Kevin Gilmartin

In June I found myself with the rather fantastic job of doing the live tweeting for media140 at their first Social Media event in Scotland.

Now, if I’m being totally honest, it was the first time I’d live-blogged an event on site. I’d done it before off the back of TV coverage – tweeting the Budget and the election from the Planet Holyrood account – and I frequently join in with the discussion/debate/caustic ranting on the #bbcqt hashtag when Question Time is on.

But this was different; this was a live, specialist event, where the speakers were talking right in front of me and I had to get their message out on Twitter quickly and efficiently.

Mark Jennings, the man who organised the event, tells me I did a grand job of that. That is nice to hear. I have since been asked by others to lay down some thoughts on the subject. Flattering. I love flattery; so here goes:

1. Practice

With enough notice of an event you can easily put in some practice.

Get on YouTube and search for the speakers. Familiarise yourself with their style of speaking and write up some dummy tweets while you’re watching them. I had to blog Trey Pennington, Pat Kane, and Steve Berry – all three very different speakers with different styles.

If you can’t find your keynote speakers on YT then politics is a great proving ground.

Politicians love to talk, they go on and on and are usually very deliberate in their delivery, much like event speakers are, always coming to a pertinent point. Fire up some old PMQ videos, or Andrew Marr on the iPlayer, or those ludicrous leaders’ debates from back in May, and get your tweet on.

2. Every character counts

If you’re live blogging on something like WordPress or Drupal or Joomla! then space may not be much of an issue, but if you’re live tweeting then every character counts.

Your speaker might take a while to make a point, and I can guarantee you he’ll do it in more than 140 characters! You need to be able to process the relevant parts of his/her speech as it’s delivered and shrink them down to fit in a tweet. Come on, how many of you actually click on Twitlonger links? I thought so.

In reality you don’t have the full 140 characters to play with; once you add in the speaker’s Twitter handle and the event hashtag (and those are essential) you’re down a fair chunk of tweet real estate. Once I’d included @treypennington and #media140 during Trey’s talk I was left with 116 characters per tweet to get Trey’s point across.

Don’t be afraid of summarising – it’s not optional, it’s essential, and confidence is key to it. You have to do it quickly, post the tweet and start listening for the next one. You don’t have time to 2nd guess yourself.

3. The right tools for the job

Equipment wise, you only need 2 things to do a good live tweeting job: a laptop and a cameraphone.

Do the tweeting from the laptop with its big screen and keyboard. Everyone has their favourite Twitter client but, for me, when you’re live-tweeting, the easiest one has to be the classic Twitter web interface – it’s neat and compact and rarely freezes up.

Yes, Tweetdeck and Hootsuite have multiple columns so you can follow @ replies, but during the talks you’re going to be too busy concentrating on covering the speeches to reply back.

On the laptop have a notepad window open with the event tag and each speaker’s name and Twitter handle typed in so you can quickly copy and paste when you need them.

The camera phone is where you’ll add some colour to the timeline. Between talks, or at the social afterwards, snap some pics, and instantly share them on the phone’s Twitter client. Your choice of photo-sharing service is down to you, but I like Twitgoo as it retains the background theme of the Twitter account you’re posting from.

The points above are just a few thoughts I put down on my process before and during the event in June. I’m no expert, but to my mind live tweeting is about engagement. It’s about bringing a little of the ambience and the atmosphere of your event to those who couldn’t be there, and enhancing it for those who could.

Your audience is in the room as well as out in the world. Try adding a little personality to your tweeting coverage too; if something’s funny then say so, if you think sharing a link to an external site (like How To Tie a Bandana) will add flavour to the moment then do it! You’re a tweeter, not a robot.

So to all three of my readers, I apologise.  My life has been a riot for the last few weeks.

