go on, invade my privacy.
The Big Day Out is, for many youths and music fans, an unrivalled day of Australianising – a chance to yell things only Aussies understand loudly and in any direction. The event appeals, primarily, to bronzed, boozed, southern-cross-tattooed teenagers.
And now, Twitter has given this much-maligned but witty bunch the perfect platform for their straight talking.
I promise to update this as #BigDayOut heads around the country…
(Well, I might.)
Posted in Pop Culture
Rupert Murdoch has tried a few things that did not work.
MySpace, News Of The World, taking his own Twitter profile picture.
However, with just one week of awkward tweets under his belt, @RupertMurdoch has already attracted more followers than his most recent online venture, the digital newspaper made for Ipad, the @Daily.
This shows that The Daily is yet to be fully accepted as a strong media force. The paywall restricts anyone but subscribers from reading most full stories. This is a terrible hindrance to the reach of any breaking news or potentially explosive investigative piece their team files.
This closed model cannot work in a world where the ease of sharing information is paramount, where the integration of social media into every nook and cranny of your daily life is becoming commonplace – e.g. I’ve just noticed my local $2 store has a Facebook page! – and where the next generation of readers’ first instinct is to tell someone about what they have just read or watched online.
As @RupertMurdoch enjoys the kudos of his follower numbers growing exponentially, (and, therefore, his influence) I hope he realises it is only occurring because of retweets, because of the free sharing permitted across other news websites that mention his tweets, and across other platforms like texting and within other social networks like Facebook and Tumblr.
Sadly, these are all elements of a strict paywall model that otherwise exciting forays such as The Daily seems committed to ignoring.
Posted in media
Last night’s entire event played out like one of those prolonged montages – a chance to pay our respects and remember the late Australian Music industry.
The Arias are traditionally lame. It’s just the Logies with more tattoos, isn’t it?
I was especially appalled by its use as a vehicle for music acts with new albums coming out. I used to have a crush on Missy Higgins, but she has been completely off the musical radar for about four years so her appearance was largely based on nostalgia and because she has a new album pending. The nostalgia continued with extended Billy Thorpe tributes, The Wiggles reaching the Hall of Fame, and then it got truly bizarre when Delta serenaded every music artist who has ever died – right back to Dame Joan Sutherland!
WHAT WAS THAT?
Dame Joan Sutherland - a posterchild for the forward-thinking ARIAs
Twitter had no presence on the night, and so, with the broadcast failing to lead the conversation, the #Arias feed became an entertaining sideline of barbs and witticisms. It becomes a real problem when tweets taking the piss are undeniably more entertaining than the actual on-air event.
The ARIAs facebook page also failed to make a real dent. It has just 17,000 fans and most comments (85) came for a pic of Altiyan Childs.
How unsurprising that the producers didn’t care about social media. The night has always been a few years behind whatever is cool.
The Telegraph painted an even uglier picture back in October, saying
“The dwindling ARIAs are a microcosm of Australian music as a whole. The glitter has gone. Once, the charismatic superstar power of a key group of stellar artists kept the whole industry revolving – but today, there is a distinct staleness at the top of the charts and a general malaise across the genres, from pop to hip-hop.” Read more…
In the same article, Sarah ‘Superjesus’ McLeod says
“We are definitely in a pickle, it sucks being a musician right now.”
Indeed, the Arias’ national irrelevance is confirmed each year in the following day’s ratings report.
@MJGAL: #ARIAs ratings are in. 369,000 tuned in. (almost half last years audience)
The industry is in a different kind of pickle. Record sales continue to plummet. The labels keep dumping staff…
So, where did it all go wrong?
Anyone have any other ideas?
Posted in music, Social Media
Instagram – the only social network which rewards creativity with more followers – is my latest iPhone app addiction and may soon become essential for news junkies.
Where else could you get a photographic insight into presidential debate just minutes before it went LIVE to air.
Twitter, you say? Ah, but Instagram makes the photos the medium, not the caption, and you can search by tags, places or even GPS.
This enables me to instantly see who else and what else is being posted at a certain location, be in the Vatican City as the pope appears, an earthquake in Indonesia or at a protest in Time Square. Of course, it works locally too as more people join up and tag posts with your favourite cafe, park or club.
As I write this, #OccupyWallStreet has 6612 photos under that tag. Even #occupysydney has 130 (not including those added by me)
It’s also becoming a nice way to tap into the US presidential campaign.
Check out what @CNNSITROOM (Wolf Blitzer’s weekly political – The Situation Room forum on CNN) posted this morning….
There is quality content here, and the feed keeps getting bigger, especially from US TV networks hitching a ride on this new photo-sharing app.
@TodayShow is leading the way starting hashtags for each musical act to join their concert series.
