Monday afternoon another tragic event shocked our world as bombs went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. While many tuned to the news channels to find out more regarding what was happening in Boston, one of the more reliable and timely sources was social media. But leveraging social media channels as a source of information requires diligence and an understanding of how to vet the sources for factual and erroneous information. Many news sources have started relying on social media channels to help them get the news out, following the feed and posting to it as well. So what are the best practices to use for looking at social media when following news of a breaking event?
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Note: This is a repost of a piece in my column in Plaza de Armas that was originally posted on Election Day. I reposted it because of interest from several friends in social media.
How can you not feel for little Abbey who, in a YouTube video that has gone viral, is tired of “Bronco Bama and Mitt Romney” and has had about as much of this presidential election as the rest of us have. I believe Abbey has expressed to the nation what all of us are feeling right now – enough of the back and forth. Let’s just get this thing over.
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Today I received a dose of reality from, of all persons, Gilberto Hinojosa, the chair of the Texas Democratic Party. The issue involved straight ticket voting, something I have been opposed to for quite a while. Today, when he provided voters with information regarding voting he also encouraged people to vote straight ticket Democrat. It was a part of his Facebook status. Having engaged in MANY a Facebook discussion, I figured I’d state my opposition to straight ticket voting. My comment was deleted. While I respect a person’s decision to delete a comment, when it’s the chair of the state party I would have expected a little more opportunity for dialogue and discourse. After all, shouldn’t we allow debate on matters rather than stifle them?
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Athletes are not the only ones who will be tweeting during the 2012 London Olympics. You can also follow the US Olympic Team and various sports such as USA Swimming, USA Diving, USA Archery and several other sports organizations through Twitter. These feeds will give you a more complete view of the team and the sports, including any official information about times or schedules. It’s a way for them to get the most information out about their athletes. I’ll add as many as I can find unless the page becomes overloaded. Then I may have to break out the team by various aspects. Read more…
As you know, I’ve been exploring how social media will play into the coverage of the 2012 London Olympics. So far, I’ve built pages to follow San Antonio Olympic athletes and official Olympic organizations. Since there are a lot of Texas athletes at the Olympics I decided to build a page to follow them and track their tweets from the Olympics. This will not include the San Antonio athletes. The entire point is to bring the Olympics closer to all of us and explores how social media will play into the experience. So far, it’s proving to be quite interesting and giving some very unique views over in London. So here are the Texas athletes I know of. I’ll update the page as I find more. Read more…
Here are the feeds of all the official organizations of the 2012 London Olympics, starting with the local organizing committee. From here you can stay abreast of any of the official things happening with the Olympics, including NBC for broadcast information. The 2012 London Olympics will be the most watched social media event in history. Using Twitter to get the word out about a variety of topics and events. Enjoy the information. Also, note that as new information Twitter handles are found I will add them to the page. We’ll see how this goes and how well the information is carried. Read more…
London 2012 will probably be the first truly social media Olympics and to help you stay abreast of the action I’ve built a blog post that follows the Twitter feeds of key San Antonio athletes. It’s a single page with the latest tweets from athletes who have a San Antonio connection, either from here or who compete here. Not all the San Antonio athletes have Twitter accounts or have protected their accounts. But for those who do, you can see what’s happening with them as they experience the 2012 Olympics. Based on what I’ve seen, it’s a way to really connect with the Olympic experience from an insider view. I’ll probably keep updating this page or add other pages as I find new ways to explore the Olympics socially. Read more…
I’m wrapping up my fifth year of SXSW Interactive, one of the biggest tech and social media conferences in the nation, just right up the road in Austin. This year’s attendance has not been announced but estimates are that it will be well over 20,000, eclipsing last year’s attendance of 19,364. Even with the incredible growth the organizers of SXSW were able to accommodate everyone by expanding the footprint and introducing transportation shuttles between the campuses. Still, there were some challenges with the festival, especially with registration when most people showed up almost all at once to get their badges, resulting in 2+ hour lines. Not much can be done to speed that up except encourage folks to show up early to get badged or have remote badging sites at the campuses. But all that aside, what draws people to this annual week of geekdom?
