Tag: Twitter

Social networking and the news

Social Networking and the News

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On Thursday I had a chance to take part in a panel on “Getting Started with Social Media: Lessons from the Front Lines,” sponsored by the Mass Technology Leadership Council.

It was an interesting experience, and I learned a lot from the other panelists — Perry Allison of EONS.com, Pam Johnston of Gather.com and Brian Halligan of HubSpot. The moderator was Debi Kleiman of Communispace in Watertown, whose Fenway Park-theme meeting room was where we held our presentation.

I’ve posted the slideshow that accompanied my talk. Slideshare appeared to choke on embedded links, so I’ve listed them below in case you’d like to check any of them out.

Don’t beam Alex up when it comes to Twitter

Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam mocks Twitter. I sympathize. I ignored it for as long as I could, and jumped in recently only as it became clear that it was morphing into a journalistic tool of sorts.

I have not researched the demographics of Twitter, but I think Beam might have gotten one thing wrong. He begins, “You have heard about Twitter. Maybe. It’s something other people do, mainly younger people.”

My brief experience is actually the opposite — Twitter is social-networking for old farts like me. I know very few students who use it. I recently asked Media Nation Jr. — a certified Facebooking, BlackBerrying, text-messaging fanatic — and he’d never even heard of it.

Maybe Twitter will go away. For the moment, though, it’s something journalists need to understand.

Twitter gathering at WBUR

A handful of folks who follow WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) on Twitter gathered at the station this morning for a tour and conversation about the station’s new-media initiatives. That’s “Morning Edition” anchor Bob Oakes behind the glass. (God help me, the event was dubbed a “Tweet-up.”)

For a Flickr slideshow of the event, click on the photo. More pictures may pop up later in WBUR’s Listener Photo Project. And Gene Koo of the Berkman Center, who shot video with a Flip camera, might upload something to his blog when he gets a chance.

Looks like some of Koo’s video is already available at the ConverStation, a WBUR new-media blog maintained by Ken George.