Twitterfail

April 20, 2009 9:04 AM

The Daily Telegraph learns how not to use a twitterfall on their website.
posted by chuckdarwin (15 comments total)

Soon...
posted by Burhanistan at 9:08 AM on April 20

Isn't this more of a "tweeterfail" than a "twitterfail"? I think news sites that want to incorporate interactive elements just have to be willing to ride out the morons who think it's hi-larious to engage in this kind of crap. I remember several years ago when the LA Times engaged in an interesting experiment in wikiable editorials. Predictably enough, the whole thing got bogged down with porn links and suchlike; but I think they should have persevered. In the end, the Beavis and Butthead crowd gets bored (after all, they don't really want to hang around on the LA Times site or the Daily Telegraph site) and then you find out if there really is something worthwhile in this. Once people get over such things being a novelty the signal-to-noise ratio will go back into some kind of balance.
posted by yoink at 9:19 AM on April 20

yoink, I wish I could agree, but watching anonymous Wikipedia edits as they happen, where they happen makes me think otherwise.

Instead of allowing anything with #budget, they could have some intern filter through things with a quick yes/no option. It'd be a bloody boring job, but after a while there would be more approving than denying tweets.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:24 AM on April 20

Yes, moderation is the key with this, and all things.
posted by Mister_A at 9:28 AM on April 20

Obligatory.
posted by djgh at 9:29 AM on April 20

This was largely the fault of MetaFilter's own Jofus, who seemed to kickstart it all by wondering if he could get the phrase "big shitty balls" on the Telegraph's page. It spiral upwards or downwards, depending on your perspective, from there.
posted by flashboy at 9:44 AM on April 20 [2 favorites]

Predictably enough, the whole thing got bogged down with porn links and suchlike; but I think they should have persevered.

With stuff like this, that the bad behavior is so predictable is an argument not for perseverance but for forethought and planning. Totally unmoderated and unfiltered streams of publicly-authored/-editable info is not something you endorse if you're in the business of presenting filtered and moderated info. It's not rocket science; this is basic stuff.

Put someone on a queue and approve the interesting/appropriate tweets only. Drop an authentication barrier on your wiki. Give yourself the tools to actually identify and highlight the good and mitigate the crap, from day one, if you want to harness a reactive, self-aware firehose like this.
posted by cortex at 9:56 AM on April 20

Looking at the screenshots, there's even a reply to a "chuckdarw1n," who seems to have been one of the pioneers in this little meme, and one of the first to use the word "twitterfail" in connection.

Hey chuckdarwin, you aren't by any chance related to that "chuckdarw1n" guy, are you?
posted by grouse at 10:08 AM on April 20

Moderation is a reasonable tactic, to be sure. But as soon as you know that a moderator is at play (or at work) that takes away something from the very immediacy and transparency that the web technologies allow. Part of the interest in providing a very public forum is to see if it isn't possible to treat it as nearly as possible as a truly "public" sphere; something like a "speaker's corner" of a public park. Such a discursive space is actually enhanced by a certain amount of "noise"--the presence of the loons and the yobs is, at least, a guarantee that what you are hearing reflects the full range of public opinion.

If every news site on the web had a "twitterfall" space (or numerous twitterfall spaces devoted to different issues/areas etc.) then the amount of noise would diminish instantly. It's only the high visibility of the early adopters that draws large numbers of people in to 'perform.'
posted by yoink at 10:15 AM on April 20

Not only a lame post, but a self link of sorts.
posted by Glarg at 10:16 AM on April 20

If every news site on the web had a "twitterfall" space (or numerous twitterfall spaces devoted to different issues/areas etc.) then the amount of noise would diminish instantly.

Welcome to the internet! Things aren't as fun here as you think.
posted by TypographicalError at 10:19 AM on April 20

With stuff like this, that the bad behavior is so predictable is an argument not for perseverance but for forethought and planning. Totally unmoderated and unfiltered streams of publicly-authored/-editable info is not something you endorse if you're in the business of presenting filtered and moderated info.

Actually, I think the idea would have been sound in slightly different circumstances; the Telegraph has also been experimenting with using football team-specific Twitterfalls on match days, I remember Dagbladet in Norway used embedded (and unmediated) Twitter streams with the Schiphol plane crash a while back to good effect, and so on. That can all work well - for short-term events where the crowd can distribute information quicker than a traditional news structure, or you want to get a snapshot of opinion, or whatever. It doesn't replace actual journalism, of course, just augments it.

The Telegraph's major error in this case was that they put it up two days before the budget is actually going to be announced. The amount of natural real-time conversation about the budget was therefore minimal, and so it was possible to hijack what was displayed on the Tele's site almost by accident - this wasn't a co-ordinated attack, just a few people idly goofing around.
posted by flashboy at 10:21 AM on April 20

You know, not everyone cares about all the random crap that happens on twitter...
posted by delmoi at 10:21 AM on April 20

Part of the interest in providing a very public forum is to see if it isn't possible to treat it as nearly as possible as a truly "public" sphere; something like a "speaker's corner" of a public park.

Absolutely, but if the actual likely result—the noise, the off-messageness, the gleeful taboo violation—is explicitly at odds with what you consider acceptable in the first place, you're doing something wrong. The venture is interesting, but if it's not a venture you can follow through with (i.e. if the Telegraph can't brook "big shitty balls" and anti-Telegraph jabs and porn/spam links and etc), it's not a venture you should start.

The onus is on the media-meets-internet pioneer to spend five minutes thinking his plan through. If he doesn't do that, he's an idiot. The Telegraph was clearly out of it's depth on this plan. Pretty words about transparency and immediacy are beside the point.
posted by cortex at 10:25 AM on April 20

Hey chuckdarwin, you aren't by any chance related to that "chuckdarw1n" guy, are you?

Ugh, well, that kind of sucks. Shades of "I helped do this" really kind of poisons the post—anybody could have posted about this, but from someone who has been actively participating in it feels a little too close for comfort, so I'm gonna nix it.
posted by cortex at 10:36 AM on April 20