City Star Kompany finds the value of twitter

A tale from Manchester City's PR office here but a poignant reminder of how stars can use twitter to turn the spotlight on issues.

City Captain Vincent Kompany joined the social networking site last month to find that his 140 character exploits would also have a surprise impact on a group of brave Indonesian school children.

He tweeted with shock about the condition of a storm-destroyed bridge over the Ciberang River in Banten in the Indonesian region of Lebak, and how each day children risked their lives to cross the 200 meter structure to get to school.

Kompany’s tweet caused waves around the Twitter world, eventually being picked up by Indonesia television, resulting in Mulyadi Jayabaya, Head of the Lebak district closing the bridge and vowing to spend 85,000 EUR to build a new crossing. In the meantime, the Indonesian government is helping the children get to school with an organised ferry service using bamboo rafts.

Source http://www.mcfc.co.uk/News/Club-news/2012/February/Caring-Kompany-helps-improve-lives-via-Twitter

Joey Barton on how twitter helped me tell my side of the story

He might get a lot of criticism over both his football and his tweeting abilities but this morning's Times carries a great piece from QPR captain and soccer wild boy Joey Barton about his use of social media.

In it he says that that the microblogging site Twitter helped him to tell his own tale,one that the journalistic community refused tt write about

It is behind the paywall but here are a couple of extracts:

I started tweeting last May having become increasingly disillusioned with the national media: their portrayal of me, their portrayal of football, their portrayal of the world. It was not completely false, but it was terribly distorted. Not that I was a saint. I had been guilty of various crimes and misdemeanours, mainly because of drunken stupidity. I take responsibility for all that. I have been punished and rightly so.

And he continues

Twitter gave me an opportunity that I could not refuse. After years of interviews, it became clear that no journalist was willing to tell my tale. Anything I said, anything I did, was given an angle to fit in with the bad-boy image. Maybe they would be ridiculed by their peers or editors? I mean, someone would look a fool, wouldn’t they? I was an enigma..

Not sure what his former manager Neil Warnock would make of all this.After all he blamed Barton's social media comments for his recent dismissal.

You can follow Joey at @joey7barton

Over half of our MP's now tweet says survey

Back in December 2008,there were just four MP's on twitter.

That was when Tweetminster was launched-

Now a survey by the site reveals that over half of our MP's are on the microblogging site,330 in total whom you can find on this list.

The site reveals the most followed as being @Ed_Miliband @DMiliband @nick_clegg@williamjhague and perhaps not surprisingly @tom_watson

Moving up the list of popularity as being the most mentioned is again probably not surprisingly @LouiseMensch

Now how to get the rest on

#e=mc2-What would Einstein have tweeted

His theory of relativity that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light is under attack but what would Einstein have made of twitter?



Well,these people have asked if the Twitter of today had been available to Albert Einstein in his lifetime, this might be what his timeline would have looked like.

“Working on this whole mass & energy thing. Seems promising. #e=mc2” - 1905, often referred to as Einstein’s “Wonderful Year,” saw the birth of his Special Theory of Relativity and it’s application to mass and energy. The now-famous equation, e=mc2, is introduced. Four of his papers were published in the leading German physics journal Annalen der Physik.

“I am passionately curious about why the sky is blue. I’ve decided to find out. #CriticalOpalescence” – In 1910, while still working at the patent office, Einstein wrote a paper on critical opalescence and scattering light by individual molecules in the atmosphere, describing why the sky is blue.

“Divorcing your wife to marry your cousin: #awkward” – Though they separated in 1914, Einstein and his wife Mileva officially divorced in February of 1919. Einstein married his cousin, Elsa Einstein Loewenthal, who had nursed him through an extended illness the previous year, four months later.

“Solar eclipse today TOTALLY proved my Theory of Relativity. #BooYa!” - On May 29, just before his marriage to Elsa Einstein Loewenthal, a solar eclipse proved that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was correct.

“Doing a lecture tour of the US. Think I’ll hang out here if this Hitler thing doesn’t cool off. #Princeton” - In 1930, Einstein began lecturing at various American universities. In 1933, in response Hitler’s ascension to Chancellor of Germany, Einstein settled in Princeton, New Jersey.

“@FDRoosevelt You should really look into atomic energy. @HerrHitler is all over it. #war – In 1939, Einstein warned President Roosevelt that Germany might build an atomic bomb and urged him to begin nuclear research. As a result, the Manhattan Project was born.

“Officially a US citizen now. #DualCitizenship #Switzerland” – 1940 saw Einstein become an American citizen, though he also retained his Swiss citizenship.
“US just bombed #Japan. I’d say the #war is over.” – Albert Einstein abandoned his belief in pacifism to urge Roosevelt to research nuclear energy, and was publicly regretful following the disastrous bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“Just appointed chairman of the #ECAS. Next on my list: #disarmament” – The Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, formed by Einstein and Leo Szilard in 1946, was dedicated to warning the world of the dangers associated with misuse of atomic energy and promoting world peace. Half of the members had been directly involved with the Manhattan Project.