So I haven’t posted here for a while – mad busy with the MA, the kids and a few other bits and pieces. Not least of which was the return of Planet Holyrood, the Scottish politics comment/blog/stuff site I run with Alaster Phillips. It’s a bit sexy, I suggest you check it out and vote in our poll – tell us who you plan to vote for on May 6th.

Also, I’m about to start working on a new online project; domain names are bought, collaborators are signed up (hopefully with more to follow) and the webspace will be puchased just as soon as I can scrape £80 (+VAT and set up fee) together.  It’s a bit exciting, and has a lot of potential if we can do it properly. I’m not saying too much about it right now – but it’s going to be delicious!

Anyway, I was just checking in here as I’ve not blogged in ages. Next time I post I shall hopefully be able reveal  a bit more about the upcoming project.

It’s all a bit quiet at the moment, isn’t it? This is my first post in nearly a month which is shameful, I know, but I just haven’t really spotted anything worth mentioning or opining over.

Google Buzz was a flash in the pan, and from what I’ve seen hasn’t had much of an uptake – maybe regular Gmail users will use it a lot, but I certainly don’t check it much. Google Wave has levelled off too.

The problem with Wave was that it was complicated if you weren’t a techie, but it did seem fairly active for a while. But now even the most active waves in my inbox have died off.

Twitter is still going strong, and Facebook is doing its thing quite happily, but I wonder if perhaps we’ve reached a plateau? Twitter and Facebook are massively successful, probably too successful and well established for any other app to come along and seriously compete. They don’t have to worry about each other; Twitter is broadcasty, for us to shout to, at and with the world whereas Facebook is more for close-knit community networking and one-to-one discussion.

If Twitter is the Microsoft of social networking, and Facebook is the Apple, then stuff like Wave, Buzz and the others are the little customised versions of Linux that you get on netbooks.

It could be that things have quieted lately because we’re seeing a calm before the storm. With Twitter due to release a load of new features on to the web interface maybe other developers are holding back. Maybe.

I think it’s more likely, though, that they’re not even trying to compete in the first place. The main reason for the success of Twitter and Facebook is that when it comes to it, they’re just downright good fun! That’s a market they’ve got cornered – so if you’re trying to develop a new social network then it better be the most fun you can have online without hearing the word “HEADSHOT!” or you might as well not even bother.

The future of social media, I reckon, lies in targetted development. For smaller developers to survive in a world dominated by Twitter and Facebook they need to start developing custom SM apps and tools for businesses and organisations and trade sectors. Like a scaled-down LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is 3 years older than Facebook, it’s still going strong with 60 million users worldwide (I was among the first million. Just sayin’) and it has never felt threatened by, or the need to compete with, Facebook. Why? Because it is aimed purely at professionals seeking work and contacts.

So before the Social Media Sci-Fi Apocalypse, I think we’ll see a lot of break-away developers trying to narrow their focus and cater to a niche. I joked about it in the post I just linked to, but when it comes to competing with Facebook and Twitter resistence really is futile.

Addendum: On an unrelated note….if you can please tune in to BBC Radio Scotland at 0900 tomorrow (Monday 7th March). There will be a documentary on about prostate cancer. It was written and produced by a friend of mine, John Thomson, who is himself a recovered prostate cancer patient. It promises to be informative and entertaining. If you can’t tune in tomorrow, check it on the iPlayer later.

God…so here’s another one. Google Buzz.
The short version is that it’s a nice mix of Twitter’s open broadcast and Facebook’s closer, intimate, networking all wrapped up in a lovely lovely Gmail platform. With a pink ribbon tied around it.

The long version is, frankly, much less intersting than the short and far too depressing to contemplate. Social Media is just getting silly.

As it is I look after 2 (sometimes 3) Twitter accounts, several email inboxes, a reasonably active Google Wave account – cos, y’know, I don’t require spoonfeeding to figure these things out – and a Facebook page. I do not want another social media tool making a grand entrance and getting a huge uptake.

