“Sorry mate, I was lost in YouTube…”

Do you ever get that? You start looking at videos on YouTube, and before you know it – it’s been hours. Something about those sidebar recommendations just keeps you suckered in. “You can’t leave,” it chuckles. “There’s MORE!”

Anyway, here’s a product of one such session: a list of brilliant musicians on YouTube. They’re all non-famous, and by that, I mean there’s no professional recording artists here. Some of them went on to *become* professionals (and I’ll tell you the ones that do), but at the time of recording, they were flat out amateurs just trying to share what they love.

Here, in no particular order, are my eight favourite YouTube musical geniuses. Enjoy (and of course, please suggest your own).

1. On The Rocks, male voice choir

These guys are fantastic. I like how, when you compare it to something like Glee, these are just a bunch of ordinary looking blokes having a blast. And very talented too – great song. (They went on to appear in a X-Factor-style TV show in the states – finalists, but not winners.)

2. Naudo, Tenerife’s finest

This chap works the bar and cafe scene in Tenerife and is the most beautiful guitarist I’ve ever heard.

3. Steven Rossitto, 16-year-old Sinatra

Sixteen – yes, sixteen – year-old Steven Rossitto has more than something of the Frank Sinatra about him – a great talent.

4. Danny Small, NYC subway soul

I hear this guy now has a record deal – but there’s still something quite magical about watching Danny Small sing. And seeing it juxtaposed with the hub of NYC life makes it even better.

5. DoneRightJr, the ChatRoulette crooners

I’m bending my own rules a bit now – but had to get this in.

6. Ronald Jenkees, king of the YouTubes

“Hello YouTubes!” says the cheerful chap with the hat. Do yourself a favour; make sure you listen at least up to when the beat drops – about 20 seconds in. Class. They gave him a record deal – have a listen on Spotify.

7. David So, “the Asian John Legend”

The top comment on one of his other videos reads: “I wish your voice was butter so I could slather it all over my body.”

Quite.

8. Anna, the signer

What? This isn’t the sort of cover you’d expect? Here’s Anna giving a performance for her final sign language exams. Inspiring stuff!

Which is why Friends Reunited, once the king of UK social networks, will be on the end of some fairly bad press today; mostly from those who’ll say “PAH! Facebook blew you out of the water”, and leave their analysis essentially at that.

But let’s take a closer look at Friends Reunited have done with their relaunch attempt. (My report is here)

They’ve teamed up with the Press Association the country’s biggest archive of images. Not only this, but they’ve also got the British Library on board, providing the country’s biggest archive of, er, anything.

Where Facebook’s entry for you being born is right now a blue box simply saying ‘born’ – Friends Reunited can offer a host of content from that day: newspaper cuttings, iconic images and soon, they hope, material items.

What car did your dad drive you home in after you were born? Add it. What was on TV that day? Add it. You get the picture (you can probably add that too…).

Friends Reunited’s biggest problem first time round was one of impatience. Had it waited, like Facebook, for the technology to catch up with it – they too could have offered targeted advertising.

As it happened – it was only Mark Zuckerburg’s stubbornness which prevented Facebook from entering its own paid subscription-powered early grave.

The sense I got from talking to Friends Reunited’s new owner Chris van der Kuyl was one of of cautious excitement. He believes they’re onto something pretty good which can be monetised in the future – but only when the time is right.

But of course, the internet – and social media in particular – is an industry built on this painful concept of ‘buzz’. Friends Reunited right now has publicity, but whether or not that will turn to buzz is an entirely different question.

That siad, I do feel this is one to watch – even if you do feel completely out of touch by admitting it.

“This is our first show. We have a million planned, literally.”

The scene resembles something from the mid-nineties, your typical late night smokey chat show fronted by a charismatic presenter who will probably never air at any time other than 1am — which is just the way he likes it.

But this isn’t a show about music, or film, or theatre or art. It’s about technology. That’s right – a show for geeks. And the presenter, Joshua Topolsky, isn’t delving into the mind of some troubled musician or actor – he’s talking to entrepreneurs, CEOs and other people responsible for some of the tech that is, to some people at least, changing how we live.

