Filed under: Internet, Media | Tags: bill thompson, budget, charles arthuer, darren waters, g20, guardian, Journalism, justin williams, shane richmond, Social media, telegraph, twitter, twitterbitching, twitterfail, twitterfall, website
Ah, sweet proof that even the best of us are prone to the occasional FAIL, troll and snarkfest. First up in the Twitterbitching ring -
Charles Arthur v …the entire Telegraph web team
The Guardian was rubbing its liberal hands with glee after the Telegraph’s Budget homepage was spammed by Twitter-users merrily taking advantage of the #budget tag to appear on the site’s Twitterfall feed. The Guardian then went on to list its favourite spammers before the feed was eventually taken down….
….and then put back up. Rumour has it that the Telegraph now has monkeys (in fact, quite possibly my City colleagues who are currently working there) frantically filtering the tweets before they’re actually allowed onto the live feed – unsubstantiated as yet. Certainly the feed appears to have slowed down, which has not gone unnoticed by Guardian Tech editor Charles Arthur, who tweeted:
50 tweets with #budget for the past hour. I could do this faster than the Telegraph. I could *automate* this better than them. Guys, give up
You can read the response from Telegraph assistant web editor Justin Williams below. Miaow! The sniping played itself out over Twitter until BBC tech heavyweights Darren Waters and Bill Thompson eventually weighed in on Charles’ side. Rather sweetly, Telegraph communities editor Shane Richmond tweets, “It’s a snapshot of the conversation that’s going on around the Budget. Why is that so hard to figure out?” Because it’s “undirected and pointless” says Charles.
There is an interesting underlying debate here – Shane, Justin and co. seem to be entirely in favour of unfiltered conversation. Except when they have monkeys filtering it (hm). Charles and the Guardian crew lean towards using social media for journalistic purposes, but favouring ‘authoratative’ voices. Have a look at their G20 Twitterfall-style feed (actually using Scribblelive) by way of example. Rather than allowing all and sundry through with a #G20 tag, the Guardian only showed tweets from its own journalists and bloggers. Elitism, or a sensible way to avoid spam?
The Twitter fight, read from the bottom up.
UPDATE: A quick glance back at the Budget homepage shows the Twitterfall feed has been pulled off again. You can see a screenshot on the Guardian’s article, however. Ding ding ding!
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[...] Telegraph had to briefly remove its budget twitterfall box after people deliberately tweeted #budget plus swear words to make them appear on the Telegraph site. They filter out rude words [...]
Pingback by That Shane Richmond / Charles Arthur Twackdown in full … » malcolm coles April 22, 2009 @ 5:32 pm