I’m a big fan of both Tumblr and Posterous, despite not really having the time/project to make the best use of them at the moment. So the fact that Tumblr has released a new feature, some interesting statistics and signs of new revenue streams launching soon has reignited my thoughts on how I could use the service effectively.

The new feature is the ability to add static pages – which will aid companies and bloggers looking to keep content highlighted. Adding a page is simple, with three layouts to choose from.

And it will only build on some pretty impressive statistics released today – 1 billion page views in February 2010 for starters. It also has 2 million posts every day, 15,000 new posts daily, and 18 new posts and reblogs every second.

Incidentally, 1 billion page views in February equals 36 million page views per day, 25,000 page views per minute, or 400 per second. And Tumblr has put together a nice infographic to show off the info:

And if that isn’t enough, apparently there are also plans to unveil two new revenue generating features next month, powered by the widget mysteriously pictured below:

For a personal or simple company blog, I’d definitely recommend checking out Tumblr or Posterous. They’re easier to update than a traditional hosted blog platform (whether Blogger or Wordpress), and offer as many design options etc. Ultimately a full self-hosted blog platform such as Wordpress (Which this site uses) offers some additional advantages, but if you don’t want the hassle or advertising, then go with the microblogging platforms.

Sponsored Post

Having spent some time running advertising with Twitter, I know how divisive it can be – and seeing as I know there’s a big group who split their time between microblogging and full-length blogging, I thought it was worthwhile accepting an offer for a sponsored post on the UK launch of blogging monetisation service Ebuzzing.

It’s fast and simple to register, and the main benefit is that you can achieve a good rate of reward for recommending or allowing services to advertise or pay for a post – but the choice of topics etc is entirely down to you. There’s no obligation to post anything you don’t agree with.

I’ve used Ebuzzing for a post on TheWayoftheWeb, and found it easy to use. There are three options to pick from – sponsored articles, videos served by a dedicated player, or videos and banners served in a syndicated player.

All posts are “no follow” within articles, and full disclosure and advertiser names have to be displayed, meaning no room for any shenanigans, and no risk of search engine penalties. And over 600 brands have used the service to propose campaigns including Coca-Cola, MTV, MasterCard, Toyota, etc.

So if you’d rather monetise your blog than your microblogging, then Ebuzzing is a simple and effective way to discover opportunities to do it for a decent reward, rather than struggling to optimise affiliate links for what might be small audiences, or having to go and attract direct advertising. And having seen an increasing amount of content providers beginning to use in-Twitter advertising, I’d hazard a guess that microblogging-related advertisers will be looking to place content via Ebuzzing in the future.

Register on ebuzzing.com

Twitter has become one of the prime targets for phishing and spam attacks, due to both it’s huge growth in user numbers, but also the each with which messages can spread (partly due to the inherent weakness in using short urls).

The latest example is the BZPharma ‘LOL this is funny’ attack, as detailed by security firm Sophos. Messages include ‘Lol. this is me??’, ‘lol , this is funny’ and ‘Lol. this you??’, and include a link which looks like ‘http://example.com/?rid=http://twitter.verify.bzpharma.net/login’ –

with the example.com element varying between a number of addresses.

There’s a handy Youtube video with details of the problem. Links are appearing in both private Direct Messages, and in public feeds – plus some third party services allow DMs to be made public, sharing the phishing attack more widely.

Click on the dodgy link and you’ll go to a fake Twitter login page, which replicates the Fail Whale when you attempt to login, and then redirects you back to the real Twitter page to make you believe your account hasn’t been hit. The same technique is also being used to phish Bebo accounts.

And after the first wave of attacks compromised accounts, there’s now a wave of spam selling herbal viagra, with messages including “Get bigger and have sex longer. go here”

So besides double-checking you’re on the real Twitter site before logging in, keep an eye on your sent messages for any clue your account has been compromised, and also watch out for messages being sent by even trusted friends.

