Tweeting the news

1. Tweeting the news

2. Twitter • Invented as internal communication tool • Based on SMS (small message service) • Messages restricted to 140 characters

3. First tweet • From Jack Dorsey: • “just setting up my twttr” • twttr later became Twitter

4. Early reviews • “Using Twitter for literate communication is about as likely as firing up a CB radio and hearing some guy recite ‘The Iliad.’ ” – Bruce Sterling, journalist • “This is like the Seinfeld of the Internet – a website about nothing.” – anonymous commenter on a blog about Twitter.

5. Twitter • 560 million active users • 492 million tweets a day (5,700 tweets per second)

6. Twitter • Influential in the Arab Spring uprising.

7. Twitter President Obama would leverage it so masterfully.

8. Twitter • The Pope would open an account.

9. Twitter

10. Twitter • Changing the way journalists • gather the news • interact with their audience • distribute the news

12. Breaking news • Hudson River plane crash • Fort Hood shooting • Hurricane Irene • Aurora theater shooting

13. Breaking news • @OWHCrime

14. New Yorkers received tweets about an East Coast earthquake 30 seconds before they felt it.

15. Twitter as a news source • News travels fast. • Osama bin Laden’s death: 12.4 million tweets an hour. • Sense of immediacy.

16. How journalists use it • Provide real time news. • Engage audiences, create community. • Connect with people, sources. • Develop personal brands. • Link to their work. • Crowd source content. • Get questions answered.

19. More ways to use Twitter • Interviews – “Man on street” • Newspapers – Use Twitter to link to stories • NYTimes on Twitter • Curate with Storify – Neil Armstrong + Hurricane Irene • Humor/news – Top 17 D.C. quake tweets+ Pizza in newsrooms

20. Understand Twitter terms • RT – Retweet (Repost someone else’s message) • Automatic retweets cannot modify the message • MT – you have retweeted a tweet but modified it. • DM – Direct Message (Private message sent to a specific person) • # - Hashtag Precedes a keyword and makes it easier to search for particular topics

21. Understand Twitter terms • @Reply -- a tweet sent in direct response to another tweet. (@ followed by their Twitter name) • Your @reply message will only show up in your followers tweet timelines if they also are following the person to whom you sent the reply. • If they are following you, but not following the person you replied to, they won't see your reply tweet.

22. Understand Twitter terms • How to get all of your followers to see?

23. Understand Twitter terms • Place a period before @username. • Or post a direct tweet, but use the @username somewhere other than the beginning. • Be judicious with @reply tweets.

24. Using hashtags • Automatically groups tweets identified with that hashtag, making topic search easy. • Great way to share information at conferences, events and during breaking news. • Find out if an event has an official hashtag; if not, you can create one. • You can save searches, to make it easy to review.

25. Some hashtag examples • Twitterfall • Hootsuite

26. What to live tweet • Twitter works well for breaking news and for the blow-by-blow account of an event. • government meetings • public forums • press conferences • speeches • sporting events

27. Breaking news

28. Live tweeting events

31. Live tweeting tips • Consider your live twitter stream a story – it needs a beginning, middle and end. • The first tweet should announce to your followers that you’ll be live tweeting. Describe briefly what you’ll be covering.

32. Live tweeting tips

33. Live tweeting tips • Once the event begins, be sure you have an opening tweet that sets the stage – location, what is happening, what is expected, etc.

34. Live tweeting tips • Cover the event on Twitter just as you would a story. • You wouldn’t write a story that includes everything that was said at a meeting or event. • Be discerning – use your reporting instincts to decide what is relevant and pertinent. You only want to report the highlights.

35. Live tweeting tips • Be a careful observer and have an eye open for novel and important information that might be relevant to your audience.

36. Live tweeting tips • Each tweet should cover one point at a time. • Think subjects, verbs (like headlines). • You can drop articles for space. • Strive to make each an understandable, self-contained message.

37. Live tweeting tips • Use good grammar. • Punctuate for clarity. • Don’t over-abbreviate – if message too long consider using a follow-up tweet to clarify

38. Live tweeting tips • Be useful – provide information or insight. • Be judicious about your links.

39. Live tweeting tips • Always be professional. • Avoid using exclamation points, emoticons, jargon and slang (including LOL)

40. Live tweeting tips • Try to be consistent and concise in how you use attribution.

43. Don’t be afraid to use color in tweets to help readers feel like they are there. This one could have indicated the person was angry and shouted.

44. Live tweeting tips • Visuals – either photos or videos are always good to include if they contribute to the story.

45. Does this one contribute?

46. Does this one?

47. Live tweeting tips • End with a wrap-up tweet – indicate to your followers that the event is over. • Then tweet to tell readers to look for an upcoming web story on the event.

48. Encourage the conversation • Let your followers know ahead of time that you’ll be live tweeting.

49. Hashtags • Also send tweets to interested hashtags know ahead of time that you’ll be live tweeting – search for those that might not be obvious by topic. • #LNK • #UNL • #OMA • #immigration

50. Hashtags