Mr.
Matt
Spangler

Twitter Japan Introduces Payment Model

From Media magazine in Asia:

“Twitter Japan has further moved to differentiate itself from its global counterpart through the introduction of a tiered payment model that will charge audiences to view tweets from premium Twitter accounts.

Speaking at the Mobidec2009 conference earlier this week, Kenichi Sugi, COO of DG Mobile – a subsidiary of Japanese Twitter partner Digital Garage – announced that Twitter would introduce paid subscription options starting in January that will allow account holders to charge audiences who want to look at their tweets and access links to their external websites.”

With the pending Bing/WSJ deal, Murdoch’s continued staunch positioning and the newly rumored conglomerate of magazine publishers coming together to create content protection against Apple, 2010 will undoubtably be a huge year for the shift to more paid content online.

Broadly, I think having the option for users to monetize their channels makes sense and it will be curious to see if Twitter in the US rolls out a similar type of model.

Tracy on Twitter

Twitter is made for comedians…This is gonna be good.  I predict fastest million followers ever.

via fimoculous (and pretty much everyone else on my Tumblr feed)

BREAKING: Tracy Morgan joined Twitter. Mission Accomplished.

Droppin Science on the “Black People on Twitter” theory

Dig back into this issue if you haven’t heard it discussed before.  This response is great and is a perfect example of the importance of looking deeper before jumping to conclusions.

via nickdouglas:

So my friend had a theory on why minorities seem to dominate Twitter trend search results: “These people don’t have real Twitter friends. So they all respond to trending topics. And that’s the game, that’s how they use Twitter.” (He wasn’t saying this was “doing it wrong,” just different from what he was used to seeing.)

Some smart people reblogged it. Then a smart person going by “Shai” blew all the other smart people out of the water in a comment:

–––

Dear Micah,

lol I always thought ‘we’ were using it the right way.

Anyway we definitely have friends and followers and vibrant communities on twitter. Ive even met a few (albeit insulated) black people that weren’t aware that white geeky people use twitter and could not fathom what they use it for. So the theory that minorities use trending topics because they don’t have contacts from more traditional means (followers, etc.,) is uninformed.

In any case, trending topic games are simply a way to open the conversation for the purposes of greater amusement, which I have always assumed to be the only reasonable use for Twitter.

If I were to play Af Am Studies professor I might submit that the inane trending topics provide a platform for shit talking and humorous signifying (see: jive talking, the dozens) on a broader less personal cyber scale. Its a party line. A giggle. An ‘oh snap” accompanied by exaggerated hand movements, and why not. Its 140 characters, common sense would suggest that something so insignificant should not, could not possibly be used for too much of anything else, or atleast nothing much more important. But it would be ridiculous to suggest that even this much thought goes into the phenomenon.

The self selection may appear skewed, but from my experience if the personalities im following are using the trending topics and I would like to participate in the game then I will too, and then once it hits the sidebar there are even more people participating that I can interact with. I dont have any data but I would guess that the average minority twitter user has a disproportionately high number of minorities in their own timelines which would perpetuate the perception that ‘everyone’ is doing it this way.

…Actually now that I think of it my Twitterverse is totally ethnic, with the only non minorities being rappers, djs, and the writers of a few blogs I like.

So I can see how you, Mr. Micah, could be so confused about whats going on outside of your twitterverse. Its the nature of how we craft these environments to suit our core comforts and fine tune our twitter experiences.
Twitter’s addition of the trending topics bar has simply shattered our insulated perception of how everyone uses this thing.

P.S. Sorry i’m late…c.p. time :)

New Journalism in Iran

via soupsoup (via winstonwolfe)

An anonymous reader on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, The Daily Dish

“Reading your blog over the past 30 something hours makes me realize why the mainstream media is really finished. I mean, this point has finally hit home. You are blogging real time events, with descriptions, evaluation, analysis, and eye witness accounts. You are gathering information from a myriad of sources and putting it out there for a cohesive message. CNN, NY Times, et al are merely running an article about “thousands” of protesters. Its a canned message from just a few stale sources. The revolution is definitely on in Iran. And its on in American journalism too.”

Its hard not to agree with this, especially when looking at the recent coverage of the Iran election.  I’ve been amazed at the amount of Tumblr images flying across my follow dashboard and while there are certainly media people in that group, there are no “journalists”.  Each is reposting a story and spreading the word based on an emotional reaction to an image they see.  They see batons and they see blood.  Most don’t even know what or why the fighting is about, who is the bloodied and what the reason they were bloodied was. Still, when you sit on the side of the fence where you are aghast at the violence and shocked at the images…you push it around, you Twitter in opposition and you call the traditional outlets dead and idiotic.

Arguably if you boiled everything else down to its most basic elements, you might find that this is the reason that the New York Times is struggling and fear mongers like Fox News seem to report good earnings.  Fast and sexy schlock sells.  The New York Times probably has stuck to their guns a bit too long, keep expensive passionate writers who take their time to cover stories, and fact check and make sure they have it right before publishing it. As everyone knows…time costs money…and good journalism takes time.

Don’t we need a mix of “new” and “old”?  One of the things that made Obama’s speech to the middle east recently so powerful was that we now have a President who doesn’t make rash decisions.  He is reasoned. He looks at both sides. He looks at the facts. He is open minded and ready for dialogue…and then he makes a sound, distinct decision.

Taking this hot topic off the table, and supplanting it with another, perhaps the Duke Lacrosse case.  Would the fact that the kids were totally cleared get the same amount of Twitters,  Tumblrs and blog postings after the two month trial where they discovered the girl was lying?  In the Iran case, I think its pretty clear that there is stuff here that needs to be shown now…but you see the folly if you apply this thought process to every story and the entire idea of journalism.

One of my favorite quotes ever was by Michael Irvin, after he was effectively tried in the media for an allegation of cocaine, and then when he was totally cleared weeks later with absolutely no connection he yelled at reporters, “Print the truth as big as you did the lie!”

As with most arguments about “new” online journalism it starts to look shaky when you analyze it in relation to a general reporting methodology. The big challenge is the reporting vs the opinion. New journalism, citizen journalism of this nature, must be leveraged by traditional media outlets to gather the facts, add them to the pool of consideration and analysis to help us make better decisions.  If we have the information lets use it.  I think the Times knows this and they are pushing their New Media team to open up the channels for shared open source information.

Then the intelligent reasoned individuals with a sense of both sides of the argument - arguably in my vision, the Pulitzer winning writers and opinion leaders at the New York Times - can look at all sides and help shape the reactions of our nation.

And then if terror, and lies and deception are the fact…then we act.