How to organize a Twitter chat without even trying

Attention tweeps, members of the Journal Register Company Idealab (yours included) will be holding a Twitter/CoverItLive chat on Tuesday, Dec. 21 at 5 p.m.


We'll be divulging our not-so-secret journalistic tricks, and will be sharing what  new web tools we're using, ideas that didn't work (so you don't have to go through that path) and our visions for 2011 (I'm still waiting for the hovercar).

If you are interested in the future of news, you might want to check it out.  I'll post the feed in this blog as well.

Don't forget to bring your links.

Below is most of the Twittersation that created this beast. It's posted chronologically from newest to oldest, so you might want to start from the bottom.

Feature | Block ivanlajara Hint: You can follow #JRCChat automatically with http://tweetchat.com/room/jrcchat #JRC #JRCIdealab -5:40 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block jemersoncooper RT @ivanlajara: #JRCchat Tuesday at 5 p.m. about new web tools you're using (loving tweetizen), ideas that didn't work and visions for 2011 #JRC #JRCIdealab -5:13 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block AndyStettler Tweet with hashtag. Then, feed tweets through CIL for more than one way to access chat. Both mobile and standard access. #JRCchat -5:08 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block triciaambrose I like that idea @AndyStettler #JRCchat -5:06 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block AndyStettler Why not make one central link for everyone to use with CoverItLive? #JRCchat -5:05 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block ivanlajara Agree. Don't forget to bring your links! #JRCchat RT @AndyStettler: @ivanlajara Somehow the link still seems stronger than the hashtag. -5:00 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block ivanlajara @AndyStettler As for metrics: TWEETREACH! http://bit.ly/dF5aIz #JRCchat -4:50 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block mattderienzo RT @ivanlajara: #JRCchat Tuesday at 5 p.m. about new web tools you're using (loving tweetizen), ideas that didn't work and visions for 2011 #JRC #JRCIdealab -4:39 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block mattgrisafi RT @Kelly_Metz: #JRCchat Tuesday at 5 p.m. about new web tools you're using, ideas that didn't work and visions for 2011 #JRC #JRCIdealab -4:38 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block LouderCMarch Be there, journos - RT @Kelly_Metz: #JRCchat Tues at 5 p.m. about new web tools you're using, ideas that didn't work, visions for 2011 #JRC -3:56 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block Kelly_Metz #JRCchat Tuesday at 5 p.m. about new web tools you're using, ideas that didn't work and visions for 2011 #JRC #JRCIdealab -3:48 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block sam_piroton RT @ivanlajara: #JRCchat Tuesday at 5 p.m. about new web tools you're using (loving tweetizen), ideas that didn't work and visions for 2011 #JRC #JRCIdealab -3:45 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block TomCaprood RT @ivanlajara: #JRCchat Tuesday at 5 p.m. about new web tools you're using (loving tweetizen), ideas that didn't work and visions for 2011 #JRC #JRCIdealab -3:40 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block ivanlajara #JRCchat Tuesday at 5 p.m. about new web tools you're using (loving tweetizen), ideas that didn't work and visions for 2011 #JRC #JRCIdealab -3:38 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block TomCaprood Agreed. Topic? RT @Kelly_Metz #JRCchat We facilitate, lead but others can join @ivanlajara @tomcaprood @loudercmarch @andystettler @timingle -3:33 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block timingle @Kelly_Metz @ivanlajara @tomcaprood @loudercmarch @andystettler #JRCchat sounds like a good tag for it -3:31 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block LouderCMarch This. RT @Kelly_Metz: #JRCchat. We facilitate, lead but others can join. @ivanlajara @tomcaprood @loudercmarch @andystettler @timingle -3:30 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block ivanlajara Ha! Beat me to it. I was going to suggest the same. RT @Kelly_Metz: It could just be #JRCchat. We facilitate, lead but others can join. -3:30 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block Kelly_Metz It could just be #JRCchat. We facilitate, lead but others can join. @ivanlajara @tomcaprood @loudercmarch @andystettler @timingle -3:29 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block ivanlajara Agree. Twitter it shall be. Shorter hash tag ideas? @Kelly_Metz @TomCaprood @loudercmarch @andystettler @timingle #JRCIdealabchat -3:25 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block LouderCMarch we could embed #jrcidealabchat via tweetizen on our blogs/sites - so it's tidy. @ivanlajara @andystettler @tomcaprood @timingle @kelly _metz -3:12 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block ivanlajara #JRCIdealabchat moderated or free-for-all? CoveritLive or Twitter? @AndyStettler @TomCaprood @Kelly_Metz @timingle @LouderCMarch #JRCideaLab -2:59 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block timingle @TomCaprood @Kelly_Metz @LouderCMarch @ivanlajara can't do this Tues. @ 5, but can after holidays! sounds fun! #JRCidealabchat -2:53 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block TomCaprood Tuesdays around 5 for #JRCidealabchat?? @Kelly_Metz @timingle @LouderCMarch @ivanlajara #JRCideaLab -2:22 PM Dec 16th, 2010

