Health Journalists on Twitter: Not Entirely Well, Thank You

I’m going to be hosting a webinar on how health journalists use social media soon.

So I thought I’d check out the health reporters on Muckrack.com, a website that aggregates Tweets of our nation’s journalistic corps.

It can be fascinating to see what sort of brain-lint the media produce minute-by-minute on the world’s tiniest news platform.

As I began writing this entry, for instance, there were dozens of Tweets not so much reporting, but wondering aloud what was up with, the “fact” that Gov. Sarah Palin seemed to be resigning, or at least not running for re-election, or something.

It was an enlightening moment in journalistic pop anthropology. You could see the complex thoughts of inside-the-Beltway sophisticates taking shape right before your  eyes.

Tweeted Howie Kurtz of the Washington Post: “Something must be up, I guess. Kind of weird.“

Talk about your first rough draft of history.

The Health Journalist Twitterers

But anyway, I was there to check out the Health niche. The health reporting corps has not for the most part discovered Muckrack yet: Only 10 health reporters’ Tweetstreams were aggregated on the Muckrack’s Health page.

They comprised three Baltimore Sun reporters, two from the Chicago Tribune, and one from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. [All Tribune Co. properties]. Then there is one each from CNBC, CBS News, the Montreal Gazette, and the New York Times.

And how were they using social media? The mixed bag you might expect.

Journalists on Twitter: Seeking Sources, Thinking Out Loud, Promoting Self, Getting Personal

Julie Deardorff of the Chicago Tribune, for instance, used Twitter to conduct some of source-fishing, cogitate about topics in her notebook, promote her own articles and, like all public-spirited Tweeters, reveal some personal information.

In Deardorff’s case, at least, the personal was professional.

• On Thursday June 25 she reported that she “injured my intercostal muscles by coughing for a week straight.”
• Two days later she reported she’d been diagnosed with pneumonia.
• And two days later she was back on the beat, trolling for sources to discuss the Nuval nutrition rating system.

Best-of-Class: Mike Huckman of CNBC

The most prolific health Twitterer on Muckrack–and, with over 3,000 followers, the most watched–is Mike Huckman, the pharma reporter for CNBC. Anybody interested in the bloodsport in the drug trade should follow Huckman’s sluice of reports, rulings, research and rumors about the companies that make America’s meds.

There is also insight into the life of a business journalist, such as this ripe observation about dealing with flacks. [Note the #prfail hashtag]:

mhuckman #prfail Just got call from PR person.I pick up phone,as always,”This is Mike.”They say,”Mike Huffman?”Pitching pvte co anyway,so 0 interest
a day ago by Mike Huckman, Pharmaceuticals Reporter, CNBC

Doctor!!!! Doctor!!!!!

CBS medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton Tweets about her comings and goings conducting interviews. Fairly routine stuff for journalistic Tweetle.

But for someone who is both a journalist and an M.D., she can be unusually enthusiastic. Within the stretch of 5 Tweets she managed to use 10 exclamation points. That may be a record of some sort.

New York Times and Twitter: Not a Healthy Situation

The smart set says that it’s poor form to use Twitter simply as a “push” device, as a tool to inflict yourself on the world. Everybody who participates in Twitter [it is said], even journalists, should expect to give more than they take, share tidbits with people who may appreciate them, develop relationships, etc. This is the spirit of the social web, it is said.

The biggest violator of this principle among the health reporting set on Muckrack is the estimable Tara Parker Pope, author of the New York Times’ Well health blog.

Her Tweetery consists almost entirely of two things: Links to her own blog entries and acolytic admirations of the fine work of her fellow Timesfolk. [i.e., "Interesting slide show on NyTimes Lens blog of homeless transgendered teens. http://bit.ly/14POwF"]

It’s true that Pope also gets personal; she Tweets about her preparation for the New York City Marathon.

taraparkerpope My 5.4 mi run tonight spent 630 calories according to http://www.gmap-pedometer.com . But now I’m 800 calories worth of hungry.
Tara Parker Pope, Well Columnist, New York Times

But that’s professional self-promotion too: Pope is the proprietor of RunWell, an online community for distance runners the Times launched recently.

Clearly Pope hasn’t gotten the Tweet about social media ethos. Another Twitter profile bears Pope’s name and likeness. nytimeswell is nothing but a botstream that’s triggered every time her blog updates.

Actually it’s triggered more often than that. Check out the series of simuTweets on celiac disease.

I found it peculiar that the New York Times was using Twitter is such a graceless manner compared to its peers.