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As you may know (if you’ve been following this blog) I’ve been blocked from commenting on articles and blog entries in MySA, the online website for the San Antonio Express-News. It came about after a couple of harsh exchanges with a few people on some issues. I let their attitudes get the better of me and pull me down to their level. The block has shocked a lot of my friends who feel I usually come across as more rational and well-researched on my comments. I think I do but in these cases I let the situation get the better of me and things got kind of ugly. So I’m taking a vacation from comments. Interestingly, I can still make comments in the Perry Presidential blog thanks to the fact the Houston Chronicle (sister site to the Express-News) is using Facebook Social so I’m using a different ID. While on “vacation” from commenting I’ve taken some time to read the comments of others and the state of affairs is not pretty at all, especially in the E-N comments boards. So have we lost the ability to converse?
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Yesterday I was checking into the Express-News comment boards on some of the articles I commented on recently. I’ve been noticing a funny thing about them. No thumbs up or down, the later being pretty common for me because some people in there just don’t like me and would thumbs down my comment if it were about ponies and puppies. But I was also noticing that some people were commenting about not being able to see my comment in a thread, complaining about blocked comments. Strange, because I could see the comments. That led me to see what was happening. Logging in anonymously I discovered the following text where my comment should have been – “This comment was left by a user who has been blocked by our staff.” AH HA! I’d been blocked. Looking deeper I found a number of people in the same predicament as me. So what’s up, E-N?
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I’ve been posting a series of blog entries about low voter turnout in San Antonio. My last entry tried to dive into some of the reasons why turnout is lower the more local the election. Today Gilbert Garcia of Plaza de Armas also dug into the issue, citing voter dissatisfaction as another possible cause. “Isn’t it possible that by not voting, people are already complaining about their government – albeit silently?” said Garcia in the article. Regardless of the cause, voters just aren’t voicing their opinion on municipal matters in the elections. If you dig a little deeper, though, low turnout could open the door for other voices to be heard, some that voters might find unacceptable or intolerable.
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This weekend and part of next week I’m at one of the biggest techy paradises in America – SXSW Interactive. It’s my third year and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger with around 15,000 people attending the five day conference. It’s a great conference in many ways and a place where you can spot the latest trends and technologies before they go mainstream. It’s where Twitter, foursquare, Gowalla, and Whrrl got their sea legs and took off. But there’s so much more that jumps out about SX Interactive that shows me we’re on the cusp of some great things in store for the future – and I’m only on day one.
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This week kicks off public television’s annual shopping spree, Blazing Gavels. It’s a time when you can shop til you drop at home and do it knowing you are helping benefit public television in San Antonio. The TV auction helps benefit KLRN and provides about 8% of funding for the station. It’s a great place to find specials on many local San Antonio items donated by businesses and individuals. In some ways, it’s also a way to become aware of unique items and services you wouldn’t normal discover browsing around North Star Mall. Read more…
Tuesday night Mayor Julian Castro hosted the first virtual town hall in San Antonio, a fulfillment of a campaign promise. For the first time it turned out great thanks to the hard work of Trinity University, several members of his staff, and his campaign office. During the hour session moderated by Elaine Wolff of the San Antonio Current people could e-mail, chat or tweet up questions for the mayor to respond to. A limited audience at Trinity was also provided the opportunity to ask questions. Hopefully we’ll see more of this type event as Mayor Castro works to bring more transparency and accessibility to city government through online resources. He is becoming one of the most connected mayors San Antonio has ever seen. Read more…
As you’ve probably seen from my blogs I’ve been diving more and more into the social media camps of San Antonio and loving every minute of it. The knowledge base out there is great and they are really trying a lot of new and innovative ways to reach people through the various social media channels – Twitter, Facebook and my least favorite, Myspace. As a result of this swimming with the cool kids I’m picking up more and more people following me on Twitter and Facebook. The Facebook thing I can manage. When they annoy me I just hide them from the stream. Simple and easy. The Twitter thing is a different matter. You see, with Twitter there really is no filter to manage the stream. TweetDeck allows you to categorize the tweets based on the interest of the person. Still, if a person tweets excessively they flood the stream. So why do I see that as a problem? Read more…
Monday afternoon another tragic event shocked our world as bombs went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. While many tuned to the news channels to find out more regarding what was happening in Boston, one of the more reliable and timely sources was social media. But leveraging social media channels as a source of information requires diligence and an understanding of how to vet the sources for factual and erroneous information. Many news sources have started relying on social media channels to help them get the news out, following the feed and posting to it as well. So what are the best practices to use for looking at social media when following news of a breaking event?
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