You can also take a look at the full Sophos update on the attack.

With news that William Shatner is to star in the first TV show to be created from a Twitter account, it appears that microblogging is now the source of choice for media content.

It wasn’t so long ago that traditional blogs were all the rage as a source for book and TV deals – probably the most notable was Belle du Jour (who recently had her real identity revealed), whose Secret Diary of a Call Girl became first a book, and then a popular TV Show.

But now Shit My Dad Says has not only landed a TV deal which was signed last November, but with William Shatner reportedly set to star it’s been greenlit for a pilot episode on CBS, with the creators of Will & Grace on board as executive producers.

With over 1.1 million followers, there’s definitely a fanbase for the show – but will any of the humour survive considering how much adult language is involved?

A guest post by Lauren Fisher, who specialises in online PR and social media at Simply Zesty – and can be found on Twitter at @laurenfisher.
As we look forward to a brand new year, I’m sure the burning question on everyone’s lips is – what’s going to happen to microblogging in 2010? In a year that saw Ashton Kutcher reach 1 million followers on Twitter and MSN launch their own microblogging service (and MSN China clone Plurk – Dan), the next year certainly has a lot to live up to. Here, I offer a few of my own predictions for microblogging in 2010, with Dan’s thoughts below.

Increased use in organisations

I’m talking here about internal use of microblogging, as a way for colleagues to collaborate and communicate with each other. We’ve seen Google Wave emerge as a tool for professional, organisational use and I think this is the path that microblogging will take in 2010. I’ve already written on here about my thoughts on Yammer (which I still stand by) and I think we will see microblogging tools play a bigger role in internal corporate communications, as an easy and efficient way to communicate with each other. The benefits of realtime will be no more paramount than for businesses.

Dan: Totally agree, although I’m not sure I’d pick Yammer out as the key product in this area – the move is towards integrating microblogging as part of a collaborative and project management toolset – e.g. Salesforce Chatter. The novelty of an ‘internal Twitter’ is fine, but doesn’t convert those who don’t like Twitter, or those happy to DM via Twitter already. Integrated tools give reasons for people to get involved.

Twitter Declining

I won’t be the first, or last, person to say this but I think Twitter may have reached its height of popularity and I think numbers will start to dwindle, albeit slowly. The love affair with Twitter has been exciting, but it might just be over. The avalanche of spam accounts has a part to play here, but I think that when Twitter reaches its highest point of saturation, is conversely when you start to lose value in the site. It has become incredibly noisy and I am beginning to question the real use of it.

Dan: I agree to some extent. I think some of the expansion already has been down to a huge number of spam accounts, and it’s something Twitter has started to tackle, but will always be a huge problem. The lesson here is to learn from the most popular 3rd party apps – Tweetdeck and Seesmic for example, which allow far better filtering than Twitter itself. The noise levels don’t bother me too much because I’m fairly selective about who I follow (Hard to believe when I’m following almost 2k people!)

Microblogging as customer service

I think that more and more companies will embrace microblogging in 2010, beyond the extent we’re seeing now. Businesses will realise the potential of microblogging as a customer service platform though, rather than a place for sexy social media campaigns. I don’t think there will be many more hashtag competitions, we’ve had pretty much every variation of these! I hope that more companies will realise the value of microblogging to source and, most importantly, solve issues for customers. As consumers, we are expecting everything to be solved in real-time and this is what we’ll expect businesses to cater to. The power of crowdsourcing will also be recognised more and we’ll see more companies opening up product development to the masses.

Dan: Totally agree that almost every company should be using Twitter as an integral part of overall improvements to customer service. I expect to reach any tech company via Twitter, and those that do have an active role tend to respond quickly and get my repeat business!

No to video microblogging

It’s not an area that’s really taken off and I don’t think 2010 will be the year for video microblogging. Some sites have made a good attempt, such as Vidly, but once the initial shine wears off the uptake is slow. I simply don’t think that microblogging lends itself to video. A quick text update is one thing : shooting, uploading and tagging a short video is another. We’re still not as comfortable in front of the camera as we are in front of the keyboard and I don’t think this will change any time soon.

