Twitter

Link Journalism

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Something that’s been fascinating me over the past few weeks during all the weather weirdness has been how incredibly valuable Twitter has been in keeping track of everything that’s happening. The #seatst (Seattle Twitter! Storm! Team!) and #pdxtst (Portland Twitter! Storm! Team!) tags were the single best sources for moment-by-moment information during the snowstorms, #waflood is still running strong for tracking flood info, and last night I was reading about an #earthquake in California just minutes after it happened. I’ve been enjoying Twitter for day-to-day trivialities and quick bursts of drivel that wouldn’t be worth making a full formal post for, but it’s Twitter’s growing usefulness as a crowdsourced quick-response news channel is mindblowing.

Of course, I’m far from the only person noticing this trend, and there’s a neat article at Publishing 2.0 (which I found via a #waflood tagged tweet from Evan Calkins this morning) looking into the creation, evolution, and use of the #waflood tag over the past few days.

The discussion about journalism’s future so often focuses on Big Changes — Kill the print edition! Flips for everyone! Reinvent business models NOW! — that it’s easy to forget how simple innovation can be.

Sometimes all you need is a few Tweets, a bunch of links, and some like-minded pioneers.

That’s how a quiet revolution began in Washington state Wednesday. Four journalists spontaneously launched one of the first experiments in collaborative (or networked) link journalism to cover a major local story.

But it gets better. Those four journalists weren’t in the same newsroom. In fact, they all work for different media companies. And here’s the best part: Some of them have never even met in person.

It’s a great look at how the collaboration allowed the journalists and their respective news organizations to stay on top of the stories, and put together stories and information pages that were far more comprehensive than if they’d each stuck to their own individual “old media style” resources.

The Washington link projects should serve as models for the entire news industry. They show that collaborative linking draws readers, is easy, and costs nothing more than time (and not even much of that).

Seth said the December snowstorm link roundup was on the homepage for three or four days — but it was the site’s most-trafficked story for the entire month.

[…]

This is the power of collaborative news networks. By forming a network, newsrooms can discover not just a greater volume of news, but a greater volume of relevant, high-quality news than one person, one newsroom, or one wire service could alone.

Compare the Washington group’s great waflood link roundup to a Google News search for “Washington flood” — I know which one I’d rather have as a resource if I lived in that area.

Neat stuff. Even though I’m “just” a consumer, not a journalist in any sense, and not involved with or affiliated with any of these organizations, I’m fascinated by the effects of the evolving connections that technology is making possible between the media and the public, and within and among the various media organizations themselves.

Stormpocalypse!

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First off, the good news: we’re not being affected by the current weather craziness hitting the northwest. While we’re near the Green River, which is pretty high at the moment — the National Weather Service Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service has one checkpoint on the Green River, near Aburn (just south of us), which shows it at ‘Action Stage’ but already crested and predicted to drop (check other NW area rivers here — it doesn’t look like it’ll be flooding in our area.

That said, this is nuts! This stormpocalypse hit us in two stages: first the snowpocalypse, and now the floodpocalypse (yes, the nomenclature is silly, but that’s part of the fun). I’ve been watching #waflood on Twitter, and it’s been fascinating watching all the updates appear.

It’s also neat seeing just who all is involved with this method of awareness and communication. In addition to all the “normal people” giving updates, the Washington State Department of Transportation is using WSDOT and @terpening (as well as their Flickr account, the city of Bellingham, FEMA (a far cry from Katrina!), the Red Cross, King County, and probably plenty of other official organizations are joining in. Lots of good information coming out…even when the information isn’t good:

Washington Transportation Secretary Paula
Hammond says Interstate 5 at Chehalis could be closed for four
days.

The Transportation Department is monitoring the flooding. The DOT says I-5 is closed from US 12, milepost 68, to Grand Mound, milepost 88 in Lewis County due to the rising water in Dillenbaugh Creek south of Chehalis.

