There are ten users on Twitter now with more than ten million followers. Nine are celebrities and eight are women. Talk about your girl tweet power.

Lady Gaga is still way out in front and almost two followers million ahead of Justin Bieber who is in the number two spot. Barack Obama is the only non-celebrity individual in the top 20 and adds weight to the idea that the 2012 presidential race will be a Twitter election. Read More »

We’ve had a few pieces on social media and journalism asking in the first instance if social media was killing it with another post arguing that social media wasn’t killing journalism, but rather changing the system.

So interesting to add into that mix these comments from Tony Maddox, the executive vice president and managing director of CNN International, talking about how social media is no substitute for journalism. Read More »

A few weeks back a post went up about how twice as many get their news via Facebook, which underscored its position a place where increasingly a lot of people pick up and share news.

Facebook has just published a list of news that is being shared with its 50 most shared stories of 2011. It is a real mix from the serious, the top most shared story was about the the Quake and Tsunami in Japan, to the ridiculous. The third most story is headlined ‘No, your zodiac sign hasn’t changed’. I don’t even know where to start with that one. Read More »

This is really pretty cool. CNN has launched a great Twitter data visualization tool called ‘Ecosphere’ in support of the COP17 climate change conference in Durban, which starts this week.

The site picks up every tweet tagged with the #COP17 hashtag and uses them to stimulate growth in a plant or tree in the Ecosphere that represents a certain topic, such as sustainability. Read More »

Despite its near ubiquity for many European and US consumers, Facebook remains something of a puzzle for some marketers.  With 600m+ users it is very obviously a place where we must be but it’s also an environment with a very specific and non commercial purpose from a user’s point of view.  Never the twain?

The VC’s and commentators take it for granted that the brains behind Facebook will find a way of ‘monetising’ the audience in any event (their valuation being based on this very presumption as was that of MySpace and Friends Reunited but let’s move on.)   New developments   in this direction are appearing with increasing regularity. Read More »

CNN has unveiled a major relaunched of its user generated news site CNN iReport five years after it launched with changes making it make more like a social network.

The subsequent growth of social media since CNN iReport debuted in 2006 has changed citizen journalism greatly and CNN wants to make its user generated news proejct fit for the social age and create what it is calling a “social network for news”. Read More »

Back in the summer there was a lot of interest in the move of reporter Laura Kuenssberg as she changed jobs from chief political correspondent for the BBC to the business editor of ITV. In the process the BBC lost 60000 Twitter followers to ITV. A win for the commercial broadcaster.

It sparked a big debate about who owns Twitter followers? Is it the journalist or the employer on whose time these accounts are built up. In the case of Kuenssberg it seemed the journalist, but a judge in the US has refused to dismiss a case where mobile phone news site PhoneDog is arguing that a former reporter had no right to leave with 17,000 followers that it valued at $2.50 a follower. Read More »

Back in May the New York Times put real people behind Twitter feed as an experiment to see what would happen. It only tried it for a while before it reverted to mostly auto tweets, which is what many news organisations do including the BBC. Until now that is.

Today the BBC is implementing a new system after auto tweeting its headlines for years it will be putting its editors behind the tweet wheel and getting them to tweet during day time hours. It makes all the difference. Read More »

Twitter has released a video and some great examples that underscore the powerful relationship it has formed with television highlighted so well by the Royal Wedding where broadcasters when big with social media.

The examples and video really drives home how well broadcasters are now using Twitter and the benefits they are getting from it as audiences show their willingness to join an ever growing conversation. Read More »

Twitter hit a new record for the average number tweets per second sent as the death of Osama bin Laden broke on the social network and the story played out in traditional media.

The moment when the news broke on Twitter, and was then confirmed by a political aide before President Obama, made his address, is being described as Twitter’s CNN moment. A true coming of age for the microblogging service. Read More »