Twitter search gets even better with twXplorer

I have long said that Twitter’s excellent advanced search is one of the most valuable tools for journalists today.

It is the superiority of Twitter’s search that makes it a more useful tool than Facebook for journalists, in my view, despite the fact that far more people use Facebook.

Well, Twitter search just got waaaay better with the development of twXplorer. Read Rich Gordon’s piece about twXplorer, then do some searches. I’ve just played with it a little and I’m really pleased and amazed.

What twXplorer does is analyze the results of a Twitter search and give you not just the tweets from a search but also patterns in those tweets: the terms, hashtags and links that show up most often in your search. And each of those terms, hashtags and links is hyperlinked, so you can click on it to filter just those tweets from your original search. You can also use it to search within a Twitter list.

It’s a great tool for refining searches and drilling down to find the most useful results.

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Anonymity or identity: Which is the best way to handle comments?

I was too busy yesterday enjoying beautiful spring weather, a beautiful baby granddaughter and exciting NCAA basketball to join a lively Twitter discussion of anonymous comments.

One of the primary discussants (it wasn’t combat, but it was pretty vigorous) was Mathew Ingram of GigaOm, who blogged about the topic (and has a link to a search string that pulls much of the discussion together). Steve Yelvington also blogged on the topic, noting that an ounce of leadership is worth a pound of management.

They summarize the issue well in detail, so I will summarize more broadly (and, admittedly, oversimplify) here:

One side (led on Twitter yesterday by Howard Owens) argues that anonymous comments inevitably become ugly and you have a more civil, responsible online discussion if you require people to participate by their real, verified names, as newspapers have always done in letters to the editor.

The other side (led by Ingram) embraces the freewheeling discussion of the anonymous comments, noting that responsible moderation of and engagement with the conversation can rein in (or remove) the ugliest exchanges, while keeping debate lively and honest. Without anonymity, whistleblowers are less likely to join the discussion, they rightly note (and the other side will rightly note that the anonymous bigots way outnumber the anonymous whistleblowers in story and blog comments). And besides, don’t we sometimes want to know how ugly people can be?

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Link lovefest for Gazette transformation continues

Updated with BeatBlogging Q&A:

The transformation we are undertaking at Gazette Communications continues to draw attention:

• Alana Taylor of BeatBlogging.org interviewed Chuck Peters and me and posted Thursday. Quotes several other blogs, including Tim McGuire’s description of me as the “real damn deal.” Can’t read that one enough. Also drops an Obi Wan Kenobi reference that must mean Chuck. Alana followed up with a Q&A with me.
• OJR asked me to write and just posted a piece on what we’re doing: “News businesses must think about content, not just products, to ensure survival.”
• Greg Linch and Daniel Bachhuber of CoPress just posted the podcast of an interview with me.
• Elaine Clisham of the American Press Institute promoted our transformation in a tweet  in the #editorchat discussion on Twitter last night. (Full disclosure: Elaine and I worked on several projects together during my three years at API and continue work together occasionally. In fact, I will be speaking at API’s The New Newsroom seminar in Eau Claire, Wis., tomorrow.)
• I had a confidential conversation yesterday with a publisher and a consultant interested in what we’re doing.

Those are new developments. These are other links I posted recently:

• Martin Langeveld on the Nieman Journalism Lab calls us a “news startup to add to your watch list.”
• Caroline Huber of editorsweblog writes about our changes (heavily citing Langeveld).
• Chuck Peters’ presentation at the MediaXChange was well received.
• Michele McLellan‘s News Leadership 3.0 blog praised our plans.
• Tim McGuire‘s McGuire on Media blog had kind words for me personally and made a flattering comparison to Outliers.
• Chris O’Brien called Cedar Rapids one of the “most important places to watch on the U.S. media landscape” in the NextNewsroom blog.
• Ann Michael described separation of content from product as a “powerful concept” in her Scholarly Kitchen blog.
• This recent attention is in addition to deserved praise Jason Kristufek has received for his leadership of the BarCamp Innovation gatherings around the country and for the continued interest in the News Mixer project a Medill School of Journalism graduate class at Northwestern University developed for Gazette Communications.
• I might have forgotten some other links. The calls, tweets and links have been coming pretty fast and furious.

As I wrote in an earlier post, all of this means nothing but ego stroking and eventual embarrassment if we don’t deliver in the executing of our plans. Lots of people in the newspaper industry have been wrong about a lot of things before. You could compile many more links than this of people eloquently making the case that news web sites need to charge for their content. And the fact that you could find a lot of them wouldn’t change the fact that they’re all wrong.

But I am encouraged that a lot of people I respect think we’re on the right track. And I’ll keep sharing those links if they keep writing.

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Gazette changes get lots of link love

I believe and hope we’re on the right path in the organizational changes we’re making at Gazette Communications. We’re getting some positive attention in the industry:

• OJR asked me to write and just posted a piece on what we’re doing: “News businesses must think about content, not just products, to ensure survival.”
• BeatBlogging.org will be interviewing me sometime today.
• Martin Langeveld on the Nieman Journalism Lab calls us a “news startup to add to your watch list.”
• Caroline Huber of editorsweblog writes about our changes (heavily citing Langeveld).
• I did an interview yesterday with Greg Linch and Daniel Bachhuber of CoPress for a podcast they plan to post soon.
• I just sent off a piece about what we’re doing to OJR.org, requested by Robert Niles. (I’ll post a link when he posts it.)
• Chuck Peters’ presentation at the MediaXChange was well received.
• Michele McLellan‘s News Leadership 3.0 blog praised our plans.
• Tim McGuire‘s McGuire on Media blog had kind words for me personally and made a flattering comparison to Outliers.
• Chris O’Brien called Cedar Rapids one of the “most important places to watch on the U.S. media landscape” in the NextNewsroom blog.
• I fielded calls yesterday from colleagues in New York and Florida, interested in more details on what we’re doing.
• Ann Michael described separation of content from product as a “powerful concept” in her Scholarly Kitchen blog.
• This recent attention is in addition to deserved praise Jason Kristufek has received for his leadership of the BarCamp Innovation gatherings around the country and for the continued interest in the News Mixer project a Medill School of Journalism graduate class at Northwestern University developed for Gazette Communications.
• I might have forgotten some other links. The calls, tweets and links have been coming pretty fast and furious.

All of this means nothing but ego stroking and eventual embarrassment if we don’t deliver in the executing of our plans. But a lot of people whose insights about innovation and journalism I respect think we’re on the right track. I find that encouraging.

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