Tag Archives: twitter

Why Twitter is the quickest way from Q to A – The Observer

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    John Naughton

    "If you're not into network theory, then the difference between six and four may not seem very significant. But if you're interested in how news spreads around a network then it's dynamite. Next to traditional, few-to-many broadcasting, Twitter is the fastest way to spread news and information. In fact, it's the nearest thing the web has to wildfire. And the key mechanism that enables that is retweeting. The Korean researchers have found that this single facility generally enables any given message to reach a much bigger audience than those who are followers of the original tweet. So the moral for those politicians out there who are thinking about the next election is: forget Facebook, think Twitter."

    External link

    Del.ici.us tags: twitter history future journalism

Why Twitter Is the Future of News – Technology Review

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    Christopher Mims comments on a study by Kwak et al. at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, who performed a multi-part analysis of Twitter:

    "They conclude that it's a surprisingly interconnected network and an effective way to filter quality information.

    [...]

    On the MSN messenger network of 180 million users, for example, the median degree of separtaion is 6. On Twitter, Kwak et al. hypothesized that because only 22.1% of links are reciprocal (that is, I follow you, and you follow me as well) the number of degrees separating users would be longer. In fact, the average path length on Twitter is 4.12.

    What's more, because 94% of the users on Twitter are fewer than five degrees of separation from one another, it's likely that the distance between any random Joe or Jane and say, Bill Gates, is even shorter on Twitter than in real life.

    [...]

    Owing to the short path length between any two users, news travels fast in the tweet-o-sphere."

    External link

    Del.ici.us tags: twitter analysis

TV election debate II: New findings – NPCU Blog

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    "Linguamatics, a leader in enterprise text mining, working in collaboration with the NPCU, announced a new view on the instant reactions made on Twitter about party leaders during the second UK televised election debate. For those who followed the instant polls after the debate last week, these results will be of great interest."

    External link

    Del.ici.us tags: npcu twitter tvdebates election2010 research

Election 2010: Will it be the Sun or Twitter wot won it? – The Guardian

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    Roy Greenslade:

    "Some of Clegg's most fervent supporters can be found on Twitter. From midway through the first TV leaders' debate, and with increasing intensity thereafter, he has dominated election tweets. As the press started to turn on Clegg, tweeters even dared to use irony, so often a counterproductive tactic, to show their support for him. The running joke, on #Nickcleggsfault, in which he was blamed for a series of supposed sins, has been hugely popular. Example: "Nick Clegg lived in the same town as a seriously ill man and never visited him, though he knows he has a spare kidney."

    Just as importantly, tweeters used the social networking site to lampoon the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Sun. Hundreds of tweets on Friday pointed to a website that features scores of imaginary anti-Clegg Mail headlines: Will Clegg cheat the middle class? Has Clegg given hard-working families cancer? Is Nick Clegg destroying Britain's farmers?"

    External link

    Del.ici.us tags: roygreenslade guardian twitter nickclegg satire election2010

Twitter says it’s all Nick Clegg’s fault in ironic swipe at newspapers – guardian.co.uk

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    Twitter says it’s all Nick Clegg’s fault in ironic swipe at newspapers | Technology | guardian.co.uk

    Charles Arthur on #nickcleggsfault:

    "In particular the Daily Mail's use of an eight-year-old article written by Clegg for the Guardian, in which he criticises attitudes to Germany which seem stuck in the 1950s – and fail to recognise how it has reinvented itself since – for its front-page splash outraged many Twitter commentators, who rapidly pointed to the Mail's history of seeking to deny refuge to Jews fleeing the Nazis, and to Lord Rothermere's congratulatory telegram to Hitler for the Czech invasion in 1939.

    The rapid responses on Twitter indicate just how much shorter the feedback loop now is for the mainstream media and electors – and how dangerous it can be to attack politicians who are riding a wave of popularity."

    Del.ici.us tags: election2010 twitter charlesarthur newspapers dailymail

Congress to archive every tweet ever posted publicly – BBC News

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    Congress to archive every tweet ever posted publicly – BBC News

    Twitter's general counsel, Alex MacGillivray:

    ""This project however is not about us, it is about our users and the fact they use the service to chronicle these amazing events. President Obama actually tweeted after he was elected. That is a big deal and it's something he did.

    "It is not something we imagined when we were forming the service," Mr MacGillivray told BBC News."

    "As a historian you will be able to look back at that and understand what people felt. The same with the healthcare legislation that recently passed. You can look back and say what where people talking about and have those views changed over time? We think that will be really useful.""

    This will be a fantastic resource for journalism and communication scholars.

    Del.ici.us tags: twitter archive web history

Social media and the leadership debates – BBC News

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    Social media and the leadership debates – BBC News

    Rory Cellan-Jones:

    "All of this activity on social networks, on blogs and on the mainstream media will be analysed by practitioners of a new discipline called sentiment analysis.

    They believe that by feeding vast amounts of data into computers they can analyse the emotions of those people watching and commenting on an event, and say something useful about public opinion.

    The technology is already employed to help financial traders make decisions about the impact of sentiment on the markets.

    The three television debates will be a useful testing ground for the claims of this new science."

    (Link has great overview of Twitter and Facebook activity during campaign.)

    Del.ici.us tags: eleciton2010 socialmedia socialnetworking twitter facebook sentiment rorycellanjones

#debill v #ge2010 – BBC: dot.Rory

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    #debill v #ge2010 – BBC: dot.Rory

    "In 24 hours, the hashtag #debill appeared 14,400 times on Twitter, as compared to 1,470 tweets using the election hashtag #ge2010. So, does that mean the mainstream media, with its concentration on campaign news, is ignoring the really big story? Or is this a particularly well-focussed campaign by a relatively small group of activists?"

    Del.ici.us tags: bbc debill ge2010 twitter campaign news hashtag rorycellanjones