Thursday 9 June 2011

Forget Facebook it's all about Twitter

News just in - forget Facebook it's all about Twitter.

It seems the social networking shift is happening again, but this time from Facebook to Twitter.

The latter is currently making newspaper headlines and has done so for the best part of 2011.

Most notably the story in which Ryan Giggs' solicitors were allegedly set to sue the pants off anyone re-tweeting his alleged affair with Imogen Thomas.

And Rooney's hair transplants as also previously mentioned.

But today another incident has occurred (with yet another Man Utd player) and not only does it back up my original point of celebs 'biting' on Twitter but it adds a new dimension to 21st century journalism.

Defender Rio Ferdinand has had a private - but very public – spat with one of the country's top sport's journalists.

The feud erupted after Mirror sports journalist Oliver Holt brought the issue of Ferdinand's missed drugs test up.

What followed was a tirade of insults aimed at the journo being called 'fat' and a 'c***' in private messages.

The journalist then wrote an article about the messages which highlights, (if Twitter doesn't do it already) how self-centred Premiership footballers can be.

Many journalists, including myself, are using Twitter as a tool to increasingly engage with their audiences.

And as usual Google is keeping ahead of the game this time by starting an “authorship markup” for journalists to collate all of their publications, including social networks and blogs, into one page.

It seems journalists are no longer hidden behind a byline, they are now fully accountable to their works and it has never been easier to interact with them - which can only be good for Democracy.

To highlight this we recently launched picture bylines on The Champion website, although for some reason mine resembles a younger, fatter Kevin Spacey.

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