The Times, after all, recently hired Jen Preston as its first Social Media Editor. Her task, presumably, would be to help staff make enlightened use of social web tools like Twitter.

So I clicked over to Preston’s feed in Muckrack to see how she is faring.

Not all that well, it turns out.

The Times’ social media doyenne hadn’t updated in about 3 weeks, and only three times since this one:

Working on response to 1,000 replies to last week’s question, how can @nytimes better use Twitter. MediaBistro conference later.
12:15 PM Jun 3rd from web

The Web 2.D’oh! Roundup

The Print ‘n’ Read ™ Feature: How Obama Really Did It

I regularly choose a story I encounter online that I find so valuable it’s actually worth printing it out on paper for later reading. This time it’s the remarkably thoroughgoing and fascinating “How Obama Really Did It,” appearing in MIT’s Technology Review.

A remarkable piece of near-real-time history [six, count 'em, six screens long], the piece describes how and who pulled off Barack Obama’s social networking strategy.

One favorite detail: The forgotten chapter about how McCain, during his 2000 campaign, was precocious in his use of the Internet, raising $1 million online before it was cool. Author David Talbot then goes on to detail his adventures trying to deal with John ["I'm getting more familiar with computers"] McCain’s current website.

[A tip o' the fez to TechPresident for the pointer to Talbot's piece.]

Mario Sundar’s Top 10 Blogs

I’m delighted to report that this very blog . . .nearly made Mario Sundar’s list of Top 10 blogs. Oh, it didn’t make the Top 10, but it was nice to be mentioned.

Sundar, “community evangelist” at LinkedIn, proclaimed recently that blogging’s demise has been grossly exaggerated. He goes on to list his 10 favorites. After that list he mentions this humble author among those who “don’t blog as often as they did in the past. Here’s hoping they’d resume their prolific blogging sometime in the future.”

I hereby pledge to try really really hard to post [nearly] every [week]day [when my day job permits] [and my family appears in no imminent danger of forgetting what I look like entirely].

As you might expect, Sundar’s Top 10 includes a few worthies that likely don’t appear on most folks’ RSS dashboards: Jason Kottke’s 10-year-old [!] highbrow take on liberal arts and Harvard Business Online’s Conversation Starter, for instance.

He also includes the indispensible Boom Town by Kara ["I only do digital"] Swisher of the Wall Street Journal. Among my few brushes with fame I include my memorable visit to Hoover Dam with Kara way back in our callow youth at The Washington Post. If I recall, she purchased a swell pair of cowboy boots.

And Finally, Our Regular Sighting of the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse ™

Church of Christ of Latter-Day Saints rumored poised to purchase Facebook

Blogs.com: A Worthy Blog Directory [Seriously]

See the ugly row of badges on the right rail of this blog? They link to blog directories that, in theory, aggregate the “best” blogs and present their content in a way that organizes the vast, incoherent blogosphere for easy consumption.

Nearly all of them suck, including the ones whose badges I display. Go ahead, click on ‘em [on the rail, not above]. Or don’t click; I have nothing at stake. These directories deliver very little user value and, contrary to their claims, are hardly worth a moment’s notice. [I stuck them on their a couple months ago so I can see whether having my blog listed directs any traffic my way. Answer: Hardly a trickle, though blogcatalog has trickled the most.]

Which brings me to blogs.com [which must be one of the most valuable URLs in Electroland]. The site has been relaunched by its owners, Six Apart, the corporate unit behind the blog platforms TypePad and Movable Type. My observations are preliminary, but it looks awfully good to me.

Unlike many directories, blogs.com has sentient beings picking the most worthy content. Evidence suggests these beings are literate, smart and funny.

Blogs.com lives somewhere between About.com [which uses human "guides" to select content], Alltop.com [an increasingly annoying aggregation site which launched with a similar idea as blogs.com but increasingly delegates its picks to legions of Twitteurs, with results I consider disastrous] and the old-school content directories of Yahoo in its callow youth. [This Yahoo comparison is made in the TechCrunch preview post about blogs.com.]

Three favorite things about blogs.com

Though it’s a product of Six Apart, it features plenty of blogs on other platforms. God love ‘em for putting users ahead of crass self-interest.

The top entry of the day weaves together a bunch of blog entries with wit and smarts. If blurb is a verb, these folks blurb extremely well.

Its list of Top 10s are ecumenical and tightly edited, a mix of picks by blogs.com editors and various Electroland personages [Craig of Craigslist's 10 Favorite Blogs, Glen Abel's Top DVD Blogs for Smart People]

Perfect? Of course not. Spend half an hour and you’ll find plenty of crap to scrape off your shoes. But the signal-to-noise is pretty high, and I find that blogs.com’s main topic pages function as daily “news” reports that cover the basics in each area but are full of wiggy surprises.