But I’ll check it out anyway. Yup. Because I’m a drone – part of the social media collective. That rather sad self-admission led me to a revelation, dear reader; a vision, if you will. I now believe that social media will bring about the end of man kind as we know it.

Drastic? Certainly. Dramatic? No doubt. Possible? Possibly…read on.

Marshall McLuhan taked about a vast electronic information loop to which we will one day all be connected and interdepenent. It has been argued that this loop is the internet, and yes, that argument was probably right on the money. But social media is Internet 2.0, isn’t it. Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Digg, Buzz and all these things that keep us talking and connected to one another all day every day, I believe that these are the real loop that McLuhan foresaw.

We’re all connected to that loop with PCs, mobiles and laptops right now – but think of this…

…what about 20, maybe 30 years from now when ultra-powerful computers are implanted in our brains? Our social media interfaces will be wetware applications! We’ll be one step closer to a collective online consciousness. I’m only half joking!

Ever read The Forever War? Man will become Man! Or worse, we’ll become The BORG!! Christ! We’re being assimilated by the internet! Resistence is futile!

Science fiction is full of collective or hive minds, all sharing information and living in harmony. I’ve already mentioned Haldeman’s Man, and Star Trek’s Borg (they sound Swedish) and those are terminal examples. But there are others.

Alasdair Reynolds’ Conjoiners are perhaps a more realistic vision of our future. They retain individuality but their mental capacity and abilities are augmented by neural implants that can be used for information sharing and communication. They are, in effect, a living, breathing social network.

Of course the Conjoiners were feared and persecuted by the rest of humanity and after losing a viscious war they were forced to flee across the stars – that would never happen to us, the Blogging, Facebooking, Buzzing, Digging Twitterati would it?

Wouldn’t it? Think of it! The Social Media Collective vs the Twitter’s For Twats Brigade. I reckon we’d win. Our social media would keep us connected to the troops on the ground and give us  a massive strategic advantage. Once victorious we could run the non-conformists off the planet and start a whole new hive mind utopia right here on planet Earth.

Hmm. That’s probably how the Borg got started.

Ah well. It’s coming and it’s time to start picking sides. Tweet you on the front lines! Qaplah!

I sometimes wonder if I’m cut out for this. The media, I mean. Journalism. I wonder if I’m hard enough for it.

I heard the story today about a wee Haitian orphan baby – 3 months old – who needs life saving surgery on her skull, but the US Military won’t let her leave the country BECAUSE SHE HAS NO PAPERS! The US fucking Military!

This kid is a miracle. Pulled from the rubble, parents missing presumed dead. And now some pencil pushing twat with a national God-complex doesn’t let her get life saving surgery because all records of her existence were destroyed in the worst natural disaster her country has ever known.

Last I heard – and I’m not writing this from a computer so I can’t easily check – the Haitian government were going to step in to get her the surgery. That whole story makes me sad, and angry too. And I don’t know that I can keep that in check.

And then there’s the Campbell/Marr thing.

Honestly. Call me cynical but are we really expected to believe that the most famous spin doctor in the employ of the most successful (if controversial) Prime Minister in generations decides, on an unremarkable February morning, to show the world his human side in an improptu fit of emotion? In an election year? Just as Blair is confirmed as having a major role in the upcoming Labour election campaign? Pull the other one Al; you’re a director, not an actor.

But that’s not what pissed me off about this story. It was the treatment of it by tabloid telly that got under my skin.

I switched on the 24 hour news tonight once the kids went to sleep and the Campbell/Marr story was running, but the focus switched to Gordon Brown. They started talking about how Brown got emotional during interviews when talking about baby Jennifer, his daughter who died at just 11 days old.

They treated it like some sort of big scandal. They used phrases like “it has emerged that Gordon Brown got tearful” – it has EMERGED that he got tearful…well, you know what? I’d be pretty God damned worried if he didn’t!

