In Britain, the editor of The Guardian explains how Twitter helped reverse a “super injunction” that prevented news media from reporting on the “existence of court proceedings and court orders” related to a massive lawsuit.
It took one tweet on Monday evening as I left the office to light the virtual touchpaper. At five past nine I tapped: “Now Guardian prevented from reporting parliament for unreportable reasons. Did John Wilkes live in vain?” Twitter’s detractors are used to sneering that nothing of value can be said in 140 characters. My 104 characters did just fine.
By the time I got home, after stopping off for a meal with friends, the Twittersphere had gone into meltdown. Twitterers had sleuthed down Farrelly’s question, published the relevant links and were now seriously on the case. By midday on Tuesday “Trafigura” was one of the most searched terms in Europe, helped along by re-tweets by Stephen Fry and his 830,000-odd followers.
In the wake of DePaul University’s announcement about its forthcoming journalism class focused on Twitter, John Cook at TechFlash has written about the University of Washington’s graduate-level summer course focused on Twitter.
The eclectic one-item-at-a-time online store Woot! passed the 1 million follower mark in July. I just learned about it in their August email newsletter; today they have 1,197,831 followers and 2,671 tweets.
The Woot! Twitter feed advertises the sale of the day, which is available until it is sold out or until 11:59pm Central, when it is replaced with the next day’s item. There are usually two tweets a day, with the second being identified with a “Last Call” alert.
This is the same model used by AmazonMP3 (992,383 followers, 645 tweets), although Amazon has more than one offer each day. It is similar to that used by Dell Outlet (1,097,064 followers, 663 tweets). The DellOutlet account differs from the other two, however. In addition to the posts advertising products, Dell’s tweeter (@StefanieATDell) posts contents, retweets and @ replies. Dell HomeOffers, which is a sale posts only account like AmazonMP3 and Woot, has only 3,412 followers, but it is also a newer account with only 357 tweets.
One of the organizations that we are profiling in the book, Kodak, has published a social media tips handout (pdf — tip @MackCollier). Kodak Vice President Jeffrey Hayzlett writes:
Why do I take the time to use social media like Twitter and Facebook? Because in today’s media landscape, it’s vitally important to be where our customers are. Kodak has always embraced this marketing philosophy, and today that means being active in social media.
The 16 page handout covers myths, provides tips, and includes information on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. It also includes the company’s social media policy. Kodak has a great “where we are” page on the website: http://kodak.com/go/followus (long live shorter, human-readable URLs!).
Over at 10000Words.net (a wonderful site for digital journalists), Mark S. Luckie describes how he transitioned from Twitter skeptic (“I am suspicious of anything being touted as the next. best. thing.”) to evangelist (“It took being unemployed to really understand how Twitter could be used to foster community and relationships.”).
Mark shares how the Twitter community gave him job leads as well as encouragement to write a book.
How many times have you looked at the Twitter trending topics list and said, “Huh?” That’s assuming, of course, that you’re on the Twitter web site and that trending topics are visible in your sidebar!
No need to scratch your head in wonder any longer, however. Bookmark WhatTheTrend? to see the top trending topics on Twitter as well as a short explanation of why the topic is trending.
If you have some time Wednesday evening, you might want to drop in on this summer’s Twitter class, either virtually (we’ll be streaming via uStream.tv) or in person (we’ll be in CMU126).
The students have been tasked with giving five minute presentations on the “best of the best” uses of Twitter in their study area. The “study areas” include airlines, hospitals, food banks, politicians, government, Latin America, news media, food service, visual communication, the military. [continue reading…]
One of the organizations that we are profiling in the book, Kodak, has published a social media tips handout (
