Less is more when updating news on Twitter

By Julie Starr | Published: April 17, 2008

It’s not just me, then. I see Jeff Jarvis is also getting annoyed with the way news companies are dumping multiple headlines on Twitter in big batches, with the result that they fill out people’s Twitter boxes.

jeffjarvis The roadblock of NYTimes tweets is irritating me. I don’t want every damned headline as a tweet. 26 minutes ago from web Icon_star_empty reply to jeffjarvis

In fact, it’s not just me and Mr Jarvis, anecdotally at least. I’ve had several people tell me how much it annoys them. The problem, I think, is that the simplest and currently most rational approach to publishing news on Twitter is to push RSS feeds on there – an automated process that doesn’t require expensive human intervention. But RSS feeds get pushed out in lumps at certain time intervals and it ends up looking like this:

Twitter is quite an intimate communication forum. Over time you make acquaintances and become increasingly interested in hearing what they have to say, what they’ve been reading, and enjoy having conversations with them. To have great lumps of news headlines dumped in the middle of all this is an intrusion. A couple of headlines here and there is fine, but a lump isn’t.

Ideally, you’d have a separate Twitter channel for news. Well, I would, plus others on an ad hoc basis for projects I’m working on. But it’s currently not possible to have multiple Twitter accounts under one username, as far as I’m aware, and I can’t be bothered logging in with multiple usernames and email addresses each day. Not now, anyway.

The Guardian’s Jemima Kiss this week pointed up the possibility of Twitter dropping ads in as sparsely drip-fed tweets, following a post from Duncan Riley on TechCrunch suggesting it was the only way for Twitter to make money: “Occasional ads in the Twitter timeline, in a similar fashion to what Twitteriffic users currently see (Twitteriffic runs its own ads on the free version) seems like the only real way to monetise Twitter, aside for premium subscriptions. The only question remaining is how Twitter users will accept the move after a two year free ride,” he said.

But Twitter subsequently denied it (you can see the tweets in an update on Jemima’s post). Thank goodness for that. I think ads in my Twitter box would kill it for me. Maybe not immediately, but over time. I struggle with the ads that show up in my Facebook news feed as it is. Well, to be fair, the news feed’s just not that interesting any more, but the ads don’t help.

In the meantime, I think it’s worth looking at building Twitter headlines into newsroom workflows so they are written at the same time as headlines and mobile alerts and pushed in smaller batches on more of a breaking news model: if it’s big, tweet it, if it’s not, stick it on the website and in the paper. As Mr Jarvis said, we ‘don’t want every damned headline as a tweet’.

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  • Shawn Smith

    Nice Post Julie. I agree with you about the problem of a ton of headlines in an RSS feed. But I think the simple thing is just “unfollowing” – I’ve unfollowed nearly every news organization I started following. However, I am still a proponent of automatic updates. The trick is to balance it with what people actually want. At our news org, we manage more than 10 twitter accounts that are more niche so they have fewer posts during a day, but they still are dominated by an RSS feed. I think as long as your news org doesn’t post EVERYTHING to twitter, like NYT and others, then it’s fine. You also can set up your own twitter feed to get the news that interests you.

  • JackD

    Yeah, I think you’re right. It ought to be just breaking news. I actually like it when they mix a voice in with the headlines. I like headlines, but I really want to follow people. I don’t know what Twitter’s business model is (other than for someone to buy it), but I hope it doesn’t kill it.

  • Julie Starr

    Hi Shawn,

    Thanks for your comment. I, too, have unfollowed a few news groups having got tired of being inundated. On the other hand,I really like getting news through Twitter so don’t want to unfollow everyone.

    In most cases it seems to be all or nothing, there doesn’t seem to be a ‘drip-feed’ button (even if you have, as you suggested, subscribed only to feeds of interest.) So it’s nice to hear that you are able to moderate your output.

    I wonder, though, how easy it is for bigger news organisations to automate and have only a handful of feeds go out at a time? (I don’t fully understand the technology, unfortunately.)

  • Aaron

    For breaking news, we send an email. More local eyeballs see that than probably anyone who will ever use Twitter.

    BTW, I see we’re both following the same question about multiple accounts on twitter. Twitter should get on top of that.

  • Gavin Carr

    It’s even more of a problem if you track topics via twitter, because you don’t have the unfollow option. I think we’ll probably see more blocking and filtering options show up in clients to handle more fine-grained approaches to improving this kind of signal/noise ratio problem.

  • Julie Starr

    @gavin carr, @jackd, thanks for your comments. @aaron Yep, I agree email’s a great way to reach eyeballs, I just think Twitter has its place in the breaking news stable too. And yes, I wish Twitter would crack the multiple account business. Sooner the better!