That kind of newsmaking disgusts me. And I’m not the only one. If that had been the BBC I’d be complaining as a license payer. As it happens BBC News 24 ran the Campbell/Marr story too – no mention of Gordon Brown. Rightly so. That’s why I happily pay my license fee.

The story was on Sky News. Its report was sleazy, and it’s why when new people ask what I’m studying I hesitate a bit before answering.

Now you might want to argue that it’s publicity, an effort to humanise and engender feeling for Gordon Brown before an election. Nah.

Sky News is owned by Rupert Murdoch and he’s thrown his support behind the Conservatives this year. It was a cheap shot, pure and simple. Low-brow tabloid journalism at its sensationalist worst.

I don’t know if I could write stuff like that and have it sit right with me. I sometimes wonder if I’m cut out for this.

Yup.

What? Oh, right, well it’s latin actually. It means “To assert no falsehood and to hide no truth” and it’s the motto of the Caledonian Mercury where I’ve been doing some work experience for uni.

It’s been an interesting experience. Although I didn’t get a by-line, as all their writing is done by hand-picked staffers and freelances, I did get some valuable insight into the way an online operation is run and the part that Social Media has to play in it. My job this week mainly revolved around tweeting links to new stories as they went live, sticking them on the Facebook page – yes, a newspaper with a Facebook page; that’s why it’s going to work! – and sorting out the following of followers and all that jazz.

On Thursday I emailed Stewart a few thoughts on how they could be using Google Wave too, so we’ll see what comes of that, if anything. I think it’s a good idea and it’s in keeping with the paper’s mission statement and ideals. I’m not going to say what it is right now but if they go for it and it works you can expect a post entitled “That was my idea!”

So what did I learn? Well, it’s taken a few days of calming my brain down (yesterday’s MAMJ News Day did NOT help with that!) to figure it all out. I knew it was worthwhile; I just wasn’t sure why. I am now.

What last week gave me was more valuable than a few paragraphs and a by-line. In Stewart Kirkpatrick I made a cracking contact – a wee gesture at the end of the week, while a bit cheesy, should make sure he remembers me – but even that was not the most worthwhile part.

I saw a new venture launch, successfully, from an almost 100% online and social media platform.

The Caledonian Mercury promoted itself completely on Twitter and AllMediaScotland, and on that first day it was almost viral. Word spread, links were tweeted and retweeted, and before the end of day 1 the site had smashed its projected traffic numbers for the year.

So what last week gave me was hope. If the CalMerc works (and if anyone is qualified to make it work it’s Stewart) then others will follow. Journalists – proper journos, not school kids with camera phones – will be in demand again. As long as they have the skills for online work, that is.

Journalism as an industry needs the internet. It needs social media. And it needs journalists who can ply their trade effectively across the online and SM worlds.

I think the Mercury will work. I can’t really say why, but I got the feeling I was in at the start of something big, in more ways than one.

I’ve been inspired with a renewed belief in the career I’ve chosen. I’ve been inspired to get Planet Holyrood’s blogs back up and running (this weekend – watch for it.)

New year, new vigour, new me. Maybe not that last one.

Maybe it’ll all be ok.

Just a quick update as I have shamefully and willfully neglected my blog over the last week.

To quote someone I overheard at work I’m rushing about like “a pure dafty” this week (I think he spelled ‘pure’ with a ‘y’).

Trying to balance work experience at the Caledonian Mercury (see Newsnight Scotland from Monday 25th Jan) with actual paid work fixing broadband in a call center between 6pm and 10pm leaves me no time for anything recreational. Real job is in Coatbridge, the Caley Merc is in Edinburgh, and I do not have a car!

At the end of this week I’ll post about my time there, but for now I need to concentrate on surviving it!

That is the question. Whether ’tis easier in the mind to just use email, to suffer the slings and arrows crashes and error messages of outrageous fortune Outlook Express*, or take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them?

*other email clients are available and just as buggy if not more so.