Aside from the ‘television’ show (it’s a webcast at the moment, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that soon changed), Topolsky and his team run The Verge, a technology news website that has been rippling through the technology scene with impressive vigour.

Meanwhile, here in the UK, there’s The Kernel, launched just before Christmas by the outspoken – to say the least – Milo Yiannopoulos. It claims to be an online technology magazine designed for – their words  - ‘enquiring minds’.

Both The Kernel and The Verge herald a new type of technology journalism. Coverage that isn’t about specifications, or new consoles, or the ever-pathetic ‘gadget’ reviews (although The Verge does feature some product reviews… but they’re no where near as awkward as much of the mainstream).

Good technology journalism, important technology journalism, is about the cultural impact; the political ramifications; the state of an industry that we’re essentially relying on to provide much of the West’s economic clout in the future.

The Kernel’s launch was met with a lot of praise. Some of it public – such as that from Moshi Monsters owner Michael Acton Smith – and some of it less so. On launch day – when Milo emailed every tech newsroom in the known universe – I shared a few emails with colleagues to gather their opinions, with responses that can be adequately summed up with the phrase “he could be onto something here”.

And he could. The Kernel is a technology website that effectively looks down on all the others, and although Milo is likely to come across his fair share of enemies along the way (in both he media and the industry), I can’t see the early momentum built up by him and his team being wasted.

The Kernel is refreshing, it’s in your face, treating the technology community as it should: not as fat lonely smelly virgins, but as highly-connected, intelligent and creative individuals.

The respective backgrounds of both Milo and Joshua are significant to their ventures’ success. Joshua, from Pittsburgh, was the former editor-in-chief of Engadget – a site that, like several once-brilliant properties on the web, is now under the ownership of Aol.

Milo, a once-fired yet cunning returnee as an expensive freelancer at the Telegraph, has also had a similar brush with the steralisation of tech journalism, taking in a stint at Techcrunch Europe, another site now part of the Aol mothership (at the expense of its charismatic figurehead, Mike Arrington, and other influential and talented journalists).

You feel sites like The Verge and The Kernel are the by-product of the squashing of the niche technology press. A press that – hello Mashable – has click-based targets that can only be reached with tacky infographics (see also: spinfographics) and ’8 reasons why posting a list drives traffic’.

So I hope, for our sake, that The Verge and The Kernel continue to attract the crowds. The whopping great banner ad at the top of The Verge suggests a sturdy level of backing, and it’s the sort of site the people splashing millions out try-hard start-ups would probably throw some money towards as well, if only to feel cool.

The Kernel, marvellously, has managed to sponsor each individual section of it’s site. And, in three months time, the ‘Nutshell’ newsletter will become a paid service. If it can establish a reputation for being something of a cheat-sheet for people wanting to feel ‘in the loop’, it will work. A business model on a news site, you say? Blimey.

It would mean, it has to be hoped, that they both can pay good money (or even some money) to their writers.

But it’s all down to the next few months. The Verge is only two shows old. The Kernel barely out of the womb – and its biggest asset, the editor, is evidently a man who operates on whims of enthusiasm and rushes of blood to the head. Two columns a week, he promises of himself, not to mention the unforgiving treadmill that is commissioning and editing a credible magazine.

The Kernel has a lot of fans right now, but Milo doesn’t need me to tell him people would love to see him cock up somewhere along the way and be forced to give up before really putting The Kernel to the test.

I hope both The Verge and The Kernel have a roaring 2012. I hope they continue to be backed, read and appreciated and, most of all, keep the corporate wolves away.

But, Milo, drop the ‘the’. Just ‘Kernel’. It’s cleaner.

Public reaction to the story has seen sympathy falling largely with the employee – at least from where I’ve been sitting.

But you wonder what impact the case will have if Noah wins. Will companies be reluctant to invest in Twitter from here on in, knowing that the investment could, potentially, walk out the door as employees come and go? Definitely one to watch.

