140Char

There’s a reason i don’t blog about quantum physics or existentialism. It’s because I don’t know enough about them to offer anything worthwhile, and I’d probably end up looking stupid.

Somehow that doesn’t seem to apply to The Daily Mail when they decide to write an inane piece about Phillip Schofield’s tweets from the Fat Duck.

Apparently the ‘journalist’ in question found it tiresome to listen to the details and see the pictures of Schofield, a British TV presenter, enjoying a £130 meal at the restaurant run by highly experimental TV chef Heston Blummenthal.

Obviously, as pointed out pretty quickly in the comments, they could have unfollowed him, rather than deciding to repeat everything in great detail, and use all of the photos he’d taken without credit or attribution – as Martin Belam pointed out.

There’s no shortage of interesting topics they could have covered instead, and no shortage of digitally-aware people who can also write a decent article. So why waste time and effort doing something so badly when the online newspapers desperately need to find ways to ensure their survival?

A bit of a microblogging round-up.

There’s been a bit of discussion about the Hitwise findings released by Heather Dougherty, that claim Twitter traffic surpassed Digg for the first time. OK, when I say discussion, it’s the normal coincidence of Techcrunch and ReadWriteWeb both jumping to analyse the same topic when it appears. (Having almost identical headlines didn’t help!).

And in the UK, it’s grown by 974% in 12 months! It’s now the 291st most-viewed website in the UK – with fastest growth among 35-44 year olds.
Apparently European CEO’s might not get Twitter, but it’s users do – as shown by the amazing growth of Twestival,  which has grown from a group of London-based Twitter users getting together, along with some gatherings in places like Toronto and Vancouver. The next one, on February 12, will now have 100+ cities around the world hosting events in aid of charity:water. And the first release of London tickets sold out in a couple of hours.

Stephen Fry is a British celebrity and icon, and to celebrate 50,000 following @stephenfry he’s set quite a challenge, which has definitely hit UK productivity today! (Via thatcanadiangirl). Entry is by submitting the best tweet using 50 letter Ls.

And speaking about celebs, one of the most mainstream TV hosts in the UK, Phillip Schofield, is not just on Twitter (@schofe), but verified himself by referring to Twitter live on the mid-morning chat show This Morning. (via PaidContent: UK). While I wouldn’t credit the host of This Morning and Dancing on Ice as the sole tipping point for Twitter becoming mainstream, it’s another big push of added momentum.