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Feature | Block AndyStettler FYI at APStyleBook is tweet chatting now..clogging feeds. RT @ivanlajara: We should have a open twitter #Idealabchat -2:20 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block AndyStettler Please dont. Use CoverItLive on a blog. You'll only annoy followers. RT @ivanlajara: We should have a open twitter #Idealabchat -2:14 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block timingle mid-week is always good RT @TomCaprood: What time would work for everyone? RT @ivanlajara: We should have a open twitter #JRC #Idealabchat -12:56 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block Kelly_Metz I like Tuesdays/Thursdays RT @TomCaprood: What time would work for everyone? RT @ivanlajara: We should have a open twitter #JRC #Idealabchat -12:52 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block LouderCMarch I like evenings, any day. RT @TomCaprood: What time would work for everyone? RT @ivanlajara: We should have a open twitter #JRC #Idealabchat -12:16 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block TomCaprood What time would work for everyone? RT @ivanlajara: We should have a open twitter #JRC #Idealabchat. You know who you are. -12:08 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block Kelly_Metz I'm down! RT @ivanlajara: We should have a open twitter #JRC #Idealabchat. You know who you are. -12:07 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block LouderCMarch Agreed. Weekly? RT @ivanlajara: We should have a open twitter #JRC #Idealabchat. You know who you are. -12:05 PM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block vsundqvist Can we live stream that? RT @ivanlajara: We should have a open twitter #JRC #Idealabchat. You know who you are. -2:23 AM Dec 16th, 2010

Feature | Block ivanlajara We should have a open twitter #JRC #Idealabchat. You know who you are. -12:11 AM Dec 16th, 2010

The production god is dead. Long live the Internet

As you know, it's been a hard but transformative week for the Freeman, having moved print production to Troy. Yes, our mailroom and press employees were let go as a result. I've know many of them for many years and it has been difficult to see them go.

But along with that difficult move comes a ray of inspiration. Our future is looking bright and I'm glad I get to be a part of it.

If you need a refresher, here's Publisher's Ira Fusfeld addressing our future and an illuminating interview by the Watershed Post with Managing Editor Tony Adamis, which addresses "how to make the transition from being a newspaper – which is a good thing to be -- to being a multimedia journalism company."

I'll let Journal Register Company CEO John Patton explain why we are doing what we are doing.


And here's New York University professor Jay Rosen and JRC adviser explaining the production routine.

One of the byproducts of this transformation for us has been an increase and timeliness on breaking news stories. Since the paper gets out earlier, editors and reporters working past production deadline can finally focus on news, rather than production. This means you get to know right away what has happened — say, a a city or county government meeting — right after it happens. Every reporter has been equipped with an Internet card for their laptops, enabling them to file directly from the field.

Furthermore, we are trying to refine and improve your experience with us on our site, on Facebook and on Twitter . And we are about to increase our offerings, both in print and online.

You might have noticed that we are now posting the police blotter (unsurprisingly the most popular story today).

Moreover, for one of my December Idealab experiments, I want to open up the site, big time.

I'm planning to have a daily Sound-Off, where I would pick three or four comments from our stories and then let you chime in if you want. I'm starting on this very blog—I want to see what kind of feedback we get with unmoderated comments — and then I'm planning to move it to our main site.


AFTER WE TAKE DOWN REGISTRATION FOR COMMENTS.

Almost half our traffic comes from the outside: Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, etc. Currently, one-time visitors who might want to comment don't, probably because they don't want to go through the hassle of registering. The idea is to allow people just to post comments after simply choosing a name. Moderation would still be operational, but it would be handled in a more timely manner. Ultimately, the best posts would be featured in print.