Dan: Damn it – this is an area that comes back to haunt me after I made a prediction on video at a conference that Seesmic’s original video blogging platform would take off in 2009. And I was wrong for exactly the reasons above. I’d say for the over 20s, audio blogging such as Audioboo is more accessible. However, I think there’s a huge group of teenagers who are very accustomed to broadcasting themselves on Justin.tv and Ustream. If someone taps into that market and can lure them away from sites which are heavily integrating with Facebook, Twitter etc, then we may see video microblogging take off in a couple of years. It’s also likely to be primarily mobile, and the odds are people will still video other people rather than themselves…

Location –based microblogging

If Twitter is to continue growing in 2010, I think the answer could be in location-based services. As mobile internet usage rapidly increases, we’re all going to be using location services more. If we can make real connections on Twitter with those that are physically close to us, as a more integrated part of the whole microblogging experience, this could prove incredibly popular. Integrating tweets at real-world events such as concerts and sport events will also become more popular, bringing people physically together.

Dan: Totally. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more integration between location, microblogging and special offers, but that’s definitely going to arrive this year – look at mobile social location games like Foursquare, or Google stepping up their location-based efforts. And events are a huge influence on bringing people together on Twitter – the FA Cup, the Superbowl, Eurovision etc as examples…

Integration with sites

As more people will be moving away from Twitter itself, I think microblogging will play a bigger part in existing sites. The new redesign of LinkedIn sees the now familiar stream of status updates with more prominence and I think this is probably the way many sites will go, including email services, encouraging even further interaction between people through short updates. As we become increasingly productive online in 2010, we’ll expect the microblogging functionality to feature more heavily in sites we’re already visiting, than having to go to a separate site.

Dan: Twitter, Facebook and Google are the three services that you should expect to seemlessly be integrated into almost every site you visit in the next 6 months. Each one is becoming very close to the single unified ID many people have talked about…

Microblogging in 2010 – what do you think?

There’s been a lot of talk about the proposed revenue model for Twitter which will seek to monetise businesses and brands using the microblogging service. But as yet none of the paid services has appeared – but one business-specific feature is now in a limited beta test.

It’s called ‘Contributors’ and manages multiple users to a single account by placing the byline of the user to their tweet on the main account. Imagine @Biz tweeting as part of the @Twitter account:

It’s supported by the API and interesting, the post revealing it on the official blog explains that it’s in beta to get feedback, but then says:

‘After we kick the tires a bit, we’ll do a full launch to all business users and ecosystem partners. Stay tuned!’

Could this be the first paid service? It’s definitely something which will make managing a multiple user account (as I do) a fair bit easier – if you’ve got a long brand name as your Twitter username, you often find there’s no room for attribution on a multiple user account.

But I’m not sure many businesses would pay (if this is released as part of the revenue plan). Although it’s a hassle, I’m not sure it’s enough of a pain to justify payment to sort – but it does show that the Twitter team are definitely focusing on the business users who could pay their bills

Video microblogging 12seconds has released 12mail, to join the existing 12cast. Neither requires you to have an existing account, and whereas the earlier application would send videos to Twitter, the new app lets you send videos directly to your friends, which has far more potential for communication.

If you don’t have a 3GS you can send a picture and record an audio message on top of that – and either way, it will be direct messaged to all recipients on Twitter, or strangely posted to a user’s wall on Facebook.

The interesting thing is that I tipped the likes of Seesmic and 12Seconds as video microblogging which would grow hugely this year, but that hasn’t really happened. And the reason is I forgot to think about users more than technology – although there are some great people using video microblogging (for example @Documentally), most people are too self-conscious to be constantly updating to camera at the moment (Although the teen users of Ustream and Justin.tv etc might well disagree).

