Extraordinary counter for social media activity around the world. 270 billion comments on Facebook in the last year. Over 1.5 million hours of video uploaded to YouTube in the last month. 16 million iPhone apps downloaded a day. About 10,000 tweets every second. Fascinating. (HT Big Bible)

Related posts:

1. Facebook infographic An interesting infographic which was posted on mashable.com: [Source:...
2. How do we make sense of the world? A little while ago I was filmed for version...
3. Twitter, the new shovelware | Media Guardian 10 Sep 09 While newspapers may have flocked to get seen on...

Related posts:

1. Facebook infographic An interesting infographic which was posted on mashable.com: [Source:...
2. Twitter, the new shovelware | Media Guardian 10 Sep 09 While newspapers may have flocked to get seen on...
3. Do Twitter and Facebook pose a moral risk? Daily Telegraph, 13 April 2009 Today’s fast-paced media could...

While newspapers may have flocked to get seen on Twitter, researchers have found that most simply use it to promote their own material.

Academics Marcus Messner and Asriel Eford looked at 180 of the top US newspapers and television stations’ Twitter activity and analysed what was produced.

Presenting the findings at the Future of Journalism Conference in Cardiff this morning, Messen said, although 91% had Twitter accounts, only two thirds of those studied actually tweeted and that 98.5% of the hyperlinks tweeted, simply pointed to existing website content.

He said: “We found that more attention needs to be paid to community building. It needs to go beyond shovelware.

“Most content could be found on the website – it’s like when websites started and newspapers just shovelled online what they had in the paper. Twitter needs to be engaged as online social network.”

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/sep/10/twitter-journalism-shovelware-newspapers

via @mediaguardian

Posted via email from Tony Watkins

Related posts:

1. Twitter a risk to health as well as morality? Yikes! Daily Telegraph 16 April 2009 Physiotherapists and Repetitive Strain...
2. Do Twitter and Facebook pose a moral risk? Daily Telegraph, 13 April 2009 Today’s fast-paced media could...
3. Posting threshold One of the reasons why my earlier blog failed...

One of the reasons why my earlier blog failed – probably the most common one – is the threshold for posting to a blog is quite high. It means opening Scribefire, doing some copying and pasting, writing something, categorising it, adding tags and publishing it. The joy of Twitter, I have found in the last three or four weeks, is that the posting threshold is so low. Firefox addons, like the one for tr.im url shortening, make it easy to quickly tweet something out into cyberspace in under a minute. Interestingly, the more I’ve used Twitter, the more I’ve realised the need to be blogging again. Sometimes 140 characters aren’t enough, and there are times when I don’t want to tweet something without comment.

Well, it remains to be seen how motivated I’ll be to work the two in tandem in three or four weeks, after being back at work for a while and with all sorts of things competing for my time. But it does seem to me at the moment that the two approaches make a good combination. And maybe Twitter followers are what’s needed to keep the ongoing motivation.

Related posts:

1. Twitter, the new shovelware | Media Guardian 10 Sep 09 While newspapers may have flocked to get seen on...
2. Twitter a risk to health as well as morality? Yikes! Daily Telegraph 16 April 2009 Physiotherapists and Repetitive Strain...

Daily Telegraph 16 April 2009

Physiotherapists and Repetitive Strain Injury sufferers have warned fans of the website to moderate their time on it – or risk it ruining their health.

The calls come just a few weeks after it was announced that the internet phenomenon had now attracted nearly 1.8 million users.

But RSI experts claim Twitterers needed to know about the potential for future health problems and have urged site bosses to put a warning on screen.

The nature of Twitter means users are encouraged to update their activities more frequently than other sites, like Facebook or MySpace.

And it is thought that the fact Twitter can be fed to from various platforms, like mobile phones, means users could find themselves spending more time on than they might expect.

. . .

Stephen Fisher, Chairman of Trustees of RSI Action, said sufferers of the illness were becoming younger all the time.

He said he anticipated there would soon be an explosion of people coming down with the condition.

He said: “We would be very concerned any extended computer use especially by youngsters because that would cause problems.

“There are two real messages here, if you are going to use it a lot take plenty of rests in between and if you get early symptoms do go and get help as soon as possible.

“I have heard of six or seven-year-old sufferers of RSI.

“The youngsters have got their hand-held gaming machines, phone texting, all of these things can cause major problems.

“I think we are steadily heading towards a bit of an abyss in terms of sufferers of the condition.

“We find that computer use tends to be thought of the cause of major problems and misuse is a significant part of that.”

I think Twitter is a minuscule part of the picture for me, but this article is a good reminder that I do need to watch my typing habits – and duration. I’m not good at breaks.

Related posts:

1. Do Twitter and Facebook pose a moral risk? Daily Telegraph, 13 April 2009 Today’s fast-paced media could...
2. Twitter, the new shovelware | Media Guardian 10 Sep 09 While newspapers may have flocked to get seen on...
3. Posting threshold One of the reasons why my earlier blog failed...

Today’s fast-paced media could be making us indifferent to human suffering and should allow time for us to reflect, according to researchers.

They found that emotions linked to moral sense are slow to respond to news and events and have failed to keep up with the modern world. . . .

Using brain imaging, they found that humans can sort information very quickly and respond in fractions of a second to signs of physical pain in others, but admiration and compassion – two of the social emotions that define humanity – take much longer. . . .

Manuel Castells, a leading sociology expert at USC said: “The study has extraordinary implications for the human perception of events in a digital communication environment.

“Lasting compassion in relationship to psychological suffering requires a level of persistent, emotional attention.”

He said he was most concerned about fast-moving TV or virtual games, adding: “In a media culture in which violence and suffering becomes an endless show, be it in fiction or in infotainment, indifference to the vision of human suffering gradually sets in.”

The introductory sentences sounds like the news media creating scary hype out of this research. But the rate at which the media torrent (to use Todd Gitlin’s phrase) overwhelms us is something which must provoke some moral reflection. It is a worrying thought that images and ideas, perhaps in juxtaposition though without any real connection, may come at us too quickly for us to react at an appropriate level. And if I read the news item correctly, that only needs six to eight seconds.

I have many thoughts from Gitlin in my head at the moment. I’ll try to blog some of them over the next couple of weeks.

Related posts:

1. Twitter a risk to health as well as morality? Yikes! Daily Telegraph 16 April 2009 Physiotherapists and Repetitive Strain...
2. Twitter, the new shovelware | Media Guardian 10 Sep 09 While newspapers may have flocked to get seen on...
3. Facebook infographic An interesting infographic which was posted on mashable.com: [Source:...