I love Chron.com. It’s a terrific site. But they’ve created a frustrating Twitter experience that I can’t help but use as an example. The concept is great: create a Twitter account dedicated to covering the incoming hurricane. But each Twitter post is a headline, a truncated sentence and a link to the original story on Chron.com. They’re just copy-pasting stories and press releases. In many of the “tweets,” you get very little information out of the headline and the first few words. Even worse, the important information is cut off…
But the value of Twitter in this circumstance is it delivers self-contained news updates to mobile users who may or may not be able to access to the site — and probably don’t have the time, as many folks are getting ready to evacuate. So this is doing more damage than it’s worth. Lesson: when using different forms of delivery, you need to tailor the content for that particular platform. This is just Twitter shovelware.
No related posts.
As a former direct competitor of Chron.com I was actually unimpressed with their operation.
True, it is #1 in the market, but it should be.
I believe they have at least 20 people working on their website in some manner — not to mention all the immense content from the newspaper itself.
A newspaper in a Top 10 market should have a site as “good” as Chron.com, but I would not rank it above ANY Tribune website in terms of functionality and simple basic reasoning and logic…
I couldn’t agree with you more. News organizations have to be thoughtful about integrating social media and at least have an idea of what they’d like to see as an end result. Speaking of Twitter, lots of backlash today about a newspaper reporter twittering the funeral of a 3-year-old!
Ugh. I can’t STAND Twitter news feeds with truncated sentences. News agencies should realize Twitter needs to be maintained. It’s not a dump for news links. And a better experience is had by all when there’s someone listening and responding on the other side.
That being said, there’s nothing worse than engaging in social media when you don’t like it. Newspapers should seek out reporters who would enjoy community building and give them the Twitter controls.
Great point Monica. The Pioneer Press (Twin Cities) did that by giving their Tech Reporter the keys to the Twitter account during the Republican Convention. My station, WCCO, maintains the @WCCOBreaking twitter feed, and the director of New Media drives it, except when he’s on vacation, and I take over (a reporter) @derushaj.
The best station that I know of when it comes to twittering is WCMH.
Show producers, AEs, reporters and anchors are constantly updating their feeds all during their shifts with little tidbits of whats going on in their market and holding conversations with other twitterers.
The fundamental problem with the suggested approach is that you are asking a news organization to provide information gratis. While that’s ok on a small scale like twitter, with the economic realities facing newspapers and tv stations, twitter isn’t exactly a game changer, and dedicating someone to be that conduit is a complete waste of money with zero ROI.
It’s neat and all, and yeah, I too prefer not getting the RSS hose attached to twitter, but I also don’t rely on twitter for my hurricane news, because the mobile web works just fine.
If you just do a breaking news feed, and only use it for truly breaking news, it’s a relatively small investment of time with a nice payoff in loyalty for potential high/intense users. Our breaking feed has only updated 200 times since February.
it never ceases to amaze me how this industry tried to cut corners and ‘automate’ stuff.
it’s almost like just doing “it” (in this case twitter) somehow outweighs whether or not anyone can actually use / benefit from it.
Loyalty to twitter though. How do you even track conversions?
dcdave,
what you have described as a fundamental problem with twitter would be much more serious if all you used twitter for was sending out headlines. the real benefit of twitter is that it provides you a conduit to your customers in a way you never had. it costs nothing, maybe 30 minutes of someone’s day ($15.00), and the ROI is an immeasurable connection with viewers. After all, people connect with people, not brands. when people at a tv station connect with people in the community in a way never before possible, it is a game changer, in fact, i’d argue that it starts a whole new type of game.
There’s no way I’m going to post “complete” news updates to Twitter. If users aren’t driven to my website, then there’s no point in using it. I make sure the headlines are complete, but if you want the story, you have to click on the link.
lol Webby. You are sooo short sighted and living in 2003.
While not a news organization, the local power company is using it to keep outages up to date.
Link in my name.
Im agree.
“lol Webby. You are sooo short sighted and living in 2003.”
Why is not giving your product away “2003″?
Or are you one of those “Information must be free!” people?
If you give away your product in Twitter, do you expect that grateful users will give you trafic just because they think you’re good people, despite the fact that they needn’t visit your site anymore?
No sweat, Webby…twitter will be ’so 2008′ sooner than they know.
Thats right.