@Starbucks is offering deals if you follow their posted pics.
And despite a few big-name signups, Instagram is still largely under the radar.
Perhaps it’s because the media hasn’t been mentioning it on air. There have been no security breaches, and no epic milestones of users signed up (although it is pushing 7million users – not bad for just 4 employees) and that’d always a good time to join.
You know, before it was popular.
Part of the app’s appeal is that it makes real people the most popular when their skill has wide appeal. Meet the Top 15 Photographers – most of whom are relative nobodies until Instagram.
That said, here are a few familiar names and faces you will know if you sign up…
News
@nbcnews
@npr
@abcworldnews
@decision2012
@Time_magazine
@washingtonpost
Real Time Reporting
@cnnireiport
@breakingnews (AWOL? just a handful of posts)
@CNNPR
TV Shows
@sunriseon7 (of course)
@todayshow (NBC)
@GoodMorningAmerica
@MTV
@NatGeo
@MeetThePress
@BackStory
Tech news/views
@LeoLaporte
@Mashable
@Zuck (Mark Zuckerberg – only 3 photos)
@Jack – creator of Twitter Jack Dorsey
@evanwilliams – entrepreneur behind blogger & twitter
@bizstone – co-founder of twitter
Other Brands
@wikileaks
@YouTube
@RedBull
@Starbucks
@YouTube
@WeatherChannel
@BillboardDotCom
@generalElectric
@SXSW
@NASAgoddard
@VH1
@Burberry
@Gucci
Aussies
@maddogsullo – Eamon Sullivan
@adamboland
Celebs
@SnoopDogg
@jamieoliver
@TonyHawk
@justinbieber
@selenagomez
Posted in Apps, How To, Social Media, Tech
My recent experience of buying a new TV should have delivered me immense satisfaction and loads of testosterone as I made the biggest decision a married male can make on his own.
But somehow, my purchase of a Smart TV” left me feeling much dumber for it.
I work in TV but live most of my life online so in my humble opinion, my new “connected TV” should allow me to do both;
I want to tweet while I watch a show. I want to read my Facebook but keep streaming the news. I want also want to be able to browse the web using a keyboard and trackpad and it doesn’t seem ridiculous to me to expect a TV to be easily able to stream videos on my much smaller-screened Macbook.
But no. For the ten years since plasma TVs came out – and I have been biding my time – the best TV makers have developed is a pretty pixelated digital picture that is thinner and uses less energy.
3D-enabled or not? 50hz or 100hz? Internet-ready? Wifi-connected? What? Why??
Why are we way back here, deciding on small variations of nothingness when even the most sophisticated TV will still only deliver me a dodgy web browsing experience.
(Massive icons, a keypad on the remote with arrows to move the cursor around like a first generation Blackberry. And on most, you enter a URL using numbers like your first NOKIA in 1995!)
After visiting two or three stores, it became obvious that the coolest, $5000 LED-LCD TV won’t yet let me flick between websites, track tweets while I watch a show in the other part of the screen, post on Facebook while I continue watching my favourite show… you know, do what my notebook computer does.
When I went to university and completed my Applied Science in Information Studies, I knew the internet was going to change everything. But that’s all I knew. And the lecturers, who were clouded by years of teaching how information sharing worked the old way,had only just begun accepting essays via email.
TVs are now the librarians of old. The rusty Citroens choking up the info highway, delivering info as they always did and resisting new developments that threaten its mainstay.
It’s no wonder nearly 50% of teens now spend more time on their computers than watching TV. [citation coming]
Looks too me like televisions are an overheated area of glitzy marketing with pretty minimal delivery. There’s lots of jargon, stickers and selling points but I am getting a TV which does little more than the mournful, cumbersome CRT I now have sitting on my living room floor like an orphaned elephant. Yes, a white elephant.
Lucky for me, one clever thing my TV can do is turn itself off if it detects no movement in the room for thirty minutes.
And so far, to Sony’s credit, this has only occurred twice during my favourite show.
——-/——-
UPDATE!!
Unbelievable.
Now that I have finally received the WIFI dongle (which had to be transferred from another store) I find that the Sony WIDGETS work on my TV model and one is for Twitter!
This means I CAN have a twitter feed in the right of screen as the show – form any source – plays out on the left of screen. Joy of joys. And my apologies to Sony.
The interface is limited but hey, it’s all a step toward real social TV. Using Sony’s rather good iPhone app ‘Media Remote’ you can type and navigate the screen as good as one might hope.
Posted in Tech
Just noticed a company that does good work aggregating Tweets around localities has also begun showing the highest trending clubs/bars/cafes.
If they extend the archive and depth of related tweets, this could make for great peer-reviewed dining out.
