50k v 4 million

Dear Jeff Zucker,

There's has to be a way of monetizing Piers Morgan. OK, so his chat show is down, on bad days (and there are more of them) to 50,000 US viewers in the ad-chasing age group of 25 to 54. But he has close to 4 million followers on Twitter. Even if a million are machines or dead accounts, that's an impressive number - he's ranked 325th in the world.

He's dogged and regular on Twitter - yesterday, the day of his old media demise, the Twitterverse waited with baited breath for 19 hours for the return of the social medium's favourite pantomime villain. He's built up his following over 4 years by being himself; a minor public-school boy, who, given a little time to think, can come up with a good put-down. He's deliberately "taken on" footballers, cricket players, other presenters, and Lord Sugar, in play-ground name-calling - and built an audience who seems to enjoy this new 'sport' of trolling. Every day, he also picks a few Lilliputian tweeters from the thousands who try to tweak his tail, and puts them down for spelling mistakes, being ugly, or not as famous as him.

There's half a case for just putting a live camera on him for the half hour a day he spends lashing out. But do it on CNN International, where football/soccer, cricket, and Morgan's milieu plays better, not the US service. Anderson Cooper has 4.79m Twitter followers. CNN Breaking News has 15.6m (compared with the BBC's version on 8.89m), the main CNN account 11.9m.

Yours, with no fee,

Bill

Twitter selector

Former News of the World editor Piers Morgan dropped by CNN. His show is cancelled. http://t.co/fOVG0LcNOp
— Diane Abbott MP (@HackneyAbbott) February 24, 2014

Piers Morgan - wealthy, healthy, four children who adore him, ITV's Michael Parkinson, young hot wife - oh Piers, where did it all go wrong?
— Tony Parsons (@TonyParsonsUK) February 24, 2014

Still waiting for KP to jump to Piers Morgan's defence and demand everyone at CNN resigns immediately.
— Adam Parsons (@AdamParsons1) February 24, 2014

I'm feeling strangely contented this morning. I wonder if something wonderful has happened somewhere.
— Jeremy Clarkson (@JeremyClarkson) February 24, 2014

Piers Morgan has released a statement saying he is looking forward to going home and spending more time with Piers Morgan.
— Colm Tobin (@colmtobin) February 24, 2014

What a week. Chris Moyles gets spanked by the taxman. Piers Morgan gets fired... Any news on Katie Hopkins?
— Ian Hyland (@HylandIan) February 24, 2014

Twitter flit

Twitter's UK team is heading upmarket. After flirting with taking office space in Regent's Place (just over Euston Road from Warren St tube), they got cold feet when Facebook announced plans to base their UK team in the same block. Now Property week reports that Twitter will flutter to the Crown Estate's AirW1 development near Piccadilly Circus, nestling behind the Cafe Royal - where the Regent Palace Hotel once stood.

BBC types will be pleased anyway; Twitter moving out of serviced offices in Great Titchfield Street should ease lunchtime pressure in the Crown and Sceptre, where social media eaters currently take up more space than the few remaining drinking hacks.

Cold ?

As the BBC's suspended Chief Technology Officer, John Linwood, discusses his future with the Corporation, it's good to see him back on Twitter, after a gap of eight months.

Interestingly, given that the Digital Media Initiative, now cancelled, struggled with creating, managing and accessing petabytes of archive storage, he's tweeted about experiments in quantum computing. Scientists in Canada have apparently managed to keep a form of quantum memory stored on silicon qubits stable for 39 minutes at room temperature. Previously, silicon qubits were only thought to be stable at temperatures of -259 degrees Celsius - hardl;y a reason to move BBC R&D to Salford.

Ben and Jamie

So nice when old chums re-discover each other across a crowded social media landscape. Perhaps they can write each other some scripts.

@ActualBenMiller it is. I am. Yes.
— James Purnell (@jimpurnell) November 17, 2013

Twitter break-up

So far, no sign of re-tweets for these two items below from the usually omni-present @iankatz1000, Editor of Newsnight.

Told Thursday, Newsnight's editor is closing programme's post of Science Editor. Disappointing, professionally and personally.
— Susan Watts (@susanwatts01) November 16, 2013

The new #Newsnight doesn't need 2 dedicated foreign reporters so sadly after 12 yrs from Afghan war to Arab uprisings I'm off the show
— Tim Whewell (@BBCTimWhewell) November 17, 2013

Susan Watts has been with Newsnight for 18 years, and messages of alarum at her post closure have come, so far, from Harriet Harman and Lisa Jardine.  Katz responded, eventually.

Newsnight's commitment to covering science - including climate change - as strong as ever. Just want to do it in a different way.
— Ian Katz (@iankatz1000) November 17, 2013

Tim Whewell's quietly tenacious but illuminating reports will be missed by this viewer.

