I’m very curious to see the reaction to this one, as I think I’m hitting some significant new ground. And if anyone can point me to examples of the global-to-micro-personal news service that I’m imagining, please do.

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Scoble is publishing the FriendFeed URLs for the folks on his list, so most likely that’s where people will start following them. The tech blogger and gadfly’s recommendations carry weight, so we’ll all get somewhat of a boost from this.

But this got me thinking about the people who start to follow me but don’t know me. With Facebook, my “friends” learn about both my professional and personal activities; but those are mostly people I know at least casually. It’s a closed social network, under my control. By contrast, with Twitter, I have “followers” who know me, as well as many who don’t but follow my tweets (probably) because they’re interested in my work or media-related opinions. Ditto for FriendFeed, but they’re getting not only my tweets but also my blog posts and photos posted to Flickr. Those systems are open, in that anyone can follow me; it doesn’t require my permission.

The thing is, I (and most of the other people I know who use Twitter) post professional as well as personal stuff. On Friday I posted to Twitter about media and political topics; today I posted a tweet about my daughter’s birthday party. While I primarily tweet on media topics, I also tweet when I go mountain biking (one of my passions); my Flickr photos are usually personal.

To my “friends,” the personal stuff is perhaps of interest; I know I enjoy reading personal tidbits not only from my real friends, but also professional colleagues who I consider to be casual friends. But for these new non-friend followers, I guess they’ll have to put up with my occasional personal ramblings interspersed with the professional-related stuff that I post.

It’s a bit odd, really. I mean, why would anyone who doesn’t know me give a hoot that I mountain biked on this really great trail? Or am currently hanging out at The Cup on Pearl Street in downtown Boulder? A FriendFeed that mixed personal and professional would be fascinating to follow for a movie star, football quarterback, politician or celebrity. It’s probably not so scintillating for all we non-celebrity types.

But perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps it is interesting to learn little personal bits from normal people we follow but don’t know and have never met. I see a lot of that from people who I follow on Twitter but don’t know well, or at all. The bits are short and easy to skip over. Yet I actually find it interesting and read them, when I’m in the mood. It’s a bit of modern-day voyeurism.

What’s your take on this? Do you enjoy seeing personal glimpses from people who you follow on Twitter and FriendFeed? Or do you find it annoying?

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He’s asking Twitter users to include #spinewatch in their tweets along with links to such coverage. Here are a couple examples of such stories from Rosen: McCain on the spot as Palin defends earmarks requests - Wheels come off Straight Talk Express?

Lots of journalists follow Rosen, and if those people take his advice, their Twitter followers will see their #spinewatch posts, too. The meme will spread.

Do you think this could have an impact? Could it actually influence reporters to tread less lightly on campaign lies and aggressively report them?

Absolutely, I believe it can.

Online social communities built around niches can be quite effective in forcing changes. While Twitter isn’t a niche social service, the networks that build up around individuals tend to be niches; ergo, Rosen’s followers includes hundreds of reporters, editors, academics, and the media “elite.” When that group gets to talking amongst themselves about important issues, social change within the group is possible.

This power of niche online communities was first demonstrated to me 17 years ago (or thereabouts), when I was graphics editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. I used Compuserve, the old proprietary online service, and there was a “forum” on it just for newspaper graphics folks. it’s so long ago that I can’t remember the specific issue, but I was annoyed by a policy of the Associated Press graphics department, which fed us syndicated infographics. I griped about it and a discussion with my co-horts around the U.S. ensued, with others sharing my complaint.

It wasn’t long before the director of AP Graphics chimed in and agreed to change the policy, based on our online group gripe session.

That was my introduction to the power of online community. I think that it can be demonstrated here on a much larger issue with Rosen’s #spinewatch initiative.

And it looks like I’m not the only one who thinks so…

(Addendum: Hmmm. I’m already thinking I may have to reconsider my optimism for this specific attempt at using social media for influence. It may still work, but already some folks with Twitter accounts who take issue with the goal of #spinewatch are starting to use the tag to post disinformation and disrupt the intent of the effort. You might call these people political spammers, since they invade channels with unwanted information.)

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I don’t profess to understand how this happened, but it’s intriguing to learn that Google now takes tweets so seriously.