I've already talked to my higher-ups and are currently working on a system for moderation.

But before we do this, I want —need—your opinion.

What do you think?

Report card: How to improve your social media presence

As I mentioned at the end of last month, my Idealab goal for November consisted of improving our media presence by doubling our Fabebook 'Likes' and tripling our Twitter 'Followers'

Accomplishments: Alas, I might have been too optimistic in my stated goals. When I started, we had 1,356 Facebook ‘Likes’ and 600 Twitter followers. I was out for the first two weeks of November on vacation, so I didn’t start until Nov. 15. Add a holiday, no help or time allotted; getting ready for the move to Troy (redesigning the Spanish paper) and you’ve got yourself a recipe for disaster.

Metrics:

                                Facebook ‘Likes’    People hiding Freeman page from feed           Twitter followers

Oct. 30, 2010          1,356                            127                                                                         600

Nov. 29, 2010         1,513                            136                                                                         826

The insights above right, from Facebook, also show that more ‘interactions’ foment many more ‘comments’ and ‘likes’ than simple postings of stories. In other words, someone has to monitor pages in case of tips, comments, questions and such. And currently, I’m the only one doing that (just because I hate it when somebody asks us a question and it sits there for days without monitoring – I myself have two other pages to administer: Preview magazine and my own).

The site had 49,182 entries via Facebook from Nov. 1 to 29, but only 1,000 entries via Twitter, comparably unchanged from last month (although much larger than previous months).

I’m also including some page view stats vs. unique monthly visitors to show our growth:

                                Page views         Monthly Unique visitors

Nov. 2009            1,092,314             127,496

Oct. 2010             1,500,583             179,930

Nov. 2010            1,552,388             196,384

What I did:

For Twiter, I decided not to do the “follow-everyone, unfollow-everyone-who-doesn’t-follow-you back” thing, as it goes against Twitter’s stated policy. I did carefully follow potential local sources (a lot of them, which – I found out later – also is against Twitter policy) and then curated them into lists. We did get a lot of Twitter followers that way, but not as many as if I had just followed everyone I ran into. I didn’t want to do that anyway, because they would be irrelevant followers. The problem is the time that it takes to do this.

I’ve been going to relevant Twitter users (found in competing media and in our own followers’ lists) and have been scrapping their potentially useful followers who are likely to follow back.

I’m using Twitter Karma (http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/) to find out who follows and who doesn’t, but I suspect Twitter Analytics, which will be released early next year, will make Twitter management easier to do.

For Facebook, I used a variety of methods. I friended as many people as possible who have 50 or more common friends to our Preview profile (different from the page), waited a couple of days and then suggested they like the Freeman. That seems to have been working (if you do it right away, they might unfriend you!).

I also put a Quick Reponse code on the Front page of the Freeman on Nov. 16, running through November, using Likify.net, but it only gathered eight likes. The good side of that is that, well, it’s eight people we might not have gotten otherwise, and that it doesn’t require more work than the initial posting. So it could potentially work better with posters and flyers. I think we should probably approach this like the McDonalds does McRibs: If it’s out there all the time, people won’t eat it anymore. But if you issue it every now and then, with added content, people will go back to it.

And I had Dawn put our combined Twitter stream and Facebook page widgets on our main page.

---

What you've taught: Droid, baby! For November, reporter Paul Kirby took over the iPad from Patricia Doxsey; and I gave her the droid so she could live-tweet Black Friday not only with tweets but with photos. We used Storify to re-publish her tweets and photos (since she had started close to 4 a.m., we didn’t expect many to be reading then). And the print edition of the Freeman used her photos taken from the droid (I maxed out the photo settings). We had a regular story published by 11 a.m., with video (taken by another reporter). Patti would have used Ustream for Black Friday mayhem, but there was none. Paul has been using the iPad to post directly to the site many times now. I created an app – or shortcut – for TownNews on the main iPad page, which –as crazy as it sounds – makes posting much more comfortable.

What you've learned: Implementation of Quick Response codes; setting up a Livestream channel for Facebook (you can’t do that with Ustream); hooking up Qik and Livestream accounts with Facebook and Twitter.

Side project: Quick response codes.

After doing the Likify experiment I decided to use Quick Response codes to allow people to watch our Life videos right on their phones by simply scanning the paper. This actually seems to have worked better. I posted a promo video using Xtranormal (which by itself gathered some notice); posted it on Facebook and blog about the new feature.

