With every major breaking news story, social media sites and sources keep outdoing themselves. The events in Mumbai have proved to be no exception, with Twitter once again leading the way.
Techcrunch notes that Twitter was talking about the terrorist attacks before the media cottoned on to the fact there was something major happening in the Indian City, and says that there’s no doubt that Twitter should now be considered a proper news source.
Putting to one side the majority of the unpleasantness surrounding the Baby P case, one of the interesting aspects – from a media point of view – has been the problem of the online world and any court orders relating to reporting.
Without having delved too far into the story, it’s obvious that there’s some form of court order in play here, otherwise we’d have had Baby P’s name by now, along with the names of two of the accused [1].
The crime led to an outpouring of rage on assorted sources on the internet – blogs, forums, and Facebook groups, among other places.
At Soccerlens: An overview of how the credit crunch is hurting the Conference, focusing on three Blue Square Premier clubs in particular – Weymouth, Salisbury and Lewes. There’s also a quick bit on which non-league clubs have got their attitude to finances just about right.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGqX-tkDXEk]
For a bunch of aging comedians, the Monty Python crew have always been a bit ahead of many of their younger contemporaries when it comes to the internet. Now they’ve gone where many other TV shows would fear to go – uploading their content for free onto YouTube.
As the Guardian reports, they’ve used the site’s Video ID system to identify their material that’s been uploaded (without their permission), replacing it with better quality footage on their own YouTube channel and attaching adverts to the clips urging watchers to buy their DVDs. That immediately appears to have paid off:
Because, it’s just, you know, so interesting reading people blogging about their social life… 
Sarcasm aside, this week saw the November Bloggers’ Meetup in Aldgate. This event is growing every month (it was full up the afternoon it was announced), and is one of the friendliest meetups you could wish to meet.
As more than one first-timer commented to me on the night: “I was expecting it to be very formal, but people just walk up to and start chatting.” It’s definitely one of the most social of the social media meets, and you get to meet a very interesting and wide-ranging group.
Certain news really puts football in perspective. Fans are fond of quoting Bill Shankly’s famous phrase about the sport being more important than life and death, but that gets put to one side when you hear some genuinely upsetting news that actually does deal with life and death situations.
This news concerns Torquay United defender and former Exeter City club captain Chris Todd who has just been diagnosed with Leukaemia.
Chris arrived at Exeter City after being released in Swansea City, via a brief spell in Ireland. He was brought to the club by Neil McNab in 2003, one of the few decent things to come out of the much-maligned coach’s short-lived reign at St. James’ Park.
Spam comments, as any regular blogger and forum user will tell you, are a right royal pain in the arse. While it’s a way of life on teh interweb, it doesn’t make them any less irritating to delete, especially if you get hit by a plethora of spam comments, which is what happened to Lewis yesterday.
He started off by Tweeting that he’d been hit by an unusually large amount of spam. He Tweeted his further investigations, and uncovered the source – a company called Demya who, for the princely sum of £75, promise to publish 100,000 forum posts promote website, products and service. They stopped short of offering to love you long time.
Soccerlens: Mark Wright gets appointed as Chester manager for the third time. Chester fans aren’t best pleased.
I’ve also got about four posts I really want to write on here. But, my Lord, it’s been busy work-wise. I’ll find time soon. Hopefully. Possibly. Maybe.
“I’ve been working like a Japanese prisoner of war. Enjoy it Lynn, I’m being bawdy.“
Or look what we’ve gone and done.
For a culture, that spends a fair bit of its life working online, social media types are, well, pretty sociable in the real world. For one thing, they throw great parties and hold regular meetups. One of the nicest things about Twitter and blogging meetups, is you can turn up and not know anybody and people will still, likely as not, know who you are. Even if not, you’ll at least have a topic of conversation to get you started, which is ideal for people such as myself who aren’t natural minglers.
A full banquet’s worth of thought from Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0:
“The web is the most disruptive force in the history of media, by many orders of magnitude, destroying every assumption on which traditional media businesses are based.
But the market should care, you say. What would happen if we didn’t have the newspapers playing their Fourth Estate watch dog role?
Here’s the bitter truth — the feared loss of civic value is not the basis for a BUSINESS.
The problem with the newspaper industry, as with the music industry before it, is the sense of ENTITLEMENT. What we do is valuable. Therefore we have the right to make money.
