Less Is More: Using Social Media to Inspire Concise Writing Overview | How can online media like Twitter posts, Facebook status updates and text messages be harnessed to inspire and guide concise writing? In this lesson, students read, respond to and write brief fiction and nonfiction stories, and reflect on the benefits and drawbacks of “writing short.” Materials | Slips of paper with brief stories (see below; one per student), computers with Internet access Warm-Up | Before class, select six-word love stories from The Times’s Well blog, in the post itself and in the reader comments, to share with students. (You can find more stories in the same vein at the Web site Dear Old Love and Smith Magazine’s Six-Word Memoirs.) To use fictional stories instead of or alongside memoirs, include the following “short short story” by Ernest Hemingway, along with stories posted on the Web site inspired by it, Six Word Stories: For sale: baby shoes, never used. Print your selected stories on slips of paper and distribute them to each student. Language Arts 1.
Une force pas si tranquille François Hollande jeudi 26 janvier au cours de l'émission des paroles et des actes © AFP/France2 Faut-il croire ce que tout le monde (ou presque) répète cette semaine à gauche comme à droite : "c'est plié, Hollande a gagné!"? Les mêmes disaient exactement l'inverse il y a moins de sept jours. L'affirmation n'est cependant pas à balayer d'un revers de main car ce que chacun cherche à saisir, c'est ce moment de la campagne où un rapport de force se crée, qu'il est ensuite impossible d'inverser. De ce point de vue, on peut bel et bien parler d'un effet Hollande et d'un contre effet Sarkozy. D'abord le rendez-vous du Bourget, dimanche 22 janvier, longue et fervente communion avec le peuple de gauche dans laquelle François Hollande puisa une nouvelle force. Et pour finir la confrontation avec Alain Juppé le 26 janvier au soir sur France 2. Cela étant, François Hollande a dévoilé toutes ses batteries, ce qui l'expose au feu nourri de l'adversaire. La campagne ne fait que commencer.
Twitter reaches 3 million tweets per day in South Korea Twitter is finally showing signs of breaking into the mainstream in South Korea, according to new data published by The Chosunilbo. Usage of the service has leapt up with it now seeing 3 million tweets sent each day from an estimated user base of 3.34 million people in the East Asian country. The latter figure is based on data from the Korean Advertisers Association and Media Research organisation, which found that 8.6 percent of 10,000 people it surveyed used the microblogging service at least once a week. Twitter itself reportedly sees 200 million tweets sent per day across the world, so while 3 million is a small portion of that figure it does show that the service is gaining popularity in Korea despite being an ‘outsider’ in the country’s locally dominated social media space. The service is a hit with young audiences in the country, with over half of all the surveyed users aged between 20 and 40 actively using the service, while none of the 1,195 respondents aged over 60 used it.
Facebook Tells Salman Rushdie He Has to Go By His Given Name, Ahmed Rushdie - Alexis Madrigal - Technology This is the sort of thing that makes you wonder what real names policy is all about. Today on Twitter, Salman Rushdie detailed his adventures with Facebook's name police. "Amazing. 2 days ago FB deactivated my page saying they didn't believe I was me. I had to send a photo of my passport page. THEN... they said yes, I was me, but insisted I use the name Ahmed which appears before Salman on my passport and which I have never used," Rushdie wrote. You know, Ahmed Rushdie, world-famous author of The Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children. Seriously, what is the point of forcing Salman Rushdie to go by Ahmed Rushdie? Update (1:46pm): Our collective exasperation worked!
Storytelling d’hier, storytelling d’aujourd’hui Récent, le storytelling ? En tant qu’art du récit, il existe au contraire depuis l’Antiquité, depuis qu’on oppose qui de la raison ou de l’émotion est la plus efficace pour transmettre un message. Mais en la matière, les histoires ne valent que dans la mesure où elles offrent un point de vue contemporain, qu’elles sont dans l’air du temps. Notre époque est demandeuse d’émotions mais semble cruellement en manque de mythes. Au matin du 14 mars 1590, la bataille d’Ivry se présentait plutôt mal pour Henri IV dont les ennemis ligueurs étaient deux fois plus nombreux que ses propres troupes. Les exemples abondent dans l’histoire de chefs galvanisant ainsi leurs troupes : par exemple, le discours que Shakespeare prête à Henry V, lors de sa célèbre harangue de la Saint-Crépin. «Soldats, je suis content de vous. Pendant longtemps, aux côtés des artistes et des ecclésiastiques – les religions forment d’admirables champs d’étude à la narratologie ! (c) Dunod, 2011
How Link Placement Affects Clicks on Twitter When it comes to crafting social status updates to ensure maximum exposure and click-throughs, many of the tried-and-true methods seem somewhat obvious. Posting at certain times of day, for example, can have a dramatic impact on performance. Makes perfect sense. Sometimes, effective optimization can come from places you didn't expect, and the only way to find out is by analyzing a large set of cold, hard data. That's exactly what Dan Zarrella does for a living. The self-proclaimed "social media scientist" at HubSpot examines large datasets from sources like Twitter and Bit.ly and then publishes some of his findings. Recently, Zarrella discovered that where the link is located in a given tweet can actually have a big impact on how many people click on it. To figure this out, Zarrella took a random sample of 200,000 tweets and used the Bit.ly API to figure out the click-through rate on each one.