Hammond says the flooding is similar to the December 2007 flood that caused a four-day blockage on the main north-south route in Western Washington.

Hammond says when the Chehalis River crests Thursday night,
officials expect water to be 10 feet deep over the highway. After
the water starts falling, crews plan to use pumps and breach a levy
to help the water drain out.

Hammond says about 10,000 trucks a day travel I-5 and the
financial impact of the closure on freight movement is about $4
million a day. That’s made worse by the closure of the three major
Cascade passes.

In fact, according to an early morning WSDOT tweet, “There are no north south routes available between Seattle and Portland, or east west routes from Western WA to Spokane at this time #waflood”. Unless you want to go to Canada, Seattle and its surrounding metro area is essentially completely cut off!

Crazy stuff, and I’m counting myself quite glad to not be directly impacted by any of this — though it came close, as Prairie’s dad sent us a shot of the Lewis River just outside his house in Woodland (in southern Washington, just north of Vancouver, which is just north of Portland).

Lewis River Flooding

The river holding, the rising has slowed, four feet to the top of the bank, then four feet to the main floor. Am watching close, a fireman rang the door bell, said be ready to evacuate, have been planning but have taken no action, hope that I don’t have to scramble.

It sounds like the river didn’t get quite high enough for evacuation, but that’s pretty close!

So…what’s going to be Stormpocalypse Part III?

Comcast Clarification

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Looks like I’ve got my answer: our Limited Basic service shouldn’t change. Here are the relevant tweets:

@djwudi Limited basic will be channels below 30 will not need a box. What channel number are you concerned about? #

@djwudi This isn’t happening immediately; it’s where we’re eventually moving. As you said, it’s seperate from the FCC broadcast transition. #

@ShaunaCausey @comcastcares You two are fast! :) I know we’ll miss 99 (CBUT), they were great during the Olympics, and we’ve kept watching. #

@ShaunaCausey @comcastcares My concern: there aren’t many channels above 29 on Limited Basic, but having them go poof isn’t “unaffected”. #

@djwudi Good point. you will still get CBUT. If you are a “limited” customer, you will not lose any channels. 75-99 WILL still be there. #

Sounds like a good end to this particular adventure to me!

Update: There have been some additions to the Seattle Times article that cover this same information. Here’s the relevant sections of their article:

Q: What about public access channels above 29? (NEW)

A: Comcast must still offer a handful of public access channels in analog format, per its franchise agreements. Tony Perez of Seattle’s cable office said that in Seattle, those channels include 75 (KCTS Plus) 76 (UW 2 TV); 77 (SCAN, the public access channel) and perhaps a few more.

Q: What about Canadian public television channel 99 (CBUT)? (NEW)

A: It will remain available to “limited basic” customers, spokesman Steve Kipp said in an email: “In addition to C-SPAN, C-SPAN2, the local broadcast channels and the local government and education channels, the Limited Basic lineup includes: Northwest Cable News, ION, Discovery Channel, KMYQ, KBCB, KHCV, QVC, HSN, KWDK, Hallmark Channel, KTBW, TVW, Univision, The Weather Channel and CBUT.”

Kipp said the limited basic channel numbers won’t change: “As for channel locations here, they will remain the same so the Limited Basic channels that are in the 75 to 99 range would remain the same.”

Maybe @comcastcares after all!

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Back when Prairie and I moved into this apartment, we ended up with Comcast cable. I wasn’t super excited about this, given all the horror stories about Comcast’s customer service floating about the ‘net, but we didn’t have much choice. Over the air TV reception in the Kent valley is nearly nonexistent, and we’re on the wrong side of the building to get a DirecTV connection.

So we signed up for Comcast’s most basic, entry level, all analog “Limited Basic” package. $18 a month gets us local channels plus a few extras, and our favorite surprise in the package was Channel 99 CBUT, Vancouver BC’s CBC affiliate. We watched almost nothing but CBUT during the Olympics, and still tune in from time to time, having become fans of Canadian TV, and especially their sports (during the Olympics, they actually recognized that there were other countries competing) and news coverage (their coverage of the US Elections was an interesting break from the US media). In any case, our cable package isn’t fancy — we don’t even have a cable box, but just run the coax straight from the wall to the TV — but it’s enough for us.