That’s why I love the fact this operates as more of a messaging service between people that know each other – the familiarity allows me to record a quick message when I don’t want to type or I want to share something visual, without worrying that the entire world will see my bad hair day.

The recent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on popular social networks was mainly felt by Twitter, which seemed to either be more susceptible or hit harder by the action, resulting in it going offline entirely for a short period.

The concept of Governments using the internet for spreading information or cyberwarfare is not a new one – but the question is how prevalent it is becoming on social networks, and how many users are aware of it happening?

Twitter seems the most likely place for this question to play out – combine a design which lends itself to the fast spread of information, and an average user age which is more likely, as a percentage of users, to be interested in news and events (particularly political), than most social networks.

Examples of the fast spread of news are commonplace, particularly when it comes to natural disasters, such as earthquakes, or human disasters, such as terrorism or fire. And increasingly these pieces of breaking information are being repeated and picked up by unquestioning users seeking to capitalise on the interest, major news organisations, and even shops using it for spam purposes.

Usage of the media by both Governments and unofficial organisations has long existed, but the internet removes the need to engage with ‘official’ media sources to reach a large audience.

And now we’re seeing the potential for Governments or organisations to co-ordinate attacks against popular services. That’s something that print distribution has somewhat protected us against – you might be able to control or attack a printing press in your own country, but it’s harder to exert pressure on foreign media platforms (although not impossible).

But the internet is accessible from any location, meaning that those who don’t believe in freedom of speech or information are able to co-ordinate their attacks on whichever target they deem suitable – and when it comes to media and social networks, we’re relying on the efforts of private companies to respond. And whilst, for example, the UK Government might interject as best it could to preserve a media institution such as the BBC for the good of the country (being a mechanism to effectively reach the population in times of emergency), do we expect – or indeed do we want, Governments to be increasingly involved in attempts to protect social networks and microblogging?

What do you think?

It’s not just Twitter that is spawning television shows in the microblogging world, with the launch of Horsetweet, a microblogging platform for horse lovers, which accompanies U.S. reality TV show ‘Hard Reins to Hold’.

Both the site and the TV show are the work of father and daughter Matt and Loagan Fury, who run Loagan ranches, around which the TV show is based.

Horsetweet itself is on the Shout’Em platform, which allows you to ‘roll your own microblogging community’. Which means you can sign up for the site, or login with your existing Twitter or Windows Live details.

The aim is to accumulate 10,000 members on Horsetweet by the end of 2009 – could this be the start of more disaggregated microblogging for specialist areas of interest?

Despite the appearance of this being a blog solely dedicated to Twitter, the intention has always been to cover microblogging as a whole.

To me, microblogging means every short form publishing format – so the 140/160 character text sites such as Plurk, Identi.ca, etc, and also the video formats such as Seesmic, 12 seconds etc.

But the third content type hasn’t really been covered – audio.

Obviously Audioboo is getting a lot of press at the moment, and quite rightly, due to the fact their iPhone app is a real USP. Converting audio pre-transfer means higher quality for starters – which matters a lot of broadcasters.

Then there are alternatives, such as Phonevite and ipadio, or even the voice-to-text magic of Spinvox.

So should I be ramping up the coverage of the Twitter alternatives? Should there be more coverage of microvideo apps? Or does the sound of more audio interest you?

Congratulations to Cesare Rocchi, the developer behind the Posty client for microblogging (I interviewed Cesare about Posty back in September last year). Posty is an Adobe Air application which offers a simple interface.
It seems I’m not the only one to have appreciated Posty, as Cesare is an Adobe student rep for Rich Internet Applications, and he submitted Posty to the RIA application content – and won!

This is where I’ll be updating from the Media140 microblogging for news conference in London, dependant on battery life and plug sockets becoming available.

In addition to myself, there is also coverage from:

Should wifi go down, I’m tweeting at @badgergravling – the content will be tidied after the event, honest!