Search Storytelling for Branding, the Red Bull Way | Eva Snijders | Storyteller One of the questions I get asked more often (by Marketing and advertising pros, most of the time) is “Who, in your opinion, is using Storytelling to it’s full extent in their Marketing strategy?” And although I know there are other brands doing cool stuff, I must admit I have a flaw for Red Bull. And this is why. In my last year at school in Holland, I had made up my mind to spend (at least!) Nearly 20 years later, this local Austrian brand has conquered the world. Red Bull – Confession Today, they also use clips from the many extreme athletes they sponsor. Plus, and here’s the thing: they have always been very active in sponsorship. What is my point here? Dietrich Mateschitz, Red Bull’s CEO, who one day, sitting at a bar in Asia, stated that “there was no market for energy drinks in Europe, but he would create one“, today, rules the world from his office in the tiny village of Fuschl am See. He embodies the Screenwriter’s principle “Show, don’t tell”.
Can watching Twitter trends help predict the future? There’s been a lot of talk recently about Twitter trending topics, and how they fail to reflect evolving events such as the Occupy Wall Street movement (although some argue that this is the fault mainly of our inflated expectations, rather than Twitter’s algorithms). But despite those kinds of setbacks, there is an emerging industry aimed at using the tweetstreams of millions of people to help predict the future in some way: disease outbreaks, financial markets, elections and even revolutions. According to new research released today by Topsy Labs — which runs one of the only real-time search engines that has access to Twitter historical data — watching those streams can provide a window into breaking news events. But can it predict what will happen? Predicting markets and the spread of disease Could Twitter have predicted revolution in Egypt> [A]s his tweets were retweeted and mentioned more than 30,000 times, his exposure grew to a whopping 82.68 million unique tweets within 21 hours.
Nep-minister op Twitter: Wie ben ik? Wat is nog waar in een wereld waarin de grenzen tussen virtualiteit en realiteit steeds meer vervagen? Gisteren zag Wouter Bos het levenslicht op Twitter (noot: mijn weblog was hier verantwoordelijk voor). Een fake account weliswaar. Maar niet iedereen had dit direct door. Thamarberber@maximeverhagen: Ik mag aannemen dat @wouterbos nep is…?? Natuurlijk is dit niet nieuw. Het aantal communicatiekanalen dat internet ons biedt neemt nog steeds toe. Een oplossing heb ik niet voor handen. Op onze Jaggle telefoon ontvingen wij een telefoontje van het Ministerie van Financiën met de vraag of wij zo snel mogelijk alles van Wouter Bos op Twitter willen wissen.
Comment Red bull boost les techniques de vente au storytelling dans le projet Stratos Tout le monde sait qu’au fond tout cela n’est que techniques de vente: Depuis sa création, la raison d’exister de Red Bull a été et demeure de vendre une boisson. Pour ce faire Red Bull a associé son image aux sports les plus extrêmes, utilisant la dimension émotionnelle des records et des sensations fortes pour atteindre, toucher et influencer leur clientèle potentielle pour les boissons énergisantes : des gens qui recherchent une vie plus intense… au moins par procuration. D’où leur implication en F1 par exemple. En octobre 2012 Red Bull a réalisé l’une des campagnes de médias sociaux les plus étonnants de l’histoire du marketing. Si vous souhaitez plus d’informations sur ce magnifique projet, consultez le site Web de Red Bull Stratos officielle ou leur profil officiel Twitter @RedBullStratos. Cet exploit cachait un autre exploit étonnant : l’incroyable campagne de presse et de media-sociaux qui a accompagné la préparation et à la retransmission en direct du saut.
9 Twitter Accounts Every Startup Investor Should Follow Should journalists confirm information before passing it along on Twitter? On Thursday many journalists unknowingly perpetuated a hoax that CNN had suspended Piers Morgan due to the British tabloid phone-hacking scandal, sparking a conversation about whether journalists need to slow down before tweeting. Others have chronicled the spread of the rumor, including TheNextWeb and Ross Neumann with a Storify. But as people were issuing mea culpas to their followers, Reuters’ Felix Salmon wrote a provocative post on his Tumblr blog, suggesting that Twitter is more like a newsroom than a newspaper. Rumors happen there [on Twitter], and then they get shot down — no harm no foul. … In the newsroom, we say things like “did you hear that Piers Morgan just got suspended?” Many people dismissed Salmon’s argument immediately, including commenters on my Romenesko post about it. The reactions illustrate how journalists are dealing with the hybrid nature of Twitter — part conversation, part publishing. Here’s how journalists are working through this issue.
How to Create Credibility and Trust on Twitter At first glance Twitter is like an adult’s version of teenage texting. The 140 characters offer the promise of much more behind its brevity and headline. At its core there are two differences that distinguish it from the humble “SMS”, that have given it traction in the public “mindspace” It is publicIt links to content Experienced and expert tweeters know how to lead you to the promised land of rich and compelling content by teasing, enticing and tempting readers to click on the link with an inviting headline. This promise of more is what drives the Twitter click and the initial engagement that pushes traffic to blogs and websites. This micro blogging revolution called “Twitter” has to date captured more than 200 million users and attracted over $800 million in funding from private investors since its humble beginnings 5 years ago. Many questions are asked about Twitter such as ..what motivates people to Tweet? Why Do People Tweet? Why do you publish on Facebook? Trust is the New “Black”