Yesterday I stumbled across an article about Comcast Seattle’s upcoming digital transition. While separate from the broadcast digital transition, it’s the same basic idea (replacing high-bandwidth analog with low-bandwidth digital) and, through somewhat unfortunate timing, will be occurring at about the same time as the broadcast switch. Since our package is analog, I was understandably curious about what to expect.

According to the article, “Customers with limited basic — just channels 2-29 — won’t be affected at all. Those channels will stay analog, so those customers can still just plug their cable into a new or old TV.” So far so good…but what about those channels above 29 that we’re currently receiving? Admittedly, there aren’t a lot of them, but there are a few, including those friendly Canadians. Are we going to lose them? And if so, would we really have to nearly triple our monthly cable bill in order to keep them around (since the lowest digital package that Comcast offers is a ridiculous $56/month)?

I figured I’d see if I could get a quick answer. I’d been following the comcastcares Twitter account for some time, after stumbling across some of the impressive stories about their customer service approach, and fired off a couple brief tweets.

It’s hard for me to believe that @comcastcares when their TV tiers jump from $18/mo (bare bones analog) to $56/mo (entry level digital). #

@comcastcares BTW, that isn’t a rant at you or the stellar customer service you do through Twitter. I just think TV pricing is horrendous. #

@comcastcares When you go all digital in Seattle http://xrl.us/o2kzp will I lose the channels above 30 I currently get with Limited Basic? #

A little bit later that evening, he came back to me with a preliminary answer:

@djwudi I have to get the specifics but as I understand it all channels above 30 will not be available. I will find out more tomorrow #

Not bad — within just a couple hours, I had a response. Admittedly, not an encouraging response, but a response. Then, this morning, I woke up to find that within an hour after he’d responded, he’d referred me to a local Comcast representative, who told me the following:

@djwudi Hi,Re:Comcast–You will not lose channels, you will actually get more. If you have basic cable, we’ll give you very small conver … #

@djwudi Oops, meant to add that Comcast will give you (free of charge) a small box that will allow you to get additional channels. #

I’m guessing that the “small box” that Shauna is referring to here is the “DTA” also being provided to multiple-TV basic digital subscribers.

…Comcast decided to also start providing a secondary type of cable box to homes with multiple TVs.

Called a “DTA,” this device is about the size of a box of frozen spinach and can be mounted behind a TV. It allows the TV to display channels 30 and above without a full cable box. They do not record shows, display program guides or enable rentals like a full box.

So, if I’m understanding this correctly, sometime around the February switchover, Comcast should be providing us with one (or hopefully two, as we have two TVs) DTAs that will allow us to keep our Limited Basic bare-bones service, while still getting the channels we’ve been receiving…and possibly a few more. Not bad.

Also of note (to me, at least) is just how effective and easy this was. I’m used to “customer service” that actually prevents me from even making an attempt (calling Quest, for instance, involves navigating through a phone tree at a call center that operates on East Coast time, even though their customer service pages simply list hours of operation with no time zone listed, so us West Coasters don’t realize that closing at 6pm really means closing at 3pm when we’re still at work until we call and get nowhere). Being able to toss off a short, quick note and get a useful and polite response within a few hours is wonderful.

Comcast the corporate behemoth may very well have its fair share of issues (and then some — I must be honest, I’m not at all convinced that I’d trust my internet connection to them), but — at least on the Twitter level — Comcast’s employees are doing some very nice work.

Somewhat coincidentally, this morning Frank (the man behind comcastcares) posted on his personal weblog about his personal customer service philosophy, and it’s clear just why he does such good work. If only more people and companies would approach their customers with this kind of mindset.