Anyway, here’s what Phonedog’s president Tom Klein had to say on the matter (he’s promised more info in the new year):

Why was the Twitter account created?

- As all forms of Social Media were gaining more momentum, the management at PhoneDog realized that these mediums would be helpful in attracting a larger audience for PhoneDog’s published content and the editors representing PhoneDog. We learned from our YouTube account in the previous years that branding the account under the PhoneDog trademark would lead to more brand awareness and loyalty. PhoneDog is a personality-driven brand, and we realized that expanding Twitter, YouTube, and other social media mediums would allow us to better engage with our fans.

What was the account used for?

- The primary objectives of the account were to promote PhoneDog’s published paid for content, giveaways, and live blogging events, and to provide the audience a way to follow Noah during his daily activities as a representative for the company. PhoneDog has always strived to provide a very personal user experience by frequently communicating with its audience, and all of our editors were and are encouraged to tweet personal aspects of their life to the account.

Did PhoneDog Media have a Twitter policy?

- Yes. When creating the account, PhoneDog management permitted and directed Noah to establish the account using the PhoneDog_Noah naming convention. An additional email memo was sent to the editorial staff in January of 2009 reiterating the Company’s Twitter naming policy.

How were the followers acquired?

- As a representative for PhoneDog, Noah published and was compensated for hundreds of blog posts and videos created during his career with PhoneDog. All of the content included the PhoneDog_Noah Twitter account information for users to follow. Our YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/phonedog and web properties www.phonedog.com, facebook.com/phonedog and other Twitter accounts attract millions of users each month. The size and the targeted nature of the PhoneDog audience were the primary drivers to grow the account’s followers.

PhoneDog Media Statement:

Since the creation of our very first account, our primary Twitter accounts have utilized a naming convention with the PhoneDog trademark to purposefully promote the brand along with the company’s editorial team. All of our social media accounts, content, and their related websites are extensions of our online publications. Our social media efforts were established to increase exposure for our web properties and to increase the brands’ identity and not any one individual after he or she departs the company. The costs and resources invested by PhoneDog Media into growing its followers, fans, and general brand awareness through social media are substantial and are considered property of PhoneDog Media LLC. We intend to aggressively protect our customer lists and confidential information, intellectual property, trademark and brands. Many of the statements made regarding the facts of the case are inaccurate. We intend to prove this in due process.

So there we have it. Who do you support now?

—–

Have you ever listened to a journalist using a content management system? It usually goes something like this:

*Click*… *click*…*sigh*. Wait. Waiitt. “Oh for fu… oh, it’s working, I think”. *Click*. “Why’s that bit not showing? Oh right, I need to put that in there. I always forget that”. *Click*… *click*… “Oh it’s fuc…. oh… no… erm… oh right. Joe, that’s live now”.

And that’s on a good day. On a bad day, Joe gets told he’ll have to wait because a glitch means the page looks completely insane. Or all the text has been gobbled up never to be seen again. Or a crash at a crucial moment means your entire effort is blasted out into the digital void, leaving the journalist to explain to an editor that it did exist, and it was brilliant, but no, I didn’t back it up in Word because there was simply no time. I’ll stay late.

I’ve said it many times: Online journalism is, in many ways, the purest journalism of all. A medium defined not by constraints, but by possibility. Think about it: TV journalism needs pictures. Radio needs great audio. Print needs, well, a day’s lead time.

But in online, to quote Yomanda, you’re free to do what you want to do.

At least that’s how it should be. Content management systems (CMS) are the most neglected part of the online journalism process, a vital cog that, in too many newsrooms, is allowed to fall by the wayside through under – or over – investment, ignorance or internal politics.

Systems and processes are becoming defined by workarounds and hacks rather than good design and intuitive publishing – and this is a big big problem.

As this brilliant piece in AdWeek puts it, good content management in newsrooms is as vital as oxygen.