Yup, the KG blog goes all cultured on you and hits you with a bit of Hamlet.

You see, I’ve been using Google Wave for a few weeks now and I think I’ve got my head round it. Google have created what I believe could become the next evolution of email and are making Waves in a sea of email troubles.

The basic functions are the same as email.

You type up a message, attach files if required, and send it to the recipient. Where Wave augments this basic funtionality is its collaborative capabilities.

If the recipient of the message I just sent is online then they can respond instantly, edit something I’ve already written, add to it, add participants to the wave, add pictures, embed a video…and who knows what else as time goes on?

Google Wave is still in public Beta, and as such it’s a wee bit tricky for the less web-savvy user. The search parameters are horrible. I happened upon them by accident and have since pointed a few well experienced web users in their direction.

The application as a whole, while built around the Web 2.0, does seem to be a bit resource hungry. There’s almost no point trying to use it on my Acer Aspire One running Linux, and if I’ve got a few Firefox tabs plus Photoshop open on the windows desktop then Wave can slow to a frustrating crawl.

But that aside, it’s a good idea with the potential to transform working practise for anyone who needs to collaborate with others in their work.

Now, I’m a technology geek and I have the horrible habit of assuming that if you’re reading my blog, or following me on Twitter, then you’re geek too. But maybe you’re not a geek. And just maybe you have no idea what Google Wave actually is.

I’m not going to tell you.

All I’m going to say is that it’s a collaborative editing tool, and the best description I’ve heard was on this chap’s blog where he describes it as “multiplayer Word.” You can also take a look at a post by Cristiana Theodoli on how it could shape the newsrooms of the future.

What I’ve been using it for has, by and large, been just a bit of experimentation with the capabilities. I used it to get some comments and ideas from sci-fi fans about a feature I was writing for uni, I used it to let my colleagues proof read said feature and I used it to make contact with a bunch of other journalism students in another university.

That last one is interesting. My lot are the MAMJs (MA Multimedia Journalism) and the other lot are the MAOJs (MA Online Journalism). We’re from Glasgow, they’re from Birmingham. There’s been some good chat back and forth between a few of us, but it seems to be only 2 or 3 from each side who are actually participating.

I’ve also tried setting up a LinkedIn directory wave – we’ll see where that goes.

Ultimately I’m quite excited about where Google Wave could go. If you read Cristiana’s post, linked to above, and consider along with that that Sky News have installed TweetDeck on every journalist’s PC and told them to get tweeting, then the newsroom of the future is just around the corner.

I can’t stress enough how important it is for anyone studying journalism, or anyone employed in journalism who wants to stay there for the forseeable future, to either get their heads around Wave or go gentle in to that good night (Dylan Thomas? My, I’m on literary form today!).

I have some invites left. Get in touch via Twitter if you want one.

That’s not actually true. In fact it’s a scurrilous lie; as far as I’m aware the guys at Last.fm and the guys at Spotify have no manner of relationship at all.

What is true, however, is that I love both Last.fm AND Spotify but I have to say that I think I’d love each one a little less if not for the other.

The thing I found annoying about Last.fm was that it would play a really great track and then it’s pretty much gone forever. Sure, I can mark it as a ‘loved’ track but I use the free version  and can’t play my Loved Library. So even if I’ve taken a note of the track and the artist it’s going to be a while before I can chase it up and check out more stuff by the same guys. Some of my associates asked why I don’t just download it; I might as well out myself right now as a conscientious objector to the whole music/movie/torrent/limewire downloading thing. I just don’t do it.

So that’s where Spotify comes in. I had a bit of a problem getting started with Spotify at first, because all the music I wanted to listen to was already on my hard drive having been ripped from my CD collection.

My wife is much more in to newer music than I am, so she’d get a lot more use out of Spotify than I did. I’m firmly stuck in 90′s grunge and metal from my early 20s – it’s not that I don’t like new stuff, I’ve just never had the time or an opportunity to discover it. Until now.

