Forced to tweet

And actually, if we're being honest here, Twitter doesn't do that much for news sites. Nielsen just released a study that said of the top 21 news sites, 12 of them received a percentage of their traffic from Twitter that was so small it didn't register a percentage. Of the other nine, only the Los Angeles Times had a greater percentage than 1.25% of their traffic from Twitter. Three others made it above 1%, those being the New York Times, New York Post and Huffington Post. That doesn't sound like it's doing much at all, especially considering that 88% of American adults do not use Twitter, and if we're talking active users, the number is probably closer to 95%.

http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/twitter_0

 

Wonder what those numbers were last year or two years ago. In other words, the number will keep increasing. As someone else said, why would you turn away from something that literally takes seconds (depending how much you want to put into it, obviously more time can be spent).

Oh, and how much traffic does the NY Times site get per month? In the millions. So 1% of that really isn't a small number, is it?

I've only been on Twitter for not even a year, and the benefits of it have been amazing, from followers to learning information to making contacts. But I know some dinosaurs people will never be convinced concerning social media.

 

You absolutely need to go with the flow, and the flow for the past couple years is social media. It's like when Google came along. Were you the one lamenting how you can't trust anything on the Internet or the guy who earned the nickname Google? I was the latter.

Problem is, in this case, the higher-ups don't really understand how it all works, they just hear Twitter! Facebook! And force everybody into it without having a discussion about how or why it's a good idea. My boss' email, for instance, referred to how you only have 147 characters in a tweet... And that was before it came out that most of the computers here can't even load the Twitter website properly.

 

I don't get why some writers think that Twitter/Facebook are the bane of their existence. I manage the paper's Facebook account, and it's a great way to see what readers care about. It also helps to get quick news bursts out (something that takes 2 seconds, informing them of breaking news, telling them to go to the website for more information), post multimedia stuff such as photo galleries and video. It's a very, very, very useful tool.

Granted, I'm 24, so I didn't have to do a lot of the manual labor like many of the more senior posters on this board. I get it. I respect you for it, but social media is a great way to interact with readers. Twitter is ideal for breaking news updates, or just tidbits that don't really fit into a story, but are still somewhat newsworthy. It just seems illogical to treat Twitter or Facebook as some kind of back-breaking punishment. It's very low maintenance and the payoff can be great.

 

I don't believe we're running 10.4.11 and I can get to Twitter just fine but I'll check on that. It could also be your browser having the issue (maybe? Hard to know without actually seeing it). We use Firefox. Safari seems to glitch out when we're on Twitter. Either we can't see the feed or it won't post what we type. Firefox handles it just fine.

 

OK, I'll tell you why I refuse to use it. Some friends from college (I'm 23) that I had a falling out with set up a fake account with my name and column picture attached that basically portrays me as a racist. I have asked Twitter to take it down twice and both times it has refused to do so. I'm honestly concerned that down the road, should I apply for a position at another paper, that this account could cost me an opportunity if a potential employer sees it. But there's not a darn thing I can do about it. If the account was on Facebook, all I would have to do is complain to Facebook and they would take it down because it violates their rules. On Twitter, they don't care.

I don't want anything to do with a company that allows someone to potentially harm someone else's life with no penalty. I don't care if using Twitter would give me eternal life, I will never have a personal account, and if I'm forced to get a professional account, it will be as bare-bones as possible.

It's not about the fact that I think Twitter is stupid, it's about the fact that Twitter has pissed me off. Social media can be a great tool, and I would be happy to blog or use Facebook to increase my paper's presence. I just don't want to use Twitter. For me, it's personal, and that's why I would turn away from something that takes seconds.

For the record, I do not think the number will keep increasing. I think it's eventually going to flame out. Maybe not today, maybe not this year, but eventually, I think Twitter will become irrelevant. At least, I hope it does someday.

 

Seriously. Not. A. Big. Deal.

Set up professional account on twitter and fb.

Twitterfeed will automatically feed links from your paper's RSS to twitter and/or fb.

Done.

 

So instead of lamenting your bosses' collective ignorance, take the kernel of truth important to you ('I need to use social media to appease the higher ups'), and turn it into something useful. If you have downtime, hold live chats on Facebook about your beat. If you have time during a game (as in, not covering a high school football game that starts at 8 with a 10:30 deadline), tease your newspaper article via Facebook and Twitter.

The bosses don't care how you use it, just that you do. It's up to you to take their stupid little ideas and make it benefit YOU.

 

So threaten legal action. If they truly are impugning your character, go to court. Talk to a lawyer. Talk to your current employer's lawyer.

Don't just sit there and throw your hands up in the air because a couple IT people on Twitter haven't taken action yet.

And maybe you've been contacting the wrong people at Twitter. Here's their Help Center information on filing "impersonation" rules violations, which your example clearly falls under: http://support.twitter.com/entries/18366

 

I guess I wasn't clear enough from the outset: I'm the guy who's been using it, I'm practically the reason they're forcing this on everyone else in the newsroom. Hell, I got two story leads and some submitted scores through my Twitter account earlier tonight.

What I was worried about initially was the heavy-handedness of forcing this on employees rather than having a meeting, explaining to them how it works and how to use it, THEN handing down the ultimatum. It turns out - today at least - that my fears were unfounded. I heard no complaints from other reporters.

Anyhow I thought it would be better to try and vent here than get in to trouble by doing it at work.

 

Could they have gone about instituting the requirement for reporters to use social media? Absolutely. But then again, when has newspaper management been known for being tactful?

I've stopped worrying about the tone of the message from management and focused on the content. It's the only way to stay sane.

 

I lost my sanity a long time ago.