Weekend Reads 13 June 2008
It’s almost the weekend, so I thought I’d share some of the interesting posts I’ve read this week. The first is a post from a Guardian UK blog on the Future of Journalism. It looks at how microblogging can be used in this way. Once again, the question of citizen journalism is under discussion, with Twitter as the main means of ‘demystifying journalism’. I don’t know that I agree with the article, but it raised some interesting points.
It occurred to me that Twitter is often included in discussion about the changing news process, and there have been many discussions online about how to use Twitter as a reporting tool. But while Twitter has huge potential for publishers, it is, at its core, a communication tool. It’s like round looking at a phone, trying to plan some editorial that uses the phone - when actually the thing to do is just to use it to talk to people.
Next up is Darren Rowse’s analysis of the differences between Plurk and Twitter. It’s all about how conversations happen, and he illustrates with some screenshots of responses to the same question on both services.
The other thing that I like about Plurk is that conversations are contained and don’t get as mixed up as they do on Twitter.
I have to agree that following conversations is easier on Plurk.
Finally, as the browser wars hot up again, Lifehacker has done a speed test comparing the latest release candidates for Firefox and Opera with Safari and IE7. IE7 takes no prizes, but the other browsers each win in one category. Happy reading.