I have seen a lot of press and blog posts about the efforts of my team on the web. I have always been surprised by this because I do not see what I am doing as that special. If you review how I defined Customer Service, you will notice that I believe it is everyone’s responsibility to talk with Customers. I also believe that it is important to be where they are when possible. The internet provides that ability.

To me if I hear someone talking about the company I work for I always offer to help. I have done this at parties, on the street, and one time in a Verizon Wireless store. I never have done it in a negative way. I would just say let me assist, here is my business card. My business card has my email, office phone and my cell phone clearly listed on it. It is very simple. “Let me know if I can help.”

So now we look at engagement in social media spaces. In many cases I write simple messages, “Can I help” or “Thank you.” I do not use the time to sell which many marketers have tried to do. Yet these simple acknowledgements have led to many sales. The key is to be genuine and willing to sincerely listen and help. I never press, I simply provide the opportunity for someone to obtain assistance. For me if I saw someone who wanted or needed help anywhere, I would be happy to assist. As many of you know I have been known to do this many hours of the day, but that is because if I see someone that needs help, and if I can, I will.

I didn’t even have a major issue, but between comcastcares and ShaunaCausey, it was a good experience. Thanks, you two!

Now we’ll just wait and see what happens come February. ;)

Do Bats Tweet?

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Potentially interesting additions to people I’m following on Twitter:

I found the Joker through a Wired article yesterday (I think). Today Rachel started following me, and I found most of the rest directly and indirectly through her, except for Edward, who added me while I was exploring.

I’m not sure exactly what’s going on here, but it’s intriguing so far. While it could be a tie-in to the current movie, it’s obviously working at least somewhat on its own chronology, as (slight spoilers here) a couple of those people are no more as of the end of the movie. At the same time, a couple more of those characters haven’t popped up in the current movie timeline, so perhaps there’s some long-term advance campaign for the next movie, whenever it comes along?

In any case, they’re actually savvy enough to have some sort of actual people behind the personas; there’s been some interaction with other Twitterers that they’re not solely advertising ‘bots. They may not stay on my Twitter list long-term, but for the moment, they’ve peaked my curiosity enough to keep an eye on them.

Possibly related accounts that just appeared on Twitter in the last few days:

Website Tweaks

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One of the projects I’d like to tackle over the summer is redesigning my weblog. I’ve been using this design for a couple years now, and I’ve been thinking that I’m about ready for a change to something a bit cleaner and sparse.

However, as the major project over the next few weeks here at home needs to be packing things up and preparing for a move, I’ve settled for doing a bit of minor tweaking here and there to streamline things where I can.

To that end, here’s a quick rundown of the changes I’ve implemented:

  • Upgraded to the most current version of WordPress. Admittedly, a behind-the-scenes change that won’t really make a difference to visitors, but it was time.

  • The About page has been cleaned up a bit, removing the incomplete bulleted list of other places on the ‘net to find me with a simple in-paragraph listing that’s far more complete. I belong to far too many different networking websites.

  • Rather than listing my tweets in a sidebar box, Twitter Tools and AsideShop will now be displaying them inline with weblog posts using their own lightweight display style. In order to keep my RSS feeds from getting too cluttered up, Advanced Category Excluder prevents tweets from showing up in syndication feeds.

  • iWPhone has been installed so that iPhone/iPod Touch users will automatically get an optimized, lightweight layout.

  • LiveJournal Crossposter has been upgraded, which should (I hope) fix the odd problem I was having with crossposts not appearing in LJ Friends pages. It’s also configured not to crosspost tweets, as they’re already crossposted by Ping.fm.

  • Postalicious will be automatically posting my del.icio.us bookmarks daily around midnight, as long as there are five or more unposted and ready to go, otherwise it will wait until the next day. This allowed me to drop the (huge) ‘eclinkticism’ box out of the sidebar.

  • In another behind-the-scenes change, the WPhone Admin Plugin gives me an iPhone/iPod Touch optimized administration interface, in case I ever need to do any posting or tweaking while on the go.