This week's news on twitter.
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Twitter Content Incorporated into Factiva
17 MayStreetInsider.com
Visit StreetInsider.com at http://www.streetinsider.com/Press+Releases/Twitter+Content+Incorporated+into+Factiva/7448869.html for the full story. -
The Twitter news map of Britain
16 Maywww.guardian.co.uk
Map: What are the most influential news sites across Britain? See how we consume our news via Bitly
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How to annoy people on Twitter
16 MayBoing Boing
There are 11 Ways You're Annoying On Twitter, reports Buzzfeed's Katie Heaney. And not a single one more! -
Twitter vows to 'protect' users
15 MayFrom BBC News
As it marks its first year operating in the UK, Twitter tells the BBC it is to work more closely with government and other policymakers. -
twitter email
14 MayVentureBeat
Twitter wants to bring the best of your timeline directly to your email inbox.
If it were any more old school, they’d be printing it out and having a child on a vintage bicycle hurl it at your front door.
The email service takes a digest approach. In a post on the company blog, growth and international director Othman Laraki writes that the email summary will feature “the most relevant tweets and stories shared by the people you’re connected to on Twitter.”
These Twitter-in-your-inbox emails will feature 140-character missives, of course, but they’ll also bring you links to articles, pages, and blog posts that were shared a lot on Twitter by the people you follow.
Here’s what it’ll look like:
Also, the emails won’t just feature tweets and linked posted by people you follow; rather, they’ll include content that was deemed interesting by the people you follow, perhaps as determined by retweets, favorites, and other metrics for determining the Twitter popularity of a given piece of content.
Laraki continues to note that the email will feature content similar to what you’d find in the Discover tab, a feature of the “new-new” Twitter overhaul from about six months ago.
The email digest will also denote “who shared each story beneath summaries to help you decide which ones matter most to you,” Laraki continued. “Click any headline to finish reading the story, add your take by tweeting directly from the email, and see related tweets from the people you follow.”
A little bird tells us Twitter’s inbox project is a product of the Summify team, which joined Twitter during an acquisition in January. Since Summify’s mission was all about this kind of culling and curation of web-based information based on the interest level of your social graph, it makes sense that the team would build something similar for Twitter.
Every Twitter user should have access to the new feature within the coming weeks. Laraki wrote that users will be emailed about the digest service soon.
Filed under: social, VentureBeat
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The power of Twitter
13 Maywww.guardian.co.uk
How I became a convert to Twitter
• The teaching and education community on Twitter is truly inspirationalI signed up for Twitter several years ago but struggled to understand the point. What is it? What is it for? What information can I share in 140 characters? I did what millions of other people do: followed famous people, sportsmen, rappers, comedians and actors. Much of the time, it turned out, they didn't have anything that interesting to say and, after a few weeks, I gave up on it.
Then, as the site grew in popularity, I decided to give it another chance. I had about 30 followers, mostly my friends. Every few days I would tweet about what I was doing and share songs, music videos and news articles and now and again I would tweet one of the many musicians I followed. Good fun but not particularly productive.
As time went on I began to take tweeting more seriously, posting more about technology and educational issues. If I saw an interesting news article, I would tweet it. I followed people more relevant to my profession, mainly users tweeting about politics, education and technology. The more I read, the more I retweeted. I started to gain more followers, which encouraged me to tweet more.
I began to understand what Twitter was about and what a fantastic resource it was for a teacher.
In fact, Twitter is the reason I am writing this blog. Back in January, when the education secretary was, it seemed, washing his hands of ICT at BETT, I lost it on Twitter. I have never been a fan of Michael Gove - after all, he seems to be doing everything in his power to destroy the teaching profession as we know it with his badly-thought-through policies and ill-informed rhetoric.
But this was the straw that broke the camel's back. An hour or so after I tweeted my disapproval, though, some good news: @GuardianTeach got in touch and asked me to write a blog based on my tweets. I was hugely excited and spent that evening channelling my fury into a post on the subject. Then, the day after it was published, I received another message on Twitter, this time from Sky News. They wanted me to do a live interview.
All this from a few tweets? Yes - Twitter really is that powerful.
The teaching and education community on Twitter is truly inspirational. I have learnt so much from reading tweets posted by all kinds of people working across the sector. Many of the resources, ideas and technologies I have read about I have been able to use in my classroom and school. In turn, I share my ideas and resources.
Twitter is a fantastic collaborative tool. As teachers, how often do we get to visit other schools? In my experience, very rarely. Twitter has enabled me to collaborate with teachers in schools across the country. Combine this with cloud services such as DropBox and Google Docs and you can create and share resources and ideas quickly and easily.
The site is also a great place for discussion. It is amazing how creative you can be in 140 characters. Teachers, academics, technologists and other experts come together on Twitter to chat and discuss a whole range of topics – you can follow and contribute to these discussions by using hash tags.
When used responsibly Twitter can be incredibly useful to students, too. I held a senior assembly last month focusing on how students could benefit from using the site. It will be interesting to find out how many have started to do so.
There are some downsides. Twitter does have a problem with spam, which won't ruin your enjoyment or detract from the site's usefulness but can be a tad annoying. And every now and again you can be followed by a fake account. These are easy to spot most of the time as they will have posted very few tweets and won't have many followers, if any at all. Generally these accounts are accompanied by a photo of a scantily clad woman and are easily blocked - although they often disappear after a few days if you ignore them. The biggest downside for me, and this is very much a personal opinion, is how addictive I find the site.
If you are on Twitter already, I am sure you can think of many more ways the site could be used as an education resource. And if you haven't signed up yet, give it a go. You won't regret it.