I had to post the videos on YouTube, however, because Flash won’t play on Blackberries or iPhones. I’m hoping HTML-5 will solve this or that we get a better platform for our videos.

Stats:

Views, from YouTube: 134 via mobile devices for seven videos with QR codes, for a total of 32 unique visitors overall. This includes my test views and visits.

I don’t know what to make of Omniture video numbers. I know large play count comes from the much-derided auto-play feature, but the low number of unique visitors should raise a flag. My hunch is that I’m reading the stats wrong.

Finally, some mobile visits:

Oct. 2010:  57,086 entries from 147 devices.

Top 10:

1.		Apple iPhone		18,189		31.9%
2.		Apple iPad		8,948		15.7%
3.		RIM BlackBerry 8330		5,312		9.3%
4.		Apple iPod Touch		5,231		9.2%
5.		Motorola Droid		3,328		5.8%
6.		Motorola DroidX		1,225		2.1%
7.		RIM BlackBerry Tour 9630		1,146		2.0%
8.		RIM BlackBerry 8530/Curve		1,080		1.9%
9.		HTC Droid Incredible		1,052		1.8%
10.		LG Ally			796	1.4%

Nov. 2010*: 62,369 from 163 devices.

*(as of 9 p.m. Nov. 29)

Top 10:

1.		Apple iPhone		19,601		31.4%
2.		Apple iPad		11,109		17.8%
3.		Apple iPod Touch		5,715		9.2%
4.		RIM BlackBerry 8330		5,393		8.6%
5.		Motorola Droid		2,649		4.2%
6.		Motorola DroidX		1,426		2.3%
7.		HTC Droid Incredible		1,270		2.0%
8.		RIM BlackBerry 8530/Curve		1,150		1.8%
9.		HTC Evo		1,123		1.8%
10.		Motorola Droid2			955	1.5%

 

How to marry print, web with Quick Response codes

Today's print version of the Freeman has a new feature, which is building upon Wednesday's Quick Response code on the front page.

First, a re-cap. The front page's QR code allows you to 'Like' the Freeman on Facebook with your smartphone. So far I've heard a lot of buzz about it, but we haven't gotten many 'Likes' through it - yet. (I'm also pushing social media elsewhere, so our recent increase in 'Likes' has been partially due to that effort).

In today's Life section, left, accompanying a food story about Aroma Thyme Bistro in Ellenville, there is a QR box (which in this section is replacing the On The Web box). This code, I believe, enhances print by allowing smartphone users to seamlessly watch a video related to the story right on their phones.

Let me demonstrate.

Quick response codes, explained

How to make Quick Response codes work for your publication

Starting Tuesday and through November, you'll see this at the bottom of the front page in the print edition of the Daily Freeman:

It's a QR (Quick Response) code. It will run with the following explanation.

"Scan this QR (Quick Response) code to 'Like' the Freeman on Facebook. You will need special software on your camera-equipped smartphone to decode the image. Search for ‘QR code’ in your phone’s app store"

You'll need a smartphone, and it could be any of these:

This is part of the Journal Register Company's Idealab, something that I'm not explaining again.

Anyway, if you are too lazy to search for 'QR code' in your phone's app store, here are some, based on a quick search and categorized by device. I'm only listing free apps:


iPhone:

* QR app;

* Neoreader;

* QRCode.

Blackberry: 

* QR Code Scanner Pro;

* BeeTagg;

* ATT Code Scanner.

 Android:

Barcode Scanner;

Goggles.

And here's an awful person doing a live video pretending to explain QR codes.

Watch live streaming video from dailyfreeman at livestream.com


 

I know. Awful.

Note that this video, via the Freeman's new Livestream channel, was broadcast, well, live, through the site's channel and on Facebook, which would have added amazing user interaction if I had actually bothered to tell anyone that I was broadcasting.

Oh, well. Next time.

P.S. If you are keeping tabs, my challenge was to double our Facebook fans and triple our Twitter followers. I've been off since Oct. 30, so I'm technically just starting today. Since then, we've gone from 1,200 Facebook 'Likes' to 1,424; and from 600 followers to 651. Some of that growth is natural, and some is due to ease of access (you might have noticed the widgets on our stories and the main site). The big push starts now.