2.30pm: Welcome from Andre Gregson (@dailytwitter – Media140 founder) explaining how the event has grown to 250+ people, and the fact it will fund a charitable event next year.

2.45pm: Keynote speech by Pat Kane, (Writer, musician, consultant, player, theorist and activist @theplayethic). Discussing personal usage of tools such as Twitter and Audioboo, and moving onto posing some of the obvious uses for newspapers and the major questions it poses.

3pm: First panel discussion on ‘The 140 character story’: How much will twitter and microblogging change the way breaking news is sourced globally by news organisations?’

Chaired by Tom Whitwell (Assistant Editor, Times Online)

Panel: Darren Waters (BBC Technology Editor, @darrenwaters), Jon Gripton (Sky News Online News Editor @jongrip), Bill Thompson (Technology critic and commentator @billt), Mike Butcher (Editor of Techcrunch Europe @mikebutcher) and Nick Halstead (CEO and Founder Tweetmeme.com and fav.or.it @nickhalstead).

@billt challenges the shared traditional media outlook of both Sky and the BBC when it comes to Twitter. Nick Halstead talking about looking at it from a technological point of view – technology can spot things happening faster than humans but then it’s how people take it and use it.

Mike Butcher moves onto discussing how Technorati would have been the main topic five years ago, and how it’s switched from blog search to microblogging. Mentions an account claiming to be Nick Brown MP claiming when the election would come – first challenge (Did anyone phone him and ask him).

Interesting point that just because things can be done in real time, doesn’t mean they have to be. @jongrip talking about Sky’s use of Twitter including engaging, chatting and answering back.

‘Does the desire to get the story quickly justify going to press quickly  – how do we implement the tools in a defensible way?’

Nick Halstead wonders if Twitter moving to a search/reputation facility is going to have an effect. Do you trust Twitter users whether or not a story is trustworthy.

Mike Butcher – We’re putting a huge amount of trust in one platform. Recent changes, unreliability etc – putting so much newsgathering onto one platform is risky.

Darren Waters on the split between official channels from the BBC and the personal channels from professional BBC journalists – for instance tweets being checked by a second pair of eyes before being included in the official stream from Davos.

Bill Thompson discussing how as an independant person who writes for the BBC and can have an opinion – and whether professional journalists from organisations being personal on Twitter is like the wizard stepping out from behind the curtain and revealing that the news is written by someone who has personal views on politics etc.

Panel question for ‘how you source news via Twitter’ – @billt- using it like being a seismologist – you can see something is  happening by the ripples, but can’t tell what it is . Twitter isn’t the journalism – doesn’t believe anything he sees or reads on Twitter. @jongrip – it’s for communicating, talking, sharing and interacting. Nick Halstead – the rise of real time services, and more adoption of real time into news etc in the U.S. – watching trends and looking into them. It’s not just about real time, but it’s also got to be relevancy. The company that gets that right will be the winner, because real time is just a massive stream without filtering. Darren Waters – BBC using a hub to look at trends emerging – personal accounts and interactions mean that the sources tend to converge between news and personal contacts – people whose tweets are valuable and worth following. Mike Butcher – at Techcrunch they don’t have a system of checks and barriers (@billt ‘Who knew!’). If there is a cutting edge it’s people on the tech side who are doing everything – these will be amazing newsgathering tools, whilst also echoing Bill’s comment about doing the verification etc of journalism. Balancing getting stuff out there as fast as you can in as reasonable a manner as you can as well. The users will fact check techcrunch/Mike as much as anyone else – the users are the News Editors – and the Techcrunch team know they’re going to get caught out or be behind in the stream. Leads to the debate between the BBC approach and Techcrunch approach – would the BBC audience accept fact checking?

Will Twitter make money – ‘answer from BillT – don’t know, don’t care. We want to microblog and someone will figure out the way it can be done.’ Darren – ‘Twitter will sell’. Nick – ‘realtime search could be advertised against, plus the pro account by the end of the year’. Mike ‘charge for tools, not for advertising. The problem is how you can slow down the stream – advertising would screw things up and slow down the stream’.

