If you’ve tuned your TV to CNN at all over the past week, you’ve probably witnessed a sweeping love affair. I’m not even kidding when I say that I think CNN’s anchors have used the word “Twitter” more than they have uttered “CNN” during that time. And while some people hate that, I think it’s great, because the service is providing a very, very valuable service for spreading information about what is going on in Iran right now. But none of that matters if CNN cannot use its Twitter account correctly to disseminate that news.
Look at the CNN Breaking News Twitter account right now. 8 of its last 10 tweets contain a broken link. This is a Twitter account with nearly 2 million followers, that CNN is promoting like no other on its shows, and it’s 404-ing millions of people.
Why this matters is of course because so many people are using this account as their main means of getting news about Iran. When CNN tweets out things like “Daughter of former president Rafsanjani arrested #iranelection,” and then has a link that doesn’t work, a lot of people are obviously very upset.
If you’re going to insist on basing most of your coverage around Twitter CNN, please figure out how to use it.
Update: It looks like CNN has figured it out after an hour with broken links. Whoever runs their account started using TweetDeck instead of the web, and so now all of the links are using the Bit.ly URL shortening service. But that’s interesting too. Why does CNN, which has a natural URL that is already very short, not just make its own short URLs? That way it could also guarantee they will work if a service like Bit.ly goes down.
Ok…the worlds shortest URL and they don’t have their own shortener? *head in hand*
seriously. that’s hilarious
how is cnn.com (7 chars) shorter than bit.ly (6 chars)?
well when all those broken links were going out they weren’t using any URL shortener.
People of Iran. Forget Twitter.
Go take the TV station! Take it!
URL shortening is more evil than the Iranian Theocracy.
Exactly what I was wondering about too, PEG.
Although, in binary, 111 and 110 both have three characters, maybe that’s why? And 1+1+1 = 3 and 1+1+0 = 2, and 2 and 3 have the same length too, although, maybe, if you straigthened them out, the 3 would be longer. Which would then again mean that 7 is longer than 6 after all.
So, yes, I think we’re all right, alright?
(seriously, a cnn-shortener would be smoother, but not on Sundays, of course.)
Well if you figure that cnn.com will have a lot less short links than bit.ly therefore they could use a shorter character combination so the overall URL length would be shorter.
“how is cnn.com (7 chars) shorter than bit.ly (6 chars)?”
6 is, of course, 1 less than 7. but does it really matter? it’s only 1 character.
I also think it’s pretty bad practice to use bit.ly and tinyurl. You have to trust the post that you aren’t going to be redirected to some heinous content. Obviously in this case it’s unlikely – but CNN, on principle, should have their own URL shortener.
It’s not even close to the shortest URL. Think about it, Texas Instruments has ti.com and someone out there owns a.com, b.com, c.com, etc.
And that’s just .com then there are also the .us domains and .ly, .tv, etc. which are all shorter than .com. The shortest domains are all one character followed by a two character tld.
TechCrunch uses the word Twitter more than it does TechCrunch.
Well that’s fine as we don’t send out broken links. Oh yeah, and we aren’t the main source of coverage of a very serious global event right now.
I will make you a deal… I will cover my twitter in broken links.. you do a cover story…. but seriously why ot use a true url.. part of the problem with shorten links is you are not sure if you want to trust them.. why does twitter charge for true URLS. A monthly subscription for companies like CNN and then all their links will appear as
CNN: Bombing in Iran from a user perspective this would be a benefit and would show everytime that site is tweeted.. if my mommy could see me now using the word tweet like that..
As for you Dog Breath..mouthwash… the amount of stories TC covers on a topic is usually a good indicator of a trend.. it is useful information for people who want to use twitter… people who come here are using pedalling something.. me it is my app… when TC was all over Yahoo I found boss API.. because of TC I have been abel to keep up on the twitter apps and utilize some… they rarely update articles on weeeknds.. want to complain, complain that TC doesn’t do a daily vlog.. seems silly that they wouldn’t have at least one person doing that since it is one of the largest growing segments of the blog world.
why doesn’t twitter..oops..grew up on msn..sorry
Funny I was thinking yesterday that I could see CNN buying Twitter. Why have a Twitter revenue model when it could just be used to enhance the platform of CNN/iReport?
Ya think?
After watching CNN yesterday for much of the day, it’s really not such a bad idea from their perspective.
I tuned into CNN briefly and I -think- I heard one reporter indicate that “RT” was the new form of hijacking and disinformation. But the reporter was able to “sniff them out”
i.e.
twitter.com/propogandabot
RT @trustedsource something false
RT @trustedsource something else false
RT @trustedsource @personrefutingit you suck
That really highlights where the RT vs (via @whatever) thing comes into focus if a “news” organization is having their brand (i.e. verified Twitter name) attributed to making statements via the RT preface.