Perpetual cycle

A bad CMS hurts. It means people cut corners. It means more time is given to fart-arsing about with HTML code than writing good editorial. It means time that should be spent refining headlines, opening pars and article structure is instead spent wrestling with ‘quirks’ that slowly sap away at a reporter’s motivation to do the job right.

It’s infectious too, don’t forget. A CMS that causes problems means slower news. It means news without due depth as more time is given too production rather than reporting. This in turn means the website isn’t as good, and therefore doesn’t get as many readers, which loops nicely into the journalists feeling hopeless once again.

It’s a perpetual cycle which the bean counters will use to justify cuts in online because “less people are looking at that section anyway”.

What’s more,  in mainstreaem organisations with ‘big’ names, online journalism can often be about convincing the old hands to get stuck in. After a long stressful day, a TV journalist can be convinced to write 600 words of copy. But when he sees that it doesn’t appear for a few hours, and that it barely receives any comments and so on, will be excited enough to do it again? Probably not – and the CMS is at the heart of that disenchantment.

There’s a glaring question that arises from all of this: Why? Why are CMSs not very good? Why aren’t basic problems which – as I’ve just discussed – create wider implications spotted and squashed within days?

“People who decide what gets done pretty much always would put resources into changing what the public sees,” a senior source in development at a major UK news group told me. For the sake of this blog post, I’ll call him John.

John is right, of course. Of the last few re-designs I’ve been a part of, only one – the BBC’s move to its latest new look – also corresponded with a CMS upgrade. This is understandable, a CMS change is expensive, potentially troublesome and requires training.

But the underlying point that many of the decision makers in top publishers put external aesthetics ahead of internal harmony is a fair one. Re-designs are short-term gains. Sites like Drudge show us that content is king – if it’s good enough, a website can look like a donkey’s arse and still gain massive popularity.

‘Four journalists in four years’

Site enhancements can bring a positive energy to a news site. Turning an ugly site into a pretty one will give journos a psychological boost, but they still need help from an improved CMS to make the most of the new opportunities – rather than, as I’ve seen in many places, having to hack their way around an old crappy system to fit the latest facelift.

It’s a question of communication. There is none. Instead, a middle man (often, in my experience, executive editors), pass on what they see as the priorities to a dev team which will duly execute the commands.

But in the same way Philip Clarke probably doesn’t know about irritations with the tills at Tesco, executive editors have a tendency to look at the bigger picture (“We’d like to enchance our live blog offering”) rather than the niggles that bring everything to a depressing halt (“It takes fifty clicks to add a quote box and it makes me want to kill a kitten”).

And that really is the problem. Communication. Not technology, not budgets, not skills – communication.

Even Developer John made this candid admission: “In my four years in the industry I have maybe spoken directly to about four journalists.”

Incredible, isn’t it? Here’s a person who is responsible in a big way for a successful CMS at an enormously influential publisher. And yet, he’s rarely in contact with the people who use the product of his work.

If he was, he’d hear from people like this reporter – who got in touch after I sent out a tweet asking for CMS rants and raves. Again, anoymous, but I can say he works for a weekly within a UK publisher (not the same place as the developer above) of around 150 titles, most of which are newspapers.

“My pet hate is nibs and non-web stories. Each one still has to be categorised, geo-tagged and filed twice before it can be used in print – information that is only useful for stories that will be uploaded to the web.

“We’re told this information are for archive purposes, but by far the most useful way of tagging stories for future search is to ask the reporter to add their own individual keywords – something that is often skipped by a reporter just labelling their story with the useless keyword ‘news’.”

More evidence of corner-cutting and time-wasting. Issues like this can be solved in moments, you’d imagine, but I think I’m not being harsh on my source when I say that it probably never goes much further than a few swear-words at the end of the day. Likewise, the developer who never talks to journos just doesn’t get this information. Both sides are frustrated.

‘Nobody bothered’

While working at the BBC World Service, I’d often grumble about one of its internal systems. Yet despite the existence of a very capable, and very well monitored, bug reporting system – not once did I take any of my complaints further.

I’d say this attitude among journos is common. Developer John told me how his team invited over 200 or so users of their CMS to test out new features.