How will journalists learn their trade when they’re starting out – Darren – ‘companies which still have money to invest in training, you’d hope will continue to train people in law, court reporting etc. There are also ways to self-train’. Mike – ‘hearing that the BBC might be looking at ‘rock star’ journalists who go out and take on news like a bull at a gate. The times when you did a training course, worked on a local paper, and then went to a national will be up against someone who could have a blog, an audience, and knows what they are talking about.’

@jongrip claiming 140 characters isn’t journalism. @darrenweaters using the example of Peter Mandleson tweeting Tony Blair lied about the Gulf War, or writing headlines which also power Ceefax would mean it’s journalism.

The suggestion from the BBC Red Button team on adding Twitter to the TV options.

Question – with only 2/3s online in the UK, will people be able to get relevant news. Darren (BBC) – taking the point that people can’t get broadband etc and the Digital Britain plan for 2Mbps broadband for everyone that could be transformational. But wishes it could be faster. Nick (Tweetmeme) if people don’t have broadband, how many people have mobile devices. Mike (Techcrunch) report that 1/3 of the country whether U.S or U.K would never be interested in being online – talks about Facebook, and the difference between an 1815 failed uprising of 40 people and two years later when 60,000 people were involved – the difference was the rise of cheap pamphleteering in between. The people themselves are self-organising around their own issues etc. The journalism aspect of local issues is fading.

4.10pm Frontline journalism with Twitter – Success and Failure in Social Media. A series of quick fire presentations by industry professionals looking at particular examples of news gathering using microblogging and social media.

Hosted by Laura Oliver (Senior Reporter, Journalism.co.uk)

Suq Charman-Anderson (Social Technologist @suw), Mark Jones (Reuters Global Community Editor @markjones), Kevin Anderson (Guardian Blogs Editor @kevglobal), Guy Degen (Frontline Club, Freelance @fieldreports), Moeed Ahmad (Al Jazeera, Head of New Media, @moeed).

Suw Carman-Anderson talking on the Ada Lovelace day movement to blog and post in honour of Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer – inspired by an article which stated women need real-life role models more than men. Was adivsed the aim of 1000 might be too many – 1000 signed up in first seven days and 1900+ eventually posted. Predominantly spread through Twitter including the specific @findingada account. The Facebook page led to Suw signing up for Facebook and discovering it was a lot more closed and less active – names didn’t seem to trasfer into action.

Spread to different areas – a newspaper column, schools, a web comic, video, audio – huge amount of coverage. Most major newspapers covered it e.g. Metro etc.

‘finding ideas which have their own momentum’ – had an idea, tried it, and it took off.

Kevin Anderson:

Went across the U.S for the U.S. election. 3rd trip – each with something interesting. First was webcasting. 2004-blogging. Spent most of career as a field journalist – the problems of leaving stories to find wifi or phone sockets etc. Once couldn’t file a story because phonelines etc were down – in 2008 it’s possible to do highly distributed, highly networked journalism. Using lots of services to see what happens – 3 primary ones – Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. This was real time information. Covering a rolling live event, picked up followers and able to Retweet . Driven 4000 miles in 3.5 weeks alone – would not have been able to do as much, in as much depth without Twitter especially.

Getting introduced to contacts and information on the fly. All into phone rather than laptop. Constantly plugged in. Also pulled sources/contacts into the conversation about the U.S. elections.

Other use was aggregation – RT and flagging them up. What’s the best way of re-aggregating everything that is so distributed – there’s work to be done on a platform level to make use of tools like geo-tagging. But then how do you aggregate the interaction?

Guy Degen:

Independant freelancer using Twitter in the field. What works and doesn’t, and what could be done better.