Then there is the matter of proving it to be false (outside of it being outlandish or lacking tonality of 140 characters)
It’s like trying to attribute something that might have been said or not and when Twitter search is not available there is little to go on to refute it or confirm it. Sure it all comes out in the wash after time has elapsed but even if there was a consistent way to thread out a status GUID reference it would be a good start.
Why shouldn’t CNN buy twitter? Because me and almost everyone else would jump ship.
From which, CNN or Twitter?
Twitter. I can only see the experience of Twitter being damaged if its development was put into the hands of an entity whose sole purpose was to make the service support its TV station. In any case I’m not really on the CNN ship to begin with.
jumped from cnn long long ago .. it literally gives me a headache when encountered in airports or hotels … how can you people watch that stuff?
I thought I was losing my mind after checking the first couple links and hit 404’s. Hopefully someone has brought this to their attention.
“Why does CNN, which has a shorter URL than Bit.ly, not just make its own short URLs”
Hello!!! HELLO!!!
This is SUNDAY. Their IT staff is AT HOME. As they should be. We’re not at work either, did you notice?
header(”Location: ” $_GET['t']);
cnn.com/sl/?t=72362
Add an .htaccess file to send ? to index.php
sl = short link
t = target
But you STILL need a developer, and today is STILL Sunday. That’s why developers make 6 figures. Hell yeah.
Should be
header(”Location: ” sql_db_get_link($_GET['t']));
exit;
Sorry about that. I am flipping between windows and my concentration was broken. Make sure and check against injection attacks too. mysql_real_escape_string
I’m glad I’m not the only one to notice this. I sent them a @cnnbrk reply to let them know within seconds of those posts. You’d think they would verify the links worked before putting it out there for the whole world to click on broken links. Maybe they’ll eventually figure it out.
I blame Nancy Grace, also #drewscancer
Lookie who is here on TC fresh from the salon.
Mr. Percival, stop frosting those tips. Natural is the way to for for summer 09.
Looks like they are using Bit.ly now
b-i-t-dot-l-y = that’s 6 characters
c-n-n-dot-c-o-m that’s 7 characters
I’d go for i-s-dot-g-d (5 characters) though
Oh for crap sake, I was making a joke.
I use both cnnbrk and breaking news. Breaking news is usually ahead of the game.
http://twitter....om/BreakingNews
Thanks for the information
While twitter is really good at being ahead of the game sending out digestible news chunks of up to 140 characters (with or without the web links, working or otherwise) sometimes it’s just too much too fast and you just can’t keep up.
Plus you subscribe to follow all these newsfeeds you’ll have an awful lot of duplication, with mistakes like this, I’d guess CNN will have a lot more un-followers tomorrow morning…
So like my prediction, are you now un-following CNN? I don’t follow them in the first place, so that doesn’t apply to me.
If you decide to look for additional news reporters to follow, I’d suggest that you check out the BBC, it has various streams.
Well, this shows how the major companies are still not too much concerned with the potentials of twitter, even though they have followed this bandwagon. Although I am following them, I hardly ever access their tweets. This gives me an opportune time to unfollow them
ROFL.
Could you elaborate more about the ‘potentials’?
Wow – what a nonstory.
can we have an option to read techcrunch *without* mgsiegel?
That would mean that you would only get about half the articles (or even less) that get published on TC….
And he is not all that bad
some days, he is
For the fun of it: http://feeds2.f...urner.com/no-mg
The links showed up fine for me in Tweetie. Not sure why they didn’t work on Twitter.com. And yes, I’m looking at the same posts you are, just within Tweetie for Mac and not the Twitter website.
Interesting. Thanks Michael.
This may be why CNN is NOT the Twitter account with the most followers. As I said here http://bit.ly/bQcrm
they should be number one because they are pioneers in terms of real time news.
[off topic rant, nothing against "Harry"]…and this is exactly why URL shortners will go the way of the dinosaur (save for select interpersonal communications).
What is “This” in: “This may be…”? Who is “I”, and where is “here” in: “As I said here…”? Harry who? Here? …Where?
If I click “bit.ly/bQcrm” do I get Russian porn? Chinese phishing?
You will get a Chinese trojan and it will steal your PayPal account password, then it will be used in MMO games.
It’s proven. That’s exactly how it works.
Very precisely. I am rich now ! He He (With a sardonic laugh)
For those who did not dare to click here is the regular link:
http://harrysel...mes-hate-it-too
very interesting.