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Something happens locally, like, say, a fire; there’s a lot of smoke in the distance, and I want to know what’s going on. But I visit my local newspaper’s website, and there’s nothing. Ditto for other local news outlets’ websites. Eventually (but not always), a reporter will get around to writing up something and it’ll be posted online.

It’s especially vexing when there’s never any report. Maybe the fire is not big enough to warrant coverage by the newspaper. But I’m still curious what happened. Where do I turn?

Now we have the solution: Twitter.

This has been staring me in the face for a while now, but it just hit me. Twitter solves this problem, because often when something happens the local “Twittersphere” will be abuzz about it, before a reporter has had a chance to write it up and publish something (or even knows about it).

To monitor this, lately I’ve been using Twinkle on the iPhone, an application that works with Twitter. A Twinkle feature is to identify where I am using the iPhone location (GPS) feature, and show me Twitter posts (tweets) from within a specified radius.

So, next time I see a big smoke cloud in the distance, I’ll launch Twinkle and check out tweets from Twitter users in Boulder. Odds are that folks will be talking about it, and someone near the blaze will have posted something more than conjecture.

Applications like Twinkle are also great journalistic tools, of course. In the old days, newspaper reporters had the TV on in the background, in case TV news had something that they should know about. Today, someone in the newsroom should be monitoring local tweets; it’s the new early warning system for news, with an army of witnesses feeding you information.

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How Do You Use Twitter? from biz stone on Vimeo.

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The website of my local newspaper, the Boulder Daily Camera, has pretty active comment threads, and, predictably, the more bizarre the story, the longer the list of commenters. A story today generated a ton of comments: about a woman athlete cycling with her young son in a child seat who had another cyclist come up to her and grab one of her breasts. She chased the guy down while calling 911 on her cell phone, and police caught the weirdo. Yeah, you know that one is going to generate a lot of discussion.

Skimming through the dozens of comments, I was intrigued to see that the victim joined in the discussion, thanking other commenters for their support. (Many called her brave; a few said she was foolish to put her son at risk by giving chase.) Her participation in the after-publication public commenting added nicely to the story. Sure, some of the other comments were dumb, as always. But this was an example of user comments adding value to the coverage.

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I think this points out a problem and an opportunity for newspapers. Problem: they don’t offer people the micro-local and personal news and information that makes a difference in people’s lives. Opportunity: they need to offer the micro-local and personal news and information that makes a difference in people’s lives.

Do I really mean to get THAT local? Yeah, I do think there’s great value in a digital monitoring system that brings me news about people I know, my neighbors, my neighborhood, schools my kids attend, organizations I belong to, interest groups (e.g., sports, hobbies) that I belong to or follow, etc. I mean individuated, personalized news feed.

That exists to a degree already on Facebook, since personal news from my Facebook friends gets fed through my Newsfeed there. Local news organizations might use that as a model, developing individuated-news services that monitor news from a wide variety of sources — even Twitter, the micro-blogging service/social network.

For a while now I’ve been advocating that local news organizations, especially newspapers, start doing a better job of tapping all the great sources of information about their communities: local bloggers, institution websites and newsletters, government agencies’ websites and databases, etc. Yann’s misfortune, and how I found out about it, reminded me that Twitter and other similar services also are a source of “news” that can be monitored and leveraged by a reinvented local news organization when it makes a commitment to individuated news for its community members.

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This week, Alex Midyette was granted a change of venue for his trial, due to the intense publicity surrounding the case. Just as with the fabled Jonbenet Ramsey case (Boulder’s most notorious criminal mystery), it’s just about impossible to find anyone in Boulder without knowledge of the Midyette case — and probably an opinion about Alex’s guilt, given his wife’s conviction.

Daily Camera commenters haven’t been reticent in expressing their opinions

What’s interesting about this change of venue is that the court cited Internet comments on local news websites (mostly the Boulder Daily Camera) and blogs as a primary reason for moving proceedings out of Boulder County, along with traditional media coverage. This may be the first time a court has relied so heavily on online comments to news stories in such a decision; it certainly won’t be the last.

The Camera’s Zak Brown covered the issue in this story, which includes a short quote from me.

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A key element is finding your online friends also on it and sharing recommendations. I tried letting it look for people in my Gmail address book (which is huge) and it turned up zero folks who’ve also installed TimesPeople plug-in. I could use some “friends” to try it out. Hint, hint.

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