Imagine a menu-log with up-to-date tweets or Travel Advisor built on honest opinions freely shared by everyday humans.
But, as this picture shows, businesses such as The Winery might develop a distaste of such an idea. All the more reason for it to work.
(And though Travel Advisor reviewers have faced law suits for poor reviews, who is going go to sue a tweep? Surely no one would ever!? But here are some tips to avoiding it…)
Posted in Social Media
Here are the best Twitter tools that I use for tweeting and tracking of the multiple accounts I manage.
At one stage I operated eight accounts at once for various TV shows (@SunriseOn7, @MorningshowOn7, @SundayNightOn7,@7NewsSydney,@7Newsroom,@Vote7News), assorted TV personalities* and my own account (as well as one alter-ego!).
I am happy to concede this is too much Twitter for one person to manage – but man, it does force you to get efficient when you’re tweeting.
@Sunriseon7 now has around 50,000 followers and continues to add a few hundred each week. I aim to make it a destination not only promoting what’s on Sunrise but a useful stream of entertaining content, local and international news as well as breaking news.
To keep on top of breaking news that will be retweeted and gain you many new followers who want to read things first, you need to have the best mobile twitter setup available.
So I tested many, many twitter clients and this is what I have wittled it all down to..
I have put them in order of how much I use them. Aren’t I helpful?
1. TWEETBOT
I am such a fan of this relatively new iPhone Twitter app (client). It’s very intuitive, has many hidden features you are surprised by after a week or so, and nothing is smoother when using multiple accounts. I have paid for about ten twitter apps. This was easily the most worthwhile. It’s highly readable, fast and flexible. Plus, it never crashes.
My past favourites for the iPhone are Osfoora, Twitbit and Twitbird Pro.
2. TWEETDECK
Explaining twitter to the uneducated is best done by showing people filtered feeds, i find. But that’s just the start of how Tweetdeck simplifies the twittersphere.
For browsing of tweets including tracking breaking news and running multiple hashtag feeds, nothing beats the multi-column,multi-account interface of Tweetdeck.
If at all possible, get a separate monitor and leave it running. Alerts show you the latest tweets allowing you to spot replies and retweet at a glance. Plus, it’s got scheduling so you can keep the convo going when you are otherwise having a life.
Lately, I do admit, the app is running awfully slow.
3. BIT.LY shortcuts
Stuff the t.co URL shortener Twitter is trying to force us into using, bit.ly offers traffic analysis, real time updates, desktop alerts and browser shortcuts that saves me about an hour a day. Try the sidebar bookmarklet and the Chrome Extension to see what I mean. (I especially like the hover tool that shows how many clicks on a link just by hovering over any bit.ly link anywhere, and the right-click function “copy and save shortened link to clipboard”). Love it.
See also my blog on explaining all my Chrome (browser) extensions
4. SNAPBIRD
Search as far back as you what in anyone’s timeline. Can be a little touchy sometimes but generally I find what I want.
5. BLACKBIRD PIE
Neatest way to embed a tweet on a website.
6. TWITTERSTATS
Get into this to see just how you have been tweeting, who you retweet the most, at what time of day and how your tweeting has changed over time.
Why is this useful? Well, imagine if you could see whose emails you forward the most or that you now send twice as many emails every day than you used to. Tracking your habits can reveal the changing face of how you are marketing your brand but also how that reflects the audience.
I know that for Sunrise, I have found that I get more response from people in the first half of the day and people are less likely to respond or retweet anything between 12 noon and 5 or 6pm. The stats show that after that, people lighten up again, so i now target those hours.
7. TWEETSTATS
A little less useful for brand tweeters but interesting nonetheless. Spits out nice graphs (for free) including your own twitter word cloud. Intriguing.
8. HOOTSUITE
I have trained several people at Channnel 7 in how to use this web app. It runs through the website which pleases the IT team as nothing suspicious need be installed.
Hootsuite’s best feature has always been scheduling, which it achieves better than anyone else. (Tweetdeck’s scheduling remains buggy and often sends my tweets now not later.)
The layout is disconcerting as it has two navigation bars, columns, tabs within columns and layers. But if you can get past that, it is a timesaver with features like saving your frequent searches e,g, #quake or “breaking news”, multiple users, columns and it offers some good features to drill down on users. Rather amazing what they have done with HTML5.
*Why did I tweet for TV personalities? When some TV stars get started, I ease them into Twitter to avoid any major faux pas going public. Some even email me their comments which I then tweet (quaint!). They are all now independent tweeps, which i suppose makes me an empty nester.
For the record, here are the Twitter iPhone apps I no longer use – but i keep on the phone to watch how they improve with updates.
Have any great tools I haven’t listed?
Please share them below – or tweet me @buckleup
Posted in Social Media, Tech
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