Live Tweeting
Last week, I set Twitter to follow Rebecca Lobo as she tweeted from the sidelines of one of the UConn Big East games. She kept up a constant conversation, and it was too much to take in, so I quickly "unfollowed".
Today, I was so excited about the new iPhone OS3, that I decided to share the keynote via Twitter. I was not there in person but refreshing a few tech blogs as they posted quotes and photos, most notably Engadget, and summarizing what I saw and read.
The keynote was 90 minutes long, and I tweeted a lot. I tried to stick to the important points, but did interject some personal comments at times. After about 30 minutes, even though I was receiving direct messages from some of my followers who were interested and grateful I was summarizing for them, I became worried. I have over 2600 followers in Twitter and perhaps only a small group of them would be interested in the iPhone information.
Would I lose valuable members of my PLN because I tweeted every 30 seconds for 90 minutes? Would people find it too much to take in, just as I had with Rebecca Lobo's sideline updates? What if someone was receiving their tweets via SMS and they incurred charges for an overage of text messages? Would people be upset, when they opened Twitter or their Twitter client, when tons of messages from me clogged up their screen?
So, what should I have done? Should I have used CoverItLive or some other backchannel tool and just posted the URL to Twitter? Should I have only followed the blogs and put a link in Twitter to the most comprehensive coverage page based on what I had read?
I will have to give it more thought, but I don't think Twitter is the right place to "live blog". Your thoughts?
Today, I was so excited about the new iPhone OS3, that I decided to share the keynote via Twitter. I was not there in person but refreshing a few tech blogs as they posted quotes and photos, most notably Engadget, and summarizing what I saw and read.The keynote was 90 minutes long, and I tweeted a lot. I tried to stick to the important points, but did interject some personal comments at times. After about 30 minutes, even though I was receiving direct messages from some of my followers who were interested and grateful I was summarizing for them, I became worried. I have over 2600 followers in Twitter and perhaps only a small group of them would be interested in the iPhone information.
Would I lose valuable members of my PLN because I tweeted every 30 seconds for 90 minutes? Would people find it too much to take in, just as I had with Rebecca Lobo's sideline updates? What if someone was receiving their tweets via SMS and they incurred charges for an overage of text messages? Would people be upset, when they opened Twitter or their Twitter client, when tons of messages from me clogged up their screen?
So, what should I have done? Should I have used CoverItLive or some other backchannel tool and just posted the URL to Twitter? Should I have only followed the blogs and put a link in Twitter to the most comprehensive coverage page based on what I had read?
I will have to give it more thought, but I don't think Twitter is the right place to "live blog". Your thoughts?
Labels: Kathy Schrock, live tweeting
posted by Kathy Schrock at 7:05 PM
8 Comments:
Kathy-
You will never be able to please everybody all the time. I actually like the experience of both trying various things as well as watching others try them. With so much new technologies and so many technology-enhanced learning opportunities for us to explore, there is no right or wrong.
If it turns some people off, they will go off to meet new learning elsewhere, just like we do when we want to explore new things. You are just as likely to attract just as many new followers as well who are looking for something different! After all, I never commented on your blog before, but your Tweet brought me to it!
Jeffrey
Kathy,
I agree. I did feel like your tweets were more of a live blog and should have been on a backchannel site, such as CoverItLive. I appreciate your post and concern. During David Warlick's session at Educon earlier this year, there was a Twitter backchannel, a CoverItLive on the conference Wiki, and a chat on the live stream of Mogulus. It became too much and led to some good discussion about multi-tasking. I felt bad for Warlick, who had flown from San Francisco to Philly for the session!
I agree with your closing sentiment, Kathy - I think actual "live blogging" is better left to backchannels which better support multi-user interaction, like Chatzy, Ustream, or CoverItLive. I've live-blogged a few times on Twitter and received a little pushback - not loud, but enough to take notice.
On a related topic, I'm very disappointed to see that Apple is still not supporting video recording and live streaming on the iPhone. :-(
With Twitter - for me - it is easy enough to scan the updates in order to find what is important to me. I am not an iphone user but I was able to quickly scan and pull what was useful to me especially since I am using tweetdeck. Your live-blogging was not annoying. For me it would depend on history. Perhaps if you were someone else I would consider not following in the future. You have posted so much of worth to me in the past that I can filter posts that are not - but know it is worth continuing to follow you. Also - It is fun to hear what people are excited about even if it is not currently relevant to me.
Hi Kathy,
Well, you probably already know my thoughts; you should have "Tapped In" and held session in one (or more) of the group rooms. You could have had live (archived) text chats plus threaded Discussions (retrievable any time) in the future!
Of course you know that Tapped In http://www.tappedin.org is my milieu. I'm there on Helpdesk much of the day along with BjB.
For those unfamiliar, Tapped In is an educator's collaborative with over 15,000 members and 500+ professional development groups, university and K-12 classrooms. Membership is free and ad free.
Sorry for hijacking your blog with my proselytizing, but hey... you wanted advice, right? ;-)
I don't mind live blogging at all because 1) it is easy enough to pick and choose what you need to read in Twitter 2) if it is an expert like YOU blogging then the material is more than valuable or 3)i trust your judgement to link us to somewhere else if necessary BUT many times i just prefer to stay in Twitter.
Why not create a second twitter identity like schrock_bkchannel or ks_bkchannel--reserve that id for any sessions you are running--advantages anyone who is interested in you can find what you're doing at any time, separates out your channel twitters, people can follow/unfollow based on event?
Julia
@jhengstler
I'd probably opt for the back channel for a live event, but then I'm really happy with my iPhone even though it won't be adding a taser, flashlight or scanner.
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