Say, I wonder if I can get a blogs.com badge for my blog?

n.b. My blog is now proudly displaying a “featured blogs” badge on the sidebar.–Sept. 9

GSP Liveblog: The Future of Facebook Commerce

Liveblog from Graphing Social Patterns East is boring even me. My sincere apologies for two dull entries just posted. New format: Three Points

Session: Facebook

1. By using attributes from profiles, marketers can target ads and applications to people by geography, interests, activity on network, etc. Use [Facbeook] people “like you do keywords” when buying Adwords keywords. [Note to self: Icky but fascinating.]

2. Application example: Open Table permits restaurant reservations across network rather than requiring people to visit their site to make reservations. Could be targeted geographically, by interest, by network activity, etc.

3. Another example: Someone “friends” a dentist and their friends see an ad for the same dentist. [Ickier than the rest, for some reason.]

My takeaway: People’s Facebook home pages will soon fill with [more] targeted commercial clutter [than there is currently]. What’s that I hear in the distance? Could it be a death knell?

GSP Liveblog: BuddyMedia and “App-Vertising” [Ack.]

Michael Lazerow, HealthBuddy speaker

“We live at intersection of social media. . .and advertising.” [Which is to say: They help marketers reach social network users.] It’s App-vertising!” [Ahem]

[Lots of stats showing ubiquity of social network use. Smells of hopeful, evasive fiction.]

Who cares most about distribution in this marketplace? Brands, says he.

Observation: Low click-through rates on banner ads on network. Buyer has power: They have so many choices, why will they choose a particular platform?

“The application is the new ad unit. Impressions are not an end, but a means to an end”–engagement with the brand.

Ad agencies, media companies are ill-placed to. . .live in this social world.

Appvertising: Share app; target; “Your friends are now in your ads” [Ack. Ick.] Widgets: Sprout is the main mover, allowing people to build flash applications on the fly.

FedEx application permitted choosing/shipping of “virtual” product [attachment] to send to a friend. The value is branding. “Check your dudeness.” Time Inc. app: View yourself as with celebrity hair, etc.

Yes, but what is the “metric” for “engagement”: Says he: “Um, it’s a work in progress.” Pulling data and producing reports. “We get paid on engagement”–installs, unique visitors. Beer campaign, 20 percent of users came back 100 times or more to measure their “dudeness.”

Bottom line is: Engagement is the metric that matters to people branding on social networks, not impressions. “Impressions are like air”–huge inventory, lower demand.

GSP Liveblog: LinkedIn Presentation

Adam Nash, Sr. Director of Product for LinkedIn [My comments in brackets]

[Intro: A video that shows Toby of The Office, talking about social network abuse at Dunder Mifflin]

What sets LinkedIn apart? Unlike purely goof-with-friends networks, LI is a “purpose-driven Network.” [Which is to say: Business only. Duh.] Based on trust, developing a business profile. Users: Time-starved business folks who value their privacy.

Dataspit:

• 8.6 million monthly page views: 361 pct growth in year. Now fourth highest social network in PVs
• Demo: 41 years old, avg. income $100k-plus
• New[ish] feature: Company posting employee directories on LinkedIn. 65 percent of them have fewer than 200 or fewer employees

LinkedInnies are “suceptive to messages” aimed at small business users. “You won’t find a page with 12 different ad spots.” Advertisers can do broad campaign, or aim at certain kinds of users, or custom segments. All that data in your profile? It’s used to match you with ads.

Members want productivity applications–things that will save them time or do things they can’t now do to reach people.

Open Social based applications to be launched. . . in Q3.

LinkedIn makes money four ways: Ads; classified job ads; premium subscription products for some users; enterprise deals for big companies. [Note to self: Am I paying for a premium subscription? If so, why?]

Data viz plans: New apps to (for example) show who’s moved where, understand relationships between people and companies, etc. [I'd love to see my LinkedIn network represented as a Venn diagram.]

Unbelievable quote: “I have a number of interns starting next week [!]” that will explore new kinds of visualizations. [Dude: If it's a strategic priority, why are freaking interns getting the work? What, you can't find people via LinkedIn who can do the job?]

iPhone plans: “It’s a little bit spoiling” that with LinkedIn mobile you can now walk into a meeting and find out about people five minutes beforehand. “We’ll pursue” mobile “very aggressively.”

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