Meanwhile I expect more glittering announcements from Katz next week, as he fills Allegra Stratton's post during her maternity leave.

Course of treatment

I wonder if Ian Katz' induction as Newsnight Editor included one of those uplifting BBC sessions on social media, and the basic policy "Don't do anything stupid..."

Transmit and receive ?

I'm a tad worried about Ian Katz at Newsnight. In the sense of start as you mean to go on. With close to 30,000 followers, he may take some time to engage in dialogue about running orders - even if only 10% of them offer suggestions. I shall be watching out for an advert for a Newsnight Social Media Journalist.

Back to Twitter after summer sabbatical…and first day in new job. What do you want to see on Newsnight tonight?
— ian katz (@iankatz1000) September 2, 2013

Following

One more weekend for the BBC News interregnum - and Harding The Hack comes riding to their relief on Monday. The build-up rivals that to the return of the Premier League; Maggie Brown in The Guardian writes a paeon of praise to his FT training ground; Roy Greenslade, in The Evening Standard, has set out what James needs to change in the BBC newsroom; and there may be more from weekend papers.

I'm more interested in James' news sources. He's a non-tweeting Twitter lurker, and follows 136 accounts. Here's a selection...

BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Breaking News - no problems there.
Various select BBC people - Nick Robinson, Nick Sutton (editor of The World at One, and provider of newspaper front pages most evenings) Rory Cellan-Jones, James Purnell, Andrew Neil (who counts as papers as well) Ian Katz, as he moves from the Guardian to Newsnight, Gabby Logan, Danny Baker, Victoria Coren
Sky News - Adam Boulton
ITV News - Tom Bradby, Laura Kuennssberg
Newspaper bosses - Rupert Murdoch, Alan Rusbridger, Lionel Barber
A whole slew of Times' chums, as you'd expect
Guardianistas: Polly Toynbee, Jonathan Freedland, Joanna Geary, Andrew Sparrow
University chums: Ben Miller and Alexander Armstrong
MPs: Sajid Javid, Ben Bradshaw, Rachel Reeves
The Mail on Sunday dep news editor, David Rose
Telegraph dep ed Benedict Brogan
CNN: Newt Gingrich, Jake Tapper and Piers Morgan
Odds and ends: Eddie Izzard, Tim Minchin, Sarah Brown, Arianna Huffington, Jimmy Fallon, Mrs Stephen Fry

Not comprehensive, but a flavour of the social media company he keeps.

3.798836082 kilograms

The media triumph for the Royal Family is keeping news of the little erk's arrival quiet from 4.24pm to 8.05pm.

Ed Perkins, Press Secretary to Prince William, is from Pen-y-fai, Bridgend, and went to Bryntirion Comprehensive School. At 17, he completed the maximum three gold runs on Blockbusters. He graduated from Christ's College, Cambridge with a degree in geography, then picked up a Ph.D in epidemiology. On the way he edited the university newspaper, Varsity, and worked weekends at Radio Cambridgeshire.

He began a tv career as a trainee at ITV News, joining the BBC Six O'Clock team in 2002. In 2005, it was back to ITV as an assistant programme editor, thence to The Royal Household as Deputy Press Secretary to The Queen and Head of News in 2007.

In December last year, he was poached for Prince William's team.

Didacts

I'm grateful to FishbowlNY for this picture of limeys Peter Horrocks, Mark Thompson and Janine Gibson explaining to David Carr (Minnesota and New York) a few things about social media (Twitter, from San Francisco; Facebook from Massachusetts) at the New York Times this weekend.

Image

Can you - should you - read anything into someone's choice of a Twitter profile photo ?

As I sit awaiting news of a busy April of appointments at the BBC, here's a picture of two great literary figures - on the left, James Harding, former Editor of the Times, legs akimbo, from his Twitter account. On the right, Ernest Hemingway.

And below, on the left, again from Twitter, James Purnell, plotting a digital future for the BBC - to his right, a man acting the part of James Bond.

Dodgy forecasts

BBC Weather Twitter account shtick: Never get caught out by the weather! Official BBC Weather account, run by presenters+producers. Forecasts, videos & behind-the-scenes chat.

Something has caught them out; hackers at work, starting at 6am, and still at it, close to 2pm.

Scandal: Edinburgh storm warning station decommissioned after maintenance fund diverted to arming Syrian opposition
— BBC Weather (@bbcweather) March 21, 2013

1430 update: and they're still at it - with BBC Arabic Online and BBC Radio Ulster

@bbcarabiconline & @bbcweather & @bbcradioulster was hacked by Syrian Electronic Army #SEA #Syria
— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA) March 21, 2013

Twinkly tweets

Some festive tweets that caught my eye in the past 24 hours.