The cnn shortner is coming soon: we’ll se on twitter more and more link like cnn.com/xyz
The “journalist” on Fox yesterday who was billed as the gal with the Iranian press connections was dumbfounded by the newsclips from “social Media” sites like it was Yellow Fever.
She actually said she was at a loss how to explain how it’s done.
What a complete head-up-their-ass traditional media suck up.
Even Fox and CNN tripped all over themselves apologizing for the videos not being “real” journalism cause the clips weren’t properly tagged as if MSNBC even knows what that means.
So the traditional media held the videos they were showing up to a totally different standard that network and cable news abuse left and right all the time, an informed source said on condition of anonymity.
Fucking hypocrites.
Dinosaur media has a few years left to “report” to people too old or too clueless what’s “going on” in “social media”.
Laughable.
Kid, do you call a crowd of idiots when you want to get a meaningful information about something happening in the world? I guess YOU do.
thanks, grandpa!
Kind of a dumb ass article from a publisher that also uses a URL shortener, but I guess consistency is not something we expect from tcrn.ch.
And why would bitly, or tcrn.ch, be more likely to be down than CNN?
And, finally, as you guys yourself have written, the major reason for these shorteners is the analytic.
But then there would be no story here for you
seriously, I can only feel sorry for these Media Dinosaurs.
anyone that’s worked in corporate America longer than a day knows that the people at CNN who were initially involved in setting up their twitter account were unimportant and powerless (interns, new hires, Office Space-esque cube dwellers).
once twitter got “high profile” within CNN, no doubt slick hot shots tripped over themselves to show PowerPoint slides to explain “social media” to Dinosaur CNN Sr Execs (that they googled the night before to learn what it meant) and shamelessly took credit for the CNN twitter “success” and anyone anywhere approaching twitter competence was pushed out.
Now the slickster PowerPoint class owns twitter and they don’t know how it works.
i think like facebook it must be usefull for user. but i hope it will be fine. thanks
i think like facebook it must be usefull for user. but i hope it will be fine
If they can’t figure out how to post and not break links do you think they know how to stop Twitter from shortening their links, or turning it off in Tweetdeck.
For what it’s worth, who gives a shit. As someone once told me, Twitter is extremely important to a very small group of people. Mistakes happen. Get over it. If you’re so orgasmic for video, GO TO CNN.COM or any other site out there.
It’s not worth it to even write about this crap. Get a life.
“Mistakes happen?”
They do, but we like to think if we had CNN’s resources, we wouldn’t make them.
Information is… important. Even if only to a “very small group of people.”
Looks like the pot calling the kettle black with all the errors MG’s posts usually contain.
Factual errors? Technical errors? Or typos?
The enemy could be speed. Or just sloppiness.
What kinds of resources are — or should be — at his disposal?
This article got a little bit of stuff wrong. They didn’t start using Tweetdeck, as you can clearly see from the correctly working link being posted from “web”. Twitter automatically shortens URL’s by default using bit.ly when they run long.
Also, as people have said, bit.ly is a shorter domain than CNN.com.
The problems were most likely caused by the “#” in the original links (this is a special character and sometimes will not be recognized as part of a URL with automatic hyperlinking) causing a break in the link and only leaving part of the URL clickable. For one reason or another it also appears to have caused the link to be unshortened with bit.ly.
It was a mistake anyone could have made.
I like the last line: “If you’re going to insist on basing most of your coverage around Twitter CNN, please figure out how to use it.” Think most of us would probably not rely on just one information source (if there’s a choice of more than one).
There are many tools available to enhance the features of twitter, but you should know how to use?
okkkkkk that is interesting. no comment.
…great!!…it’s a kind off….funny!
*satire, without a script!!!
–but, i’m sure they will learn…
Twitter, the most trusted name in news.
CNN and Twitter ? which ?
TwitterArts.com : Graphics and Arts for your Twitter
http://gestureg...r-your-twitter/
Newsday’s political cartoonist has a great new comment about the impact of Twitter on the rioting in Iran. Check it out at http://weblogs....he_twitter.html
I hate following news organizations. I only follow CNN breaking news because they only update when something is breaking. CNN’s other news feeds update as if it’s necessary to remain alive.
This is actually a burgeoning problem with pseudo- tech-savvy media and news channels who don’t want to miss the limelight at any cost. News channels in India are abound with news regarding twitter and how it is holier-than-google , but IMHO, it’s just being done to follow the herd and not be left behind.
Sad nonetheless, as the content oriented mediums should be vigilant in these matters.
Twitter is like a breath of fresh air on the Social Media scene. I have been on it for just a few weeks now and I have met several interesting people. It is a platform to network with people you would like to meet in real life.
KZ
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