“Almost nobody bothered – and when we thought it’s fine (because of no requests to fix something) and turned the old version off there was this shitstorm about some minor things not working properly (which could have been fixed in couple of days).”

“Small improvements could make journalists life much easier but if they don’t want to participate they shouldn’t expect much either.”

Strong words – but important ones. Then again, in a busy newsroom, there simply isn’t time to log complaints and bug reports. Time is constrained enough as it is without then having to spend another 10 minutes explaining why something took too long.

Can it be solved? Sure it can. But it’s not a problem that can be fixed by simply flinging money at it. As the issues discussed in this post show, like so many business problems, crappy content management can be overcome with better communication between the people who really matter: the creators and the users.

Journalists need to speak up when something’s rubbish – and not just to their immediate colleagues. They need to make more effort to quantify just why it’s such hindrance.

Developers, for their part, need to observe how journalists work – sit in for a week, a month – and work out why current set-ups are failing.

And, most of all, managing editors and publishers need to take the cancer that is a terrible CMS seriously. Do something!

It was when I realised I was reading comments from a user identifying himself as ‘MuslimFuckJew‘ that I realised something was very wrong with YouTube.

The username didn’t surprise me. You’ll always get offensive buffoons on the internet.

No, what surprised me was that rather than just stumbling across a soon-to-be-banned lunatic, MuslimFuckJew’s profile has in fact been active for almost a year.

In that time, he’d taken a moment to fill in his profile.

Occupation? “nigGER HATING FUCKING HATING THEM NIGGERS”

Favourite film? “The HoLOLocaust live tapes: Jews get gassed”

Books? “Mein Kampf, and Around Blacks Never Relax”

It’s no surprise then, with members like this, that my friend refers to the world’s most popular video-sharing as the ‘arsehole of the web’.

It’s something of an internet-wide joke, isn’t it?

Mention Israel, or Obama, or, erm, WWE wrestler John Cena and you suddenly find yourself in a world of pain, where the nastiest of ill-informed comments flood the discussion stream, with not even a well-placed asterisk for protection.

We look at these comments and laugh. “Oh! That’s YouTube for you!” we’ll cry, treating the site like some sort of racist elderly Nan – dearly loved and harmless as, well, she’s always been like that. You love her, she’s seen a lot. You put up with it.

Yet as I see our mate MuslimFuckJew (who, quite staggeringly, claims to be 29 years of age) go headlong into another foul-mouthed tirade I begin to wonder: when will Google be held to account for all this?

To date, Google has been very clever whenever the issue of moderation swings around – usually spurred by an horrifically offensive video surfacing.

“It’s all good,” they say. “Users can flag content immediately and it will be removed.”

They’re right, of course – YouTube’s flagging system is among the quickest in the world, a remarkable feat given the sheer amount of footage uploaded every moment of the day.

But is that good enough? What happens when – and I’d argue this has happened already – the problem gets too big and people start giving up on trying to moderate as a community?

Remember, this is the company that produced software which can listen in to a movie for copyrighted audio and then swap it for something licensed – or at least pop a link underneath the clip to buy it.

This is also the company whose search algorithms are so complex that they have become the most closely guarded corporate secret since Coca-Cola’s secret recipe.

And yet, for some reason, comment upon comment upon comment flies through. Racism, sexism, hate speech… nothing is left out in that sacred spot underneath a YouTube video.

Are Google seriously suggesting that they’re not clever enough to fix it?

If I can isolate offensive comments – using, naturally, Google’s own technology – why can’t they?

It’s a war kick-started by Nick Davies’ brilliant book Flat Earth News. In it, he detailed the worrying picture of newsrooms up and down the land aimlessly churning out copy based on press releases and wire copy.

Faithful reproduction of wire copy still goes on, there’s no denying that. Indeed, with every new publication brought to market, the churnalism problem grows worse.

Yet various unofficial and unscientific observations of the newsrooms I’ve worked in suggest that the blind churnalism of press releases is actually decreasing.