Stay classy in 2013, Talksport, even without Moz...

Crikey, let's hope it runs post-van-Klaveren...

No comment

Sweary world

I'm grateful for US techy site The Verge for pointing me to WTFlevel.com.

This site attempts to monitor how twitchy and angry our world is, by tracking profanities on Twitter. The team doesn't disclose its full list of rudeness and supporting algorithms, to prevent deliberate, co-ordinated surges. But I suspect it's based on American phrases, and there's room for some clever development of a UK version.  And if I was running it, I'd put the explanation at the top, not at the bottom. They'd probably say "WTF ?".

Boogie nights

According to TV Newser, NBC gets the bragging rights for being the first to call the election for Obama, at 4.12am GMT. CBS followed at 4:15, then Fox News, CNN and, at 4.25, ABC News. Only able to watch on Freeview, and denied unfettered access to a US network, I clocked ITV first of UK tv services, at 4.15pm, then Sky (who still insisted on "projected victory"), following by BBC News at 4.24pm.

Obama's victory Tweet is timed at 4.16pm; clearly it took 8 minutes for the BBC to refer that one upwards.

Around that time, the best coverage was on Sky, who just took pictures from the giant shed at McCormick Place in Chicago, where thousands of delegates waited to greet the President. The crowd were the best bellwether, cheering at the big screens - and the DJ got the message and moved the soundtrack upbeat, with the Beatles' Twist and Shout, Aretha's Respect, and The Whispers' And The Beat Goes On.

• Credit where due. Emily Maitlis was on good form at the BBC results touch screen; Virtual Reality Vine was an unnecessary duplication, and may have been taking a nap when it was all happening.  

Tweet not

And, on day one of the real George Entwistle starting as BBC DG, you'll notice that the rather-near-the-knuckle Twitter Parody account, BBCDG, which used George's mugshot, is no more.

http://twitter.com/account/suspended 

Ever closer

The Twitter parody BBCDG is in danger of further triangulation of his/her identity; he's currently promoting this clip from BBC Radio Northampton's Bernie Keith, cheeking one of his regular targets, BBC News boss Helen Boaden.

listen to ‘Bernie Keith on Helen Boaden BBC Northampton / BBC Local Radio’ on Audioboo

To tweet or...

Will George's BBC offer social media leadership and audience interaction ?  On Twitter, @BBCDG is not our new leader, but an occasionally potty-mouthed wag with some previous in news, radio and local radio, and probably based closer to Manchester than London, by my triangulation. George himself is on Twitter, but as a lurker, not a contributor.

Only one of George's old Vision team seem to be on Twitter - Zai Bennett is also a non-tweeting lurker. Of course, the others may be there under deep cover, as per Prince Harry's creation of Spike Wells. It's hard to believe Danny Cohen isn't in there somewhere. His wife, Noreena Hertz, is, with 15,887 followers - and has just been appointed UK chair of "public interest" social media campaigners, Fenton, as well as joining a list of 101 of the world's most innovative people (with Jimmy Wales, Richard Branson and David Beckham).

Acting Director of BBC Vision, Roger Mosey, who, in his role running Olympics coverage, blogged, tweeted and engaged like a good 'un, is clearly considering his social media future. He's tweeted about visits to the Dr Who set and how much he enjoyed "Our War" on BBC3. But here's another recent exchange...

Peak ‏@Peakthinking @rogermosey How is the new job? Any big decisions like cutting E-Enders to give more uplifting TV time to 'Road to Rio' Olympic sports? 

Roger Mosey ‏@rogermosey @Peakthinking I think the acting role rules out answering questions like that! 

Peak ‏@Peakthinking @rogermosey 'Acting' perhaps but if they give you the big chair best take advantage and make the big calls

Other hashtags are available....

And to remind you that there's more than one way of looking at things, try #GBJOfacts on Twitter (Grande Bretagne Jeux Olympiques).  One consequence of the re-start of the men's double sculls - when the British pair held up a broken seat, within the first 100m, which, under the rules, allows a complete re-run - was that, as we sobbed with the Brits winning silver, the French howled at coming fourth.

The cascade of tweets is wide-ranging in its targets.

"Usain Bolt applies for British nationality to be allowed to make false starts".
"During the marathon, if an Englishman gets tired, he is entitled to a taxi".
"Federer will have to play Murray with a ping-pong bat".
"Team GB have been given the right to replay the football match against Korea on Playstation"
"Flipper the Dolphin has been authorised to swim for GB".
"The Queen has just knighted 738 Olympic judges".
"By Royal decree, it is mandatory to carry a screwdriver for everyone in the country"