Now I’m a new music MACHINE, I TELLS THEE!!

As I struggle with my continuing mission to re-arrange my bookshelves I’m discovering new musical delights at the same time.

With Last.fm running on my XBox 360 I can listen to tag or genre stations as I work. If a particular band or artist grabs me then I have Spotify running on the PC. I simply type in the name and go back to the search results later on. It’s a beautiful thing; both services complement each other so well.

But as is the way of things in our materialistic digital world, I doubt it’s a marriage that’ll last.

Spotify is still in technically Beta – you can only get signed up to the free version if you have a Beta invite. Technically.

I have to wonder how long it’s going to be before the people at Spotify realise that if they incorporate a Last.fm kind of functionality into their client then they can provide a single, enhanced, service to people who are currently using two rival services together. Not long, I’ll wager.

Would that kill off Last.fm? Who’s to say? I for one hope not – it’s a good service and I’ve discovered a few new things through it. If they’re smart they’ll adapt to the threats from opposition and come out of the other side better for it. I do think that Last.fm can, and deserves to, survive.

If it does come to the crunch, though, and legal free music services start battling it out then, as they are at the moment, the smart money is on Spotify.

Ever since I started using Twitter regularly I’ve said that it really comes into its own when used from a mobile device. Backing this is the factlet that Twitter has started putting a wee message up that says: “Twitter is more fun and useful when you access it from your mobile phone. Set up your phone up now!”

I think that’s true. I will tweet on things that happen around me, or as part of a discussion on a backchannel like BBC Question Time (#bbcqt) – I can’t be sitting in front of a desktop or have my laptop running all the time, so a hand-held tweeting device is a must for me. I find that when I’m at my desktop I’m doing something that requires all my monitor real estate like something in Photoshop, or something else has my full concentration.

I think I’ve got my Twittering technique down to a good flow. I rarely, if ever, post from the web, preferring to tweet from UberTwitter on my Blackberry or Twibble on my N95. That’s not to say that programs like TweetDeck and the Twitter.com interface don’t have their place.  I still use Twitter.com in my toolset, I just think that it’s been surpassed for actual tweeting and that isn’t the best use of it anymore.

What I do use the Twitter.com site for is a link repository.

Often I’ll be sitting on the train or in the library going through the various tweets from those I follow. I reckon about 90%* of the people I follow are journalists, journalism students or social media professionals; so they tweet a lot of really interesting links to articles, blog posts and videos.

The problem is that on my teeny wee mobile screen I can often have trouble reading a blog post or online newspaper article – sometimes the page won’t load at all on the mobile browser and this is regularly the case when videos are embedded.

So, if I’m sitting in the library and reckon that the link is worth a revisit from a fully functional browser I’ll favourite the tweet and come back to it from my desktop. I log in to Twitter.com, view my faves and start browsing in a new tab.

I’m at the point now where unless it’s a blog post that I know for 100% certain will load ok on my Blackberry I just fave the tweet with the link and re-visit it from home. Experience has shown that by doing it this way I will get more links marked for review in the limited time I have whilst out and about than I would if I tried to view them all as I find them.

As a result, once the kids are asleep I can sit down to perhaps five or six articles and blogs on the subject of journalism or social media or whatever is in the news at that time. For me that’s best practice with Twitter. I don’t often tweet pics and when I do it’s usually something daft just for a giggle.

Mobile tweeting should an every day part of any journalist’s routine. We’ve seen the evidence that it works and has an impact on the news. The Hudson River plane crash was probably the first publicly acknowleged example of Twitter in the news. James Buck’s arrest in Egypt is another, although less well known to the non-tweeting masses.

So go on, sort your mobile out for some on-the-go microblogging. You’re a Tweeter, and a Tweeter tweets. Get out there.

*the other 10%, I’ll admit, are mostly celebrities related to science fiction. And Stephen Fry.