Yes, much of the news is still powered by press releases and PR reps getting, to use a friend’s posh ghetto phrase, “up in one’s grill”. But journalists are aware of it now. Journalists are aware that readers are aware, and that by churning out press releases, they are doing a disservice to the industry.

Not only that, but the momentum of Davies’ book has filtered up to the ruling classes and – I’m hope I’m not being naive here – I’d suggest that some publications that were getting deep into the unwavering horror that is constant churnalism have turned a corner.

But watch out. There’s a new menace in town – something I’m now calling the ‘spinfographic’*.

Yes, yes, well done, it’s a clever play on words from ‘infographic’, one of the buzziest buzz words in news right now.

Done well, infographics are beautiful. Get a good data set, apply some artistic flair and a skill for displaying complex information, and you’re left with a beautiful method of producing journalism.

Newspapers and websites are desperate to make their own, commissioning graphic artists on a daily basis.

Among all this excitement, the PR industry’s ears have pricked up. You see, press releases are great – but there’s a serious problem. Journalists can change them. They can take out the “best” – in a PR’s eyes – bits, replacing them with horrible things like balance and criticism**. Oh the horror.

Wouldn’t it be better, then, if there was some way a PR firm could get their “message” out exactly as intended?

Enter: the infographic. The spinfographic. Unlike a text piece, it’s very difficult to rearrange a pre-made, illustrated graphic. What’s more, they’re popular as hell. Even better: they make a site look very new media and clever.

So that’s why sites like Mashable fall arse-over-tit to get them online as quickly as humanly possible. Concerns about bias seem quickly brushed aside when infographics are on offer.

One example. An enormous infographic showing some detailed statistics about how people are flocking to the internet in search of jobs. Infographic made by, wait for it, CareerEnlightenment.com.

Another: The growing work from home phenomenon. Designed by a company that, funnily enough, offers solutions for managing a work-from-home workforce.

And, my personal favourite, an infographic wondering if, in our social media world, our email habits are changing. Yes, it concludes, we’re more mobile. But wait! Overall email use is absolutely on the increase, and you should, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES, stop using email marketing as a way of reaching potential customers. The source of this information? Litmus. An email marketing firm.

See what I mean? To be fair, most of these infographics are indeed accompanied by a blurb which dips into why the data could have a few elements of bias.

But an infographic, by its very nature, is a self-contained piece of journalism. For a PR firm, it’s a dream. An untouched, share-friendly dream.

It must be stopped.

* Thanks to Martin Warne for coming up with ‘spinfographic’. All associated fame and wealth should be directed to him.

** True story: I was once hollered at down the phone by a well-known broadband company. Their complaint? “We don’t feel like your story shared the message of today”. Mugs.

Personally, when it comes to adult-orientated output, I don’t have a problem with a few naughty words in relevant context or even for, as this example will show, for comical effect.

This morning, on the Today programme, in a debate about whether we should still be obsessed with class, author A.N Wilson uttered the word ‘bollocks’ in a way that can only be described as a) measured and b) perfect.

Is it time for the word to be downgraded? It’s nowhere near the s-, f- and c-words of our lives, and when used in such a magnificent way it seems a shame to banish it away like a naughty child.

Context: A.N Wilson is talking about the perception that Downtown Abbey is a faithful representation of the Britain of yesteryear.

A thing of beauty?

A story that meant that rather than scurry across London to meet friends on a Friday night – as would be the norm after a late shift on the breaking news desk – I opted to quietly slump off home.

I’d spent the last few hours sifting through the swathes of information about the unfolding events in Oslo. It started from a desk a few metres away, ‘Bomb in Oslo!’ came the cry – followed by the sound of many others scrabbling at their computers, cursing that they’re just never watching the wires at the right time.

At this point, what did we know? Very little – but enough. An explosion.

Possibly gas? People soon got in touch to say it was likely due to infrastructural differences in how Norwegian buildings are likely to have been built.

Early footage – found via Twitter, naturally – showed what looked to be a very charred-out car, on its side, situated between the two buildings that bore the brunt of the damage. The hunch was that it was a car bomb – a charred out vehicle shown in footage to be on its side seemed to confirm that.