Using Georgia as an example – opposition protests in April. Twitter means a solitary reporter isn’t alone in the field. In Georgia producing multimedia work for the UN.  Given a couple of hours before going live on German TV – only tool was a Nokia N82 and a 3G network. Monitoring local radio coverage and had reported on Georgia before – but following a Twitter search for Tiblisi was a useful feed to have to monitor developments. Also trying to reach out to people in Tiblisi or followiing events to get in touch with anything of interest. Pics via Twitpic. Also created audio with Utterli – and live-ish video with Qik. 

Protests happening over several locations – Twitter for monitoring other sites. By the end of the week a blog and useful network were starting to emerge. Suggestions for helping reports etc, a digital space, training, and also time to practice.

German shooting media coverage – showed weaknesses – German media weren’t active Twitter users on the scene – one hour after shootings before 1st shot, two hours before getting in touch with the first Tweeter. And the first tweeter said that they had secondhand news, and didn’t have any information for the media, but the media still shone the spotlight on her. They were doing a lot of learning on the run, and probably weren’t ready for doing it with this story. One magazine started a new Twitter account with the German name for a killing spree, and then had to delete it and start again under a more neutral Twitter name.

Mark Jones: Reuters microblogging and social media:

Four stages of Reuters tweeting – cynicism, curiousity/anxiety, engagement, addicition.

Uses: 1. Alternative RSS, 2. Live blogging tool, 3. News monitoring, 4. Socialising public policy events.

Verdict of Reuters Pakistan experts was that you couldn’t understand what was going on in recent events unless you were watching a particular hashtag.

Editor-in-Chief was liveblogging in Davos and beat his own newswire.

Socialising public policy events – public figures coming to Reuters to make a speech and in the old days, they’d be broadcasted.  New way involved @documentally and a Nokia, broadcasting with Qik. Learnt from first event and integrated questions to David Cameron via Tweetdeck – and then David Cameron addressed some later on his own Youtube channel. 3rd event was Robert Zoellick, to do a special social media only session – had 100s of questions come in, and they were the types of questions certain groups might have thought were basic.

Question to Guy – Are people twittering etc in English, or are there language barriers:

Tweetdeck has a translation function as a client. Georgian script wouldn’t come through on some platforms because it was unusual – only gave the chance to communicate with a small group communicating in English.

Question to Guy and Kevin: How do you find these networks ina  breaking news situation, or groups that might not be visible in your language.

Kevin – Liveblogging debates would lead to people coallescing around them, and could then follow them and hashtags related. Also spoke to political loggers in every state he went to. Plugging into existing communities and conversations. Important to find people who are interested in what you;re doing, and not trying to go viral by spamming people. That way people pass it along.  Using Twibble to find people on a map via profile information.

Guy – iPhone and Tweetie – being able to see in terms of proximity who is on Twitter, which would have helped.  In Nigeria etc, Nigeria Pulse is an open source network – it’s not just Twitter, thanks to Identi.ca.

Question: What are your thoughts on Obama’s team changing social media policy after winning:

Winning an election is very different to governing. Still trying to tap into the community created around the campaign to try to put pressure on Congress for new laws etc.

Question: If you had a room full of developers in front of you what would you like built:

Mark – A version of Tweetdeck that sorted wheat from the chaff

Kev – a version of video, and if mobile carriers could be less bastards,

Suw – tools around Twitter are designed for symmetrical networks - if you have a lot of people following, the amount of DM’s become unwieldy.  Once you get asymmetrical you risk broadcasting rather than conversing. It’s about how they work when you are dealing with huge numbers of followers.

Moeed via Skype (connection issues made it slightly difficult to follow)

Gaza conflict was the first which was happening as much online as on the ground, with a battlefield for ideas. The first thing that happened was the helpuswin website to mobilise people sympathising with Israel. Gaza New Media Resistance, pulling together news as facts from different sources and trying to win hearts and minds online. All tagged with #gaza. Launched a feed to make use of advantage of english -speaking reports on the ground, plus Arabic staff there.