“Honored that @AbbaEban presented an offer for #IsraeliPresidency. #DeeplyMoved” – Upon the death of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, the post was offered to Albert Einstein. He declined by saying, “I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it.”

Huhne puts a c instead of a d

We have all made out mistakes in social media,that slip of the finger,pressing send at the wrong time.

Now energy secretary Chris Huhne accidentlt revealed to political journalist Patrick Hennessey that he did not want to be the source of a planted story.

According to the Independent,he appeared to accidentally post a private message to his almost 8,000 followers on Twitter.

Mr Huhne wrote: "From someone else fine but I do not want my fingerprints on the story. C"

and adds that

Last night there was lively speculation on what the story might be that Mr Huhne did not want his "fingerprints" on. It appeared the message was intended for the political editor of The Sunday Telegraph, Patrick Hennessy, who tweeted five minutes later: "Got to find another Lib Dem source for my splash now *massive cough*". A "splash" is journalistic slang for a front-page story.

Twitter,Knox and the pressure for instant

More on the reaction to the Amanda Knox verdict and what journalistic profession can learn.

A very thoughtful insight from Charlie Beckett,head of POLIS at LSE.

He writes that as various outlets including Sky, the Guardian and most notoriously, the Daily Mail launched into the ‘guilty’ narrative before they realised that she had been found guilty of slander, but cleared of the much more serious murder charge,what does this tell us about the current state of journalism and particularly twitter

It confirms the fact that Twitter is a brilliant device for instant revelations, but that a Tweet is only as good as the Tweeter. In this case most of the micro-bloggers who falsely announced Knox’s guilt were miles away from the actual story and were simply re-tweeting the mistakes made by the professional journalists camped out in the medieval Umbrian town where the case was actually happening. The social media savvy hacks in Perugia were adding to the confusion with the same error in 140 characters. Luckily, Twitter also sorts these things out pretty quickly and within minutes the (revised) truth was out.

But this is the crux and this is what the profession has to operate under

The pressure to be instantly live is intense. Scoops are now measured in micro-seconds as editors seek desperately to become the public’s ‘go to’ channel or platform for instant history. If you are a second behind the competition then Google will have sent the searchers to a rival’s website.

Lib Dems accuse Manchester City Council of Twitter bias

This press release has just dropped into my inbox.

I have copied it in full.You can decide what to make of it's accusations

Chorlton Lib Dem Councillor Victor Chamberlain has accused Manchester’s Labour Council of showing inappropriate and blatant party political bias through their use of the official twitter account (@ManCityCouncil).

The 'official' account follows 168 people; which include six Labour City Councillors, the account for Manchester Labour (@ManchesterRose) and Manchester’s Labour MEP, Arlene McCarthy. The official account does not follow a single Liberal Democrat Councillor or politician despite many having twitter accounts.

Last year Manchester’s Liberal Democrat opposition criticised the Labour Council for hiring a £38k Twitter tsar while axing 1500 jobs.

Councillor Chamberlain said: “The City Council is legally required to be neutral and non-partisan; however their ‘public face’ on twitter has been anything but. The Council’s resources should be used to benefit all Mancunians and not to promote the Labour Party. ”

“I have suggested the Council either adopt a policy of not following any politicians or follow all Manchester Councillors and elected representatives on twitter.

The perils of twitter and non quiet zones on the train.

An excellent read from Guido which had me laughing out loud and a warning to those of us who like to engage in loud conversations on the train.

A big round of applause to the Liberal Democrat activist Dan Falchikov who spent an entire train journey mouthing off about how he stirred up a rumour that had been picked up by the press about the closure of Kingston Hospital. Richmond MP Susan Kramer quickly got a campaign up but little did Mr Falchikov realise he was infact sitting opposite the Mirror’s Kevin Maguire, who was commuting in from his million pound suburban mansion:

Did Marx predict twitter?

An interesting argument from Chris Gillow who asks

Does the Trafigura/Carter-Ruck case vindicate Marx? ie
Marx argued that technical change was a powerful force behind social change, so technology influenced power relations between people:

Would Trafigura have got away with it without the new media?

In the pre-web age, they might well have gotten away with trying to suppress free speech. But thanks to technical change - the emergence of the web and twitter - their efforts backfired spectacularly and inadvertently led to one of the most effective viral marketing campaigns of recent years.

Paul Waugh makes it to twitter

Paul Waugh claims that he is the first Westminster Lobby blogger to be on twitter on his blog today.

Finally succumbing to the media after weighing up the arguments the Evening Standard blogger concludes that

Twitter can be a fantastic way of connecting people with what we're reporting and blogging on here at Westminster.