• Matt Britland is head of ICT at Kingston Grammar School. He has been teaching for just over six years and taught in both state and independent schools. Follow him on Twitter @mattbritland.
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Follow On Twitter
13 MayFulham FC
Follow our official Twitter account @FulhamFC for all the latest updates live from White Hart Lane as we take on Spurs in the final game of the season. -
Complain on Twitter for an instant response
13 Maywww.guardian.co.uk
Twitter is becoming so widely used for complaints that companies, from LA Fitness to BT, have Twitter accounts specifically to deal with customer feedback
What is the best way to get your complaint sorted out by a company that is driving you up the wall? A few years ago the answer might have been a string of irate phone calls followed by a letter to the company and perhaps to your favourite newspaper's consumer agony aunt. But, increasingly, it seems that 140 characters are doing the job of 1,000 words.
Companies as diverse as banks, gym chains, travel agencies and large retailers are using Twitter and, to a lesser extent, Facebook, to resolve consumer complaints in hours or even minutes rather than the usual days, weeks, or months.
Twitter has become so widely used for airing grievances that companies such as BT, Halifax and LA Fitness have Twitter accounts specifically to deal with customer feedback, separate from their general public-facing accounts. For example, BT has @BTcare, First Direct has @firstdirecthelp, Halifax has @AskHalifaxBank and La Fitness has @LAFitnessUkHelp.
La Fitness set up its account after an article in the Guardian about the company's poor customer care caused a storm of protest on Twitter. Hundreds of people bombarded its US account as well as a little-used UK account that it had previously used solely to share exercise and diet tips.
It has since has taken on a new public relations agency and set up two separate Twitter accounts, @LAFitnessUK_HQ, which it uses to promote itself, and@LAFitnessUkHelp, which deals directly with people's complaints. The latter is now dealing regularly with customer services issues.
Last week a member of the gym chain, Guy Sumner, took to Twitter to complain about the gym's cancellation policy. He tweeted: "Cancellation policy for @LAfitnessUK_HQ is awful. 15 mins on hold and then it's a month notice from the 1st day of next month … and they won't do anything to help even though it's the 3rd day of the month. Awful customer care."
Just four minutes later a representative of @LAfitnessUKhelp replied: "Hi Guy — can you DM [direct message] me your membership number? Thanks, Alice."
The Observer asked Sumner what happened next. "LA Fitness gave me an email address of someone in their customer services team," he says. "I emailed her everything that had happened and why I wanted to leave. She then replied and cancelled my membership so it now only runs until the end of this month instead of the end of June. Twitter was very useful as I managed to get it all resolved in two working days."
Halifax is another company that uses a separate Twitter username, @AskHalifaxBank, for customer service issues. Earlier this week, one Twitter user, Kelly-Anne Smith, tweeted about the bank, saying:
"Good LORD @askhalifaxbank how can 1 company make SUCH a mess of Isa transfers? I'm on hours of phonecalls, branch visits & still not sorted."
Minutes later @AskHalifaxBank responded. It forwarded her details directly to a member of the customer services team and asked them to contact Smith directly. It ended by saying: "If we can help with anything in future, feel free to tweet."
Halifax hasn't followed up its tweet so far, says Smith, which she is disappointed about. But she says she would use Twitter again to complain.
"I complained about Fitness First, who immediately messaged me, got my number and called to fix the issue straight away. They were great and I tweeted again to say as much," she says. "I've done it several times and on the whole find it a much more effective way of getting help. Having always tried normal routes first but to no avail."
Despite cut-backs, increasing numbers of companies are employing separate teams to deal with complaints via Twitter and Facebook. Nationwide building society now has a dedicated social media team and has just launched a Facebook page to answer questions and promote its products. It is set to launch a customer-facing Twitter account in the next couple of weeks.
"If you have a complaint, at the moment, the best way to contact Nationwide is through the normal channels," says Paul Beadle, social media press officer for the building society. "However, we have realised that those channels need to be expanded."
First Direct has been using the account @FirstDirectHelp, for some time. The bank employs a digital team to monitor it and look after Facebook responses and queries. Its spokeswoman admits Twitter can be a quicker route to getting a complaint resolved.
"We aim to respond to a tweet within an hour and whilst it's difficult to put a figure on it, at the moment it has definitely improved the time to resolution, which was already good," she says.
Most of the companies we spoke to were unwilling to admit publicly that Twitter can be a quicker way for customers to get complaints resolved. But, speaking off the record, one banking industry representative was more candid.
"We find there are two types of Twitter people. Those who use it generally to talk about everything, who might mention a complaint about our brand in passing. We would contact them and direct them to the normal complaints channels," he says.
"Then you get people who are not happy with a response they have had from us and believe by shouting about this on Twitter they will get a personal response. It's true that Twitter can be a way of escalating complaints in this situation. It is basically another version of a newspaper's consumer agony aunt, as on Twitter that complaint could be seen by thousands of people."
The threat of bad publicity via social media certainly seems to have companies on the hop. One reader tells the tale of spending three months trying to get a refund from a well-known travel company using phone calls, emails and letters. In the end he contacted the company via an email address for its social media team.
"I sent them a one-line email stating: 'No tweets yet. But there will be if this matter is not resolved immediately'," he said. "This was sent at 15.30 one afternoon — by 21.00 the same day I had received a full refund, plus a £100 voucher."
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
How To Use Twitter For Business
11 MayVideoJug
Twitter is a great online marketing platform, helping you stay in touch with your target market and with other industries in your field. Jodie Cole from JC Social Media shows you how to use Twitter to boost your business profile.
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Warning on posting Twitter abuse
11 MayFrom BBC News
The government's top legal adviser, Attorney General Dominic Grieve, issues a new warning about writing abusive tweets and Facebook posts.
