Twitter

Doonesbury is riffing on Twitter this week. Good stuff.

If you're Twittering every few seconds, how on earth are you taking coherent game notes?

 

I'm not "live tweeting" yet, but I can speak to live blogging, and I think it actually helps me organize my thoughts. You're basically doing a running chronicle of big plays or key moments, so you're kind of outlining the story as you go.

 

I agree on the displeasure with auto feeds. CBSauctions may be the worst I've seen at that. We have several here, none of them auto feeds: mine is ajcsportseditor; Jeff Schultz has one, as does Tony Barnhart (MrCFB); for sports business news, see Kristi Swartz. I know the Orlando Sentinel has about 10 sports accounts, from regular news (may be an auto feed) for Central Florida football.

 

I think Twitter has some real promise, but you have to have some personality or give some value. The auto feeds are boring.

 

Ahem ... Tweeting.

And your Tweets are your notes.

 

Big 12 Sports has a running one up and going during the games, but I think they throw way too much on to it.

Question I've always had: Why is it Tweeting instead of Twittering? I mean, the service is Twitter, not Tweeter. Any halp?

 

Messages are called tweets

 

I'm still relatively new to this -- not to new technology, just our specific Twitter account -- but I'm still having a hard time figuring out why having our columnists autofeed onto there every hour when people aren't here, or too busy, to do it personally is a bad thing.

We get a sweep every hour, and any columnists who have written something new are picked up. We still post there beyond that, and I'm looking at it several times a day to make sure everything is as it should be.

It's working for us, and I'm not currently seeing a downside.

 

Look at anamariecox (former Wonkette). She posts little musings, quirky things and usually post a link but usually has something funny or snarky to say when she does it.

And her back-and-forth with the Huffington Post blogger give you a sense of their personality.

So I look for her tweets, but my eyes glaze over on typical auto-generated posts that have some generic headline and a link.

And if someone shares a link "Hey, here's a story about the guy going over Niagara Falls naked" it has a different community sharing feel than an AP auto link to the same story.

But I'm pretty new to it all.

 

STL Post-Dispatch has a Twitter feed on its Cardinals page where reporters can talk with fans. Also, IndyStar tweeted/twittered the Indy 500 with lap-by-lap stuff, which looked pretty sweet.

 

Good point about the talking with fans/followers. For the right personality, that could work really well to engage the readers.

 

There are Twictionaries out there.

http://twictionary.pbwiki.com/
http://twittonary.com/

I think I have finally cemented my status as dork. I'll go do penance now.