Newspapers and Twitter

[Erica Smith]

Over on my blog, I have a roundup of the number of followers for newspaper that use Twitter. (I've found 174 accounts.)

It should come as no surprise that the New York Times leads with 4,147 followers. There are fewer people following its 17 other accounts. USA Today's Pop Candy blogger comes in second with 1,442 followers. And that's just the Twitter members -- several papers post widgets on their sites where readers can see the Twitter updates without joining Twitter.

Some people argue that Twitter isn't worth the time or effort. Others -- myself included -- believe that reaching out to those 20, 500 or 4,000 followers is worth it, even if you're just pushing RSS feeds. (My favorite, of course, are the papers that actually use Twitter to post breaking news or to follow a story.)

What are your thoughts? Any success or failure stories?

[Brad King]

I'm actually surprised that there are that many newspapers doing it -- although that's a good thing despite the low number of ACTUAL Twitter users (which has more to do with Twitter than with the papers, I suspect).

My question would be this: isn't it better to use Twitter to report new, geo-location types stories than to simply push out what you've done online.

Using a mobile social network simply for marketing is fine, but it doesn't use the medium to its maximum. Telling a Twitter-location story, I think, is a far better way to imagine using the service. If done properly, you could have some amazing stories.

[Erica Smith]

I agree -- I'm not a fan of newspapers (or individuals) that just push their RSS feeds on Twitter. I only follow one that does that (my employer), but when news breaks I try to get in there and post it as quick as possible. The Orlando Sentinel does a good job of posting breaking stories, perhaps my favorite.

Ideally, Twitter could also be used for breaking news tips from readers/users. I don't know that anyone's taking advantage of that yet.

I don't think newspapers (or any other media) should put all of its efforts into Twitter. Sure, it's the most popular microblogging tool. But too often newspapers are afraid to innovate. (Twitter's been around for awhile, and many newsrooms are just starting to ask what it is. They're definitely not thinking about trying to develop or find something that could do even more.) There's no attempt at research and development, which is an immediate death sentence for any other industry; it's finally catching up with ours.

[Brad King]

I absolutely agree that no newspaper -- and maybe any company -- should invest much in emerging technologies; however, Twitter offers some very interesting opportunities for reporting as you mentioned.

I'm not a huge fan of Twitter TV, but that's certainly a model for what could be done. I expect that intrepid newspapers will recruit citizens who use Twitter to post on election night, for instance.

And they will set up a tool for "breaking news" Twitters that can be mapped (all of this should be mapped) and broken down into a coherent stream.

Those people who sign up for the service (the newspaper service) could also be recruited as sources as well.

[Kevin Dugan]

This is a great list Erica. Thanks. Twitter is a great utility and I think newspapers need to do a lot more than simply rebroadcast what they're doing online. My question is, will it be as useful once/if it gets a critical mass of users? Staying in the niches might be the best to keep the volume at a useful level.