The PM was safe, and the death toll wasn’t, considering the position of the blast, that large.

That was the extent of our information. If Twitter was to believed, there was a second blast – there wasn’t – and one widely-retweeted account described tens of bodies all over the street, a statement we now know to be utterly, and dangerously, false.

Misinformation on Twitter has become a serious, serious problem. When it comes to the BBC, many tweeters criticise the speed behind of lot of its breaking news. “That happened ten minutes ago!” will come the cry, not realising that ten minutes ago it was just one piece of correct information among the thousands of lies that come our way.

Lies is a strong word – and with good reason. Even in horror stories like Oslo, people get kicks from trying to fool the media. This video shows a clip from YouTube video (the original of which has now been removed) that has been altered to make it look like a second explosion took place. It was widely retweeted.

Now, these juvenile attempts at tricking us are one thing, but there are other sources, sources that should know better, that blindly retweet and quote things they have no idea are true.

Here’s an example. Jeff Jarvis, formerly king in the world of forward-thinking news, he’s now descended into a cantankerous old bloke who seems ready to rampage at anything, such the BBC daring to have a meeting in semi-secrecy a month or so ago.

Anyway, when it was clear that Oslo would be a massive story, the BBC set up a live blog (or live event page as we call it internally. Meh). On it, we’d be doing the usual stuff – putting up comments from readers, pulling in tweets as well as correspondent analysis.

One particular comment was plucked out of an email sent to us by Julia in Berlin:

“Residents in Oslo are asked via Twitter to unlock their WiFi signals to let trapped people communicate via wireless because phones will jam!”

Now – that’s interesting, isn’t it? Not in the grand scheme of things, but any of those technology things that wouldn’t have happened 10 years ago or so make for good little stories.

Although, having said that, it seems that that email was powered by a few people on Twitter, tweeting with the #Oslo tag, asking people to turn their WiFi encryption off. The earliest I can find is by @crowdsourcing. It wasn’t an order – as far as we’re aware – from an authority. Just someone on Twitter. It gained real traction when Ben Goldacre tweeted it.

And then this happened:

Full circle. Twitter decides unlocking WiFi is a good idea. It gets retweeted a lot. A person emails (from Berlin, incidentally) the BBC describing advice given out on Twitter. BBC publishes email. And now, Twitter, in its infinite stupidity and naivety, now say that line has come from the BBC. Right – I get it now.

So now the heavily retweeted line begins with “BBC:”. In some cases, people started posting it as “RT @BBCBreaking:…” – which is how it came to my attention.

Step in Jeff Jarvis who, always a stickler for accuracy and, whenever he gets a moment, slagging off rolling news, pops up with this ill-informed masterpiece:

It did, did it?!

You see, the Twitterati loves to stick the boot in when ‘big’ news orgs get it wrong. As they should – there’s never a problem with that.

But what the Twitterati also loves is to knock mainstream media when it’s slow to innovate, or, when a story is breaking, slow to report the very latest line.

But that example, although arguably frivolous compared to some of the horrors that go out with every big story (bomb at Tottenham Court Road, anyone?), shows perfectly how Twitter never lets accuracy and truth get in the way of passing on a line that is guaranteed a few retweets, followed by an irrelevant post on Mashable.

I’ve banned myself from going to any more journalism conferences. Particularly ones with sessions entitled “Is social media killing news?”. It’s tedious: Social media – and the news junkies within it – is too immature and too obsessed with its own ‘reputation’ to ever be considered anything near trustworthy.

Let’s take Twitter for what it is: A good way for people to share experiences, discuss opinions and pass on content.

A news service it is not. If you look through the Oslo coverage, the truth came from reporters on the ground. From Norwegian newspapers, TV and radio journalists. Old media. Mainstream media.

Instead of getting all misty-eyed about how Twitter ‘broke’ something, instead give a bit of praise to the people who made sense of it all.

Rant over.

Until next time.