140Char

Although Ashton Kutcher has people following him on Twitter than the entire UK news industry, in terms of online readership, the UK news industry has pretty good reach, with The Telegraph, The Guardian and The Daily Mail all attracting over 30 million unique users in September 2009.

So I thought it would be interesting to see exactly which ones were mentioning Twitter the most – and to keep it simple and relevant for everyone, I decided to only use their search functionality to work it out:

So which newspapers have mentioned Twitter the most?

• The Telegraph: 5180 results.
• The Guardian: 3779 results.
• The Financial Times: 1887 results.
• The Times: 1033 results.
• The Daily Mail: 825 results.
• The Sun: 579 results (inc: The Scottish Sun)
• The Mirror: 100 results (Search total limited – site:themirror.co.uk twitter = 82,000 results)
• The Daily Star: 87 results.
• The Daily Express: 78 results.
• The Independent: 56 results (Note – their Google-powered site search is limited in some way! A general google ‘site:theindependent.com twitter‘ reveals 1400 results)

Key thoughts from this simple experiment:

• Most people would probably have put The Guardian top if asked.
• The fact Twitter search returns and ABCe results are closely linked suggests the effectiveness of site structure and search functionality, rather than Twitter mentions being integral to driving readers! (I’m sure Martin has much more in-depth information on this as part of the team at The Guardian).
• At least a couple of sites have seriously wonky search functionality, despite being two of many with search powered or ‘enhanced by’ Google.
• It’s definitely skewed towards the ‘middle-class’ broadsheets regardless of political leaning, which is what most people would expect.
• There’s a power law in full effect, with two/three sites providing most of the coverage.

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!

Everybody Knows by Harvard Avenue on Flickr (CC Licence)

@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!

Obama Wins! by annethelibrarian (Flickr CC Licence)

The best way to get reliable UK train travel updates during the current light covering of snow appears to be the excellent uktrains service, which publishes updates to Twitter for 25 rail companies. Especially when the official website for some companies appears to be as reliable as the trains themselves.

'No trains' Pic by aburt on Flickr (CC Licence)

Once again Twitter is showing itself as an excellent mechanism for information, following on from the #uksnow mash-up in my last post.

But although it’s still new enough to get coverage on mainstream media such as the BBC, (@bensmith is talking about UKtrains at the BBC as I type), it’s not without precedent (Not to diminish the great work by Ben Smith (uktrains) and Ben Marsh (uksnow).

Back in October 2007, Twitter users @nateritter and @viss used the hashtag #sandiegofire to distribute information on fires in California.

And then there were the earthquakes. US, UK and China.

There was the tragedy in Mumbai, and the use of Twitter to start alerting people about the status of hospitals and need for blood donations.

And some emergency services have a Twitter account, such as the LA Fire Dept.

The interesting thing about #uksnow and uktrains is how the interpretation and use of data pulled from, and pushed into Twitter is evolving to make more effective services for information.

Plenty of people have talked about how Twitter is moving into the mainstream, or how Facebook made an offer to purchase the microblogging service – but in many ways the mainstream are being sucked into Twitter – exactly as happened with Facebook en route to 150 million+ global active users.

There’s been some coverage of the appearance of Twitter on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, due to both @wossy and guest @stephenfry not only being ‘celebs who Twitter’, but actualy ‘celebs who really get how Twitter works’.

Martin Belam calculated that Stephen Fry had increased his follower count by 16% between the filming on Thursday and Sunday morning.

Personally, I’d have calculated any effect from when the programme was first shown, as that’s when new followers would appear. Neville Hobson used Twittercounter to count 4000 new followers for StephenFry in the first 24 hours, but really focuses on the increase in activity and conversation from existing Twitter users about the TV mention. (Techcrunch UK also has a summary of the TV coverage)

But hang on a minute.

Even if we take the total at 10.30pm on Sunday, @stephenfry has gained 8864 from an audience of 4million+. Meanwhile 84% of his followers appeared before the mass media appearance, by finding him on Twitter and spreading the word.

So he gained 8/10 followers by conversation, word of mouth and social networking, and just 2/10ish by broadcasting on the biggest national TV station in the UK.

Does mainstream media coverage really boost followers or validate Twitter?