AJGaza twitter account, plus training teams and reports on how to use Twitter. Instantly get the initial cynicism – overcame it by convincing the upper management.  Also embedded Twitter stream back onto the website – lots of users didn’t know or care about Twitter and would never sign up – but could get that reporting when it was embedded on the main website on the articles. People cared about the immediacy – became fourth most popular page on the website within days.

Challenges included journalists dropping hashtags because he felt it made the sentence look ugly! Not part of existing work, so getting understanding that it was an important avenue. Also covering Ushahidi crowdsourcing for emergency information to take SMS to report via web, email, SMS over a map. But because communications were knocked out it didn’t really work, so they took the Twitter stream and used it to visualise the data.

5.10pm: Local News: How will social media and microblogging change the way traditional local news provider source and report news?

Hosted by Joanne Jacobs (Social Media Cosultant)

Simon Grice (Founder, Ideas.org @simongrice), Christian Payne (Journalist Ourmaninside.com @docaumentally), Paul Bradshaw (Brimingham City University @paulbradshaw), Joanna Geary (Web Development Editor, Times Online @timesjoanna).

Joanna Geary: Changing local journalism in the same way as all jorunalism – finding the community, want they want, what they need, and reporting back to them. Just a more visible place to find the people journalists should have already been serving.

Christian Payne: What I hope microblogging can do for news – make sure it happens where it matters most – where there’s no free press, where there’s no real news etc. Using the example of Zimbabwe  – 30,000 texts sent 3 times a week with news headlines after short wave broadcasts were blocked by Mugabe. We need to take local news seriously in places that aren’t local to us. And asked everyone to add @swranews to find out more soon.

Paul Bradshaw: Journalists have to do it, not a job for the paperboy online anymore. Opens up opportunities for organisation etc which wasn’t there before. Ieas like flashmob journalism to cover an event.

Simon Grice:  Had the idea to links people to tweets from the nearest physical local paper to them. People really care about the local news that’s important to them. Very local is very important to them.

question : How does anyone make money, not just Twitter?

Paul – partnering with carriers to offer text updates.

Simon – offering local ads.

Christian – micro, micro local.

Joanna – we’ve been selling audiences not content. We need to look at what people need. Maybe it’s how businesses are structured.

Question: Johnstone press etc suffering:

Simon – We need to rethink locality when local papers used to decide what was news and local etc.

Question – Will we have a highly connected, local, but globally ignorant community:

Simon – We actually need to focus more on local news. The act of aggregation, filtering and context. Different media, same skillset, and instead of 1 newspaper etc, there would be 100s of thousands.

Paul – No, Yes. Is the internet bad or good, it’s like life – it’s complicated. Future for local news publishers – they have a great opportunity if they’re canny about it. They need a newsroom without walls,a nd if they don’t do it, others will fill the gap and benefit.

Joanna – social media people can be scary at first – but the big help was meeting people in real life, leading to inviting the scariest person on the website into the newsroom – if people have hung around that long they genuinely care.

Questions – what about IPTV’s effect on local TV?

Simon – same local approach.

Question: How deep into revenue streams do local newspapers have to go?

Joanna: If we knew the answer we’d have made it. Already a growing amount of experimentation in local media. New products and services, new advertising, trying to own a platform. I don’t know what’s going to work.

Christian: Only the creative will survive – and I hope only the creative will survive.

Paul: Digital Britain an allowing organisations to merge or tax breaks is just about propping up an idea of what needs preserving rather than supporting something new. Already happening in America. Mu suspicion is that most publishers will trundle along trying to squeeze something out of what they’ve got, cutting staff, until someone else comes along with something amazing.

Simon – a comapny said they wouldn’t work with us because they said they should have been able to do it themselves.

 6.10pm Closing Comments

Jeff Pulver (Technology Anthropologist, Entrepreneur, Early-Stage Seed Investor @jeffpulver)