:: Future of Journalism

Benedict XVI due to open a Twitter account

Italy's Corriere della Sera was betting on @BenedictusPPXVI

Guardian :: It does not have quite the same ring as a papal bull, but Catholics looking to stay in touch with the Holy Father are about to get acquainted with the papal tweet. Fourteen centuries after popes started using papal bull missives to communicate with the flock, Benedict XVI is due to open a Twitter account, a Vatican official has announced.

Continue to read Tom Kington, www.guardian.co.uk

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says users shouldn't spend hours tweeting

Guardian :: A co-founder of Twitter has told its 500 million users not to spend hours on the micro-blogging site because it is "unhealthy". Biz Stone, Twitter's creative director, said users should visit the site for information but leave once they had found it. At a business conference in Montreal, Canada, Stone, 37, said that using Twitter for hours at a time "sounds unhealthy".

Continue to read David Batty, www.guardian.co.uk

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter data guide investment decisions: "How tweet it is"

Wall Street Journal :: Some investors think they have found a way to profit from the most ephemeral of data sources: the Twitterverse. More than a dozen hedge funds and high-frequency traders now make trades guided, in part, by data from social-media sources, such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, according to Gnip, a Boulder, Colo.-based company that provides social-media data to the funds. Topsy Labs, a social-media analytics firm in San Francisco, released a white paper in January that claimed to show how its analysis of tweets would have predicted moves in the price of Netflix stock last fall.

Continue to read Joe Light, online.wsj.com

Rob Beschizza, Boing Boing: We don't own the news we break

Boing Boing :: MG Siegler complains that the Wall Street Journal failed to credit him when covering a story he earlier scooped at TechCrunch: Apple Acquires Chomp. The WSJ's omission is rude, for sure. How hard is it to begin a sentence with "First reported by MG Siegler at TechCrunch," or somesuch? But is it really necessary?

Continue to read Rob Beschizza, boingboing.net

Twitter partners with Google's Russian search rival

San Jose Mercury News :: Twitter and Russian search engine Yandex have agreed a partnership that will allow Yandex to show new tweets in its search results almost instantly, as Twitter becomes an increasingly important source of real-time information. Twitter will give Yandex access to its so-called firehose of all public tweets, the two companies said on Tuesday, in an agreement similar to the one the social short-messaging site has with Microsoft's search engine, Bing.

Continue to read Georgina Prodhan, www.mercurynews.com

Study: #Memstorm, Twitter as a community-driven breaking news reporting tool

changingnewsroom.wordpress.com :: Carrie Brown's study offers an in-depth exploration of how citizens and journalists in Memphis, Tennessee havecome to utilize Twitter and the hashtag #Memstorm as a collaborative breaking news reporting toolwhen severe weather hits the region. It examines some of the factors that motivate public participationand looks at how this new, always-on community-driven communication system what scholar AlfredHermida has called "ambient journalism" - is affecting local journalism, building on previous theory andresearch revealing how social media has helped make the news process increasingly participatory. Usinginterviews, a survey, participant observation and textual analysis, this study shows how Memphians arebuilding community online and playing a role in sharing information vital to public health and welfare.

Continue to read Carrie Brown, University of Memphis, Abstract: www.scribd.com

Study: #Memstorm, Twitter as a community-driven breaking news reporting tool

changingnewsroom.wordpress.com :: Carrie Brown's study offers an in-depth exploration of how citizens and journalists in Memphis, Tennessee havecome to utilize Twitter and the hashtag #Memstorm as a collaborative breaking news reporting toolwhen severe weather hits the region. It examines some of the factors that motivate public participationand looks at how this new, always-on community-driven communication system what scholar AlfredHermida has called "ambient journalism" - is affecting local journalism, building on previous theory andresearch revealing how social media has helped make the news process increasingly participatory. Usinginterviews, a survey, participant observation and textual analysis, this study shows how Memphians arebuilding community online and playing a role in sharing information vital to public health and welfare.

Continue to read Carrie Brown, University of Memphis, Abstract: www.scribd.com

Is Twitter a newspaper, or is it the phone company? A question with legal implications

GigaOM :: Is Twitter a publisher and distributor of information like a newspaper, or is it just a dumb pipe like a telephone network? Lawyers in Australia seem to believe that a case could be made that Twitter is a publisher, like a newspaper, and therefore it can be sued for defamation as a result of a single tweet. That may be a stretch.

Continue to read Mathew Ingram, gigaom.com

French preschoolers post messages to Twitter

AFP | on Google :: French preschoolers near Bordeaux are posting daily updates to the micro-blogging website Twitter, despite not yet knowing how to read or write. Since the start of the school year, the 29 schoolchildren have posted short messages of 140 characters or less about a daily activity to their joint Twitter feed, which has 89 followers, most of them parents.

We gathered snow to see how it turns into water, reads one tweet from the five-year-old students of the Albert-Camus kindergarten in Talence, a commune in southwestern France.

Continue to read www.google.com

Could Twitter predict the stock market?

Reuters :: When Richard Peterson first started meeting with hedge funds about eight years ago to pitch using social media to predict market movement, investment managers looked at him as if he had just arrived from outer space. Back then, what he was pitching them seemed pretty insane. Peterson, managing director of Santa Monica-based MarketPsych, said that social media can be mined for data about what people are thinking and feeling. And that, in turn, could translate into powerful investment ideas.

Continue to read Chris Taylor, in.reuters.com