlandosentinel_com]
Journalists should definitely use Twitter, especially now that Twitterlights makes updating a profile ten times easier. Just cracked the top 100 in Twitter apps.
Posted by: lightstuff | April 28, 2008 2:04 AMFabulous, fabulous article on the creative use of an emerging website.
To be honest, I have neglected to use Twitter... and to a larger extent Facebook... and this post is that "kick in the butt" that makes you realize the type of missed opportunities flying by every day.
I admire the way you dismiss the scoffing of critics. These folks who refuse to adapt and change are the ones who get left in the dust. If their "old methods" were so great, would printed newspaper subscriptions be plummeting across the globe?
Your efforts are commended and this is an article I'll be passing on to some colleagues. Hell... it might even be my first "tweet" haha!
BREAKING NEWS:
Posted by: MobileRoar | April 28, 2008 4:21 AMNew obsession confirmed
http://twitter.com/trigatch4/statuses/798622756
I wouldn't want everyone thinking, based on your post, that ALL BBC journalists scoff at using Twitter as a journalistic tool.
We've had reporters twittering from the Rugby World Cup in France, whilst covering the Turkish elections, from a boat in Bangladesh, etc etc
There are also quite a few BBC staff, including at least one Director, using twitter to communicate our movements, share links and pass around ideas.
Hopefully more and more of us will realise that twitter (and many other services) can be useful tools, as your post does a good job of pointing out.
:-)
Robin.
Posted by: Robin Hamman | April 28, 2008 6:00 AMany twitter tips for a first time user?
Posted by: cedric | April 28, 2008 10:57 AMI use it primarily as a one-way microblogging plugin for my web site. (In other forms, called "asides".) I'd actually be MORE efficient if people didn't try to communicate with me on it. ;) I would caution folks to not go crazy with the self-promotion - I've pruned about 20% of my contacts who mostly broadcast links to their blogs, which I already read.
Posted by: Dave Zatz | April 28, 2008 12:49 PMMany of these are great points and very useful ways of utilising a service like twitter - but they do only work if the people you target actually follow your tweets.
Posted by: Vics | April 28, 2008 2:59 PMMany a time I've shot a plea for help into the wilderness of the web via twitter only for it to be ignored completely or swallowed up and lost amongst the more frequent offerings of better known tweeters.
It's not surprising to me that Twitter is catching on with "new Journalist" such as RWW. "Old established Journalist" will come around or wake up one day and find that their subscribers are using Twitter. It's all about communication! Twitter is a democratized, easy to use, 21st version of the old wire service. It has the potential to be the people's wire service.
Posted by: TJGodel | April 30, 2008 8:21 AMHi all,
Very interesting content here. I've researched the ways in which newsrooms are using Twitter and wrote some pieces about the subject for Poynter Online last September.
Here are the articles, which you might find of interest: "Newsies Twittering on Twitter" (http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=128588) and "Experimenting with Twitter: How Newsrooms Are Using It to Reach More Users" (http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=128918).
~Mallary Tenore
Posted by: Mallary Tenore | May 1, 2008 10:18 AMI think twitter's success is that it that it lies somewhere between two other popular online mediums:
IM and email
You have the dialogs, but without the need to have an immediate conversation nor dealing with distributions required for listerv, etc ...
Let's hope the folks at twitter understand the efficiency of their simplicity and not screw it up with feature bloat that moves it away from delivering the best of both IM and email worlds.
Posted by: Mean Dean | May 4, 2008 12:56 AMTwitter is a remarkably good traffic driver to our posts. Its now a preferable medium for promotion. The main advantage with this approach is that you can give the readers the most important part of the story without giving the entire story away. So you can use this twitter as one of the directory to promote your website.
Posted by: Mogens | May 5, 2008 4:11 AM