Category blogging

eBay founder Pierre Omidyar dropping Twitter project for local news service

0 comments By Andy Soloman Filed in Uncategorized, blogging, journalism, news, newspapers, online revenue, publishing, twitter Tagged with Business, EBay, editor, Ginx, Hawaii, Honolulu, Howard Weaver, journalism, local news, media, news, Newspaper, Peer News, Pierre Omidyar, publishing, randy Ching, twitter November 19th, 2009 @ 12:48 pm

: Pierre Omidyar, Image via CrunchBase

Billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar has announced that he’s abandoning Ginx, his Twitter client project, in favour of developing a new online local news service in Hawaii where he lives.

Peer News, founded by Omidyar and fellow eBay stalwart Randy Ching in 2008, has advertised via Twitter for an editor and in a blog posting Omidyar said a lot of effort was now going into building the new service.

We have a lot of work to do before our public launch in early 2010. We’re focused on building a really talented team here in Honolulu. For our Ginx users, we’re sorry to let you know that we’ll be shutting down the service at the end of 2009. We learned a lot and greatly appreciate all the interaction and feedback from you over the past year. We’re huge fans of Twitter, so you will still see us online, but we want our developers focused on the new organization and news service.

Omidyar (@pierre on Twitter) said he had been interested in news for some time and that Peer News was founded with the goal of:

empowering citizens and encouraging greater civic participation through media. We believe that a strong democracy requires an engaged society supported by effective news reporting and analysis. And, we believe that this can be done in a profitable, sustainable way.

So if you fancy applying to be the editor based in Honolulu, the details can be found here. Prospective candidates need to offer answers to two key questions impacting news today.

In 100 words or less, when did you first realise that the Web was going to change journalism forever?
In 100 words or less, what advice would you give the news industry?

News veteran Howard Weaver has been advising the Peer News team, and in a blog posting entitled “Looking toward one future for local civic journalism” he said:

The new venture intends to demonstrate that a digitally native, technologically fluent web organisation can profitably serve targeted readers who want sophisticated journalism focused on local civic affairs.

Local and regional newspapers have been hugely impacted in the crisis affecting journalism and changing reader and advertiser habits. Local publications have been closing in their scores as revenues and circulations plummet. The loss of a local newspaper closes a prime avenue for local accountability and democracy. It is a subject of heated debate, and stressed out newspaper executives will be watching Omidyar very closely to see if he can generate profits from online local news.

LinkedIn & Twitter go a “Twitter #In” to enable cross posting

2 comments By Andy Soloman Filed in Uncategorized, blogging, media, partnerships, social media, social networks, twitter Tagged with linkedin, micro blogging, partnerships, Social networking, twitter November 10th, 2009 @ 10:05 am

Professional networking site LinkedIn and micro-blogging service Twitter have joined forces to enable cross posting of LinkedIn status updates or Tweets to ensure they reach the widest possible audience. The service is not yet available to all LinkedIn users (myself included) but is promised to be rolled out over the next few days.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman can be seen talking about “Twitter #In” here.

Allen Blue on the LinkedIn blog says:

The idea is simple: When you set your status on LinkedIn you can now tweet it as well, amplifying it to your followers and real-time search services like Twitter Search and Bing. And when you tweet, you can send that message to your LinkedIn connections as well, from any Twitter service or tool.

On Twitter, LinkedIn users will have the option of making all or selected Tweets available to their professional network. Certainly useful when it comes to filtering out the personal and focussing in on the purely professional personna projected through LinkedIn.

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Nasa launches Tweetup for Space Shuttle liftoff

1 comment By Andy Soloman Filed in Uncategorized, blogging, twitter Tagged with kennedy space center, NASA, space, tweetup, twitter October 15th, 2009 @ 9:32 am

'NASA - NASA Launches Tweetup for Space Shuttle Atlantis Liftoff in Florida' - www_nasa_gov_home_hqnews_2009_oct_HQ_09-240_STS-129_Tweetup_html

US space agency NASA is inviting 100 of its top @nasa followers on Twitter to a two-day Tweetup at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that will culminate in front row seats for the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on 12 November.

While this is NASA’s fifth hosted Tweetup, it is the first that will allow space freaks to get up close and personal with a shuttle and its crew.

“Each event has provided our followers with inside access to NASA personnel, including astronauts. The goal of this particular Tweetup is to share the excitement of a shuttle launch with a new audience,” Michael Cabbage, director of the News Services division at NASA Headquarters in Washington said is a press release.

The first 100 people to register on the web will get the golden ticket, with 50 others to be added to a waiting list. Registration opens at noon EDT on Friday 16 October at http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup

The event will give lucky registrants the chance to tour Kennedy Space Center, view the space shuttle launch and speak with shuttle technicians, engineers, astronauts and managers. There will also be a session to meet the staff behind the tweets on @NASA.

NASA astronaut Mike Massimino has become wildly popular on Twitter where he Tweets under the name @Astro_Mike, and currently counts some 1,084,677 followers. He was the first person to send a Tweet from space when in May this year he posted:

From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!’

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@Guardiantech has 78% of all UK newspaper Twitter followers

0 comments By Andy Soloman Filed in blogging, twitter Tagged with The Guardian, twitter October 7th, 2009 @ 12:38 pm

The @guardiantech Twitter feed now accounts for 78% of all 1,665,202 followers of UK national newspaper Twitter accounts, a blog posting by Malcolm Coles has said.

FireShot capture #012 - 'Rate of growth slows for newspaper Twitter accounts » malcolm coles' - www_malcolmcoles_co_uk_blog_newspaper-twitter-october-2009

Table showing UK newspaper Twitter accounts and number of followers. Table: Malcolm Coles

In the posting also found on the Online Journalism Blog, Coles said that between them national UK newspapers had gained 196,266 new Twitter followers in the month to 1 October, a 13.1% increase compared to 17% achieved the previous month.

Coles is tracking 131 accounts. The full table can be found here.

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Twitter’s $100m to buy time to sort itself out

1 comment By Andy Soloman Filed in Uncategorized, blogging Tagged with blogging, finance, twitter, vietnam September 25th, 2009 @ 10:17 am

The giant of the microblogging world, Twitter, is close to getting $100 million in new capital that will value the fast-growing site at around $1 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Goodness me, at 140 characters max, that works out at a each character being worth a massive $7 million.

Now, I’m a huge fan of Twitter, I think it’s great, although sometimes it can grate. Do a search on the word “Vietnam” and see just how many people start their day with Tweeting “Good morning, Vietnam“. Enough, let’s concentrate on the good. As a tool to filter and quickly digest the things I really want to know, it is hard to beat. But get this, just what will they be doing with the extra $100 million (which was apparently twice as much as was expected) in Twitter Towers?

The new funding, said the WSJ would…