RSS to Twitter - turning website updates into automated tweets, with IFTTT

Some Twitter accounts are broadcast-only (they send tweets but there isn't a person behind the account typing out these tweets) and they're useful for getting news feeds from various websites and sources.

There are several ways of creating one of these "bots" (Twitter robots, automated accounts) - you don't need to know how to program and you don't need your own server.

Probably the easiest way to set up such a Twitter account is to use the free IFTTT service (which stands for 'IF This, Then That'). If a website has an RSS feed (look for an orange square icon with a radiating white pattern) then you can use that to set up a system that will ping out a tweet for you.

You will need

• an input, in this case an RSS feed
• an output - a spare Twitter account

To make your own Twitter feed based on an RSS feed you can use an IFTTT recipe that converts RSS feed items into tweets, it's called RSS to Twitter.

The steps are

1. Create your spare Twitter account and log in
2. Create an IFTTT account and log in there too
3. While logged into both IFTTT and Twitter go to https://ifttt.com/twitter and activate Twitter as a channel (this will be your output) you probably won't need to activate RSS as a separate channel but just in case its https://ifttt.com/feed

Here's an example from one that I've made, the @moviesinconcert feed for the Movies in Concert website - my IFTTT 'recipe' is a modified version of the RSS to Twitter recipe, it's at https://ifttt.com/recipes/262124-film-music-concert-info-from-movies-in-concert-rss-to-twitter

#filmmusic: (Brooklyn, New York / USA) 07.10.2015 - Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular http://t.co/DV0E1kByrn The Doctor Who Symphonic Spec…

— Movies in Concert (@moviesinconcert) May 2, 2015

Here’s what it looks like under the bonnet with the RSS feed as the ‘trigger’ causing the action of sending out a tweet. I’ve added the hashtag #filmmusic and asked the recipe to publish this along with the title of the update from Movies in Concert along with the address (Entry URL) and the first line of the page.

If you click into the lower box it looks like this and you can click on the blue ‘science flask’ icon to change the options, this will change what the tweets look like.

Mute, block, private - the three Twitter levels of peace and quiet, but not much else

The three Twitter levels of shushing people are

1. Mute

Muting someone just stops their tweets from appearing in your timeline. You'll still receive any tweet they send you as an @mention or a direct message. Muting is useful for temporarily shushing people who are live-tweeting an event that you're not interested in while keeping all other lines of communication open. They won't know they're muted unless you tell them.

Can you see their tweets? Only the ones where they've tagged your name
Can they see your tweets? Yes (unless they've muted you)

2. Block 
Blocking someone means you don't see their tweets. None of their tweets will be shown to you including their broadcast tweets and any tweet that mentions you. They also can't follow you or interact with your tweets. It is possible that you'll still see something of them if someone else that you follow retweets one of their tweets. All of your tweets are still entirely visible to them however, blocking just means they can't communicate with you on Twitter.

Can you see their tweets? Yes but on official Twitter you may need to click a 'view tweets' button (see first picture below)
Can they see your tweets? Yes, but it may take more effort depending on what platform they use (in second picture I've taken the screenshot from Twitter desktop which doesn't show profile, but Echofon on iPhone does).

What it looks like when you block someone, on Twitter

What it looks like when someone blocks you
(on Twitter, tweets visible on other apps!)

They may know they're blocked if they look at your profile on official Twitter sites (desktop or Twitter for smartphone / tablets) but might not notice if they're using third party apps.

Blocking someone does not stop them from seeing your tweets however and even if they're shown a blank profile your tweets will still show up in searches. You can see screenshots of what a blocked account can still see (I tested it with a spare account) here.

If you have blocked someone know that they can see your tweets by searching for from:yourname.

Think of the Twitter block more as a "continue to site" hurdle rather than "you shall not pass" barrier. Most apps still show a blocker's tweets to a blockee (even when logged in) and blockees can always search for a blocker's tweets (even if they're logged in), or just log out.

Rather unfortunately an awful lot of people have taken the "you are blocked from following X and viewing X's tweets" to mean that "if you block someone on Twitter they can't see your tweets", which isn't true. 

2a. The missing impossible level
This is the one that everyone seems to want - the ability to really block one or more people from ever seeing your tweets while making all your tweets publicly available to everyone else - but of course it's impossible. Anyone, if blocked, can use another app, use another browser or log out, or search for the tweets of someone who's blocked them.

It is impossible to stop someone from seeing your tweets unless you make your tweets private and trust everyone that you've allowed to follow you.

3. Private
This hides your tweets from everyone except those accounts that you've allowed to follow you. Your tweets will not show up in search results and tweets you send to people who aren't following you won't be seen by them.

Can you see their tweets? Yes
Can they see your tweets? No (unless you give them permission to follow you). Remember that your followers can share your tweets by manually retweeting them (comment RT) or by taking a screenshot (or, worst case scenario, having their account phished or hacked).

If you want to see how much people can infer from your conversations, even though they can't see your tweets, run a search for to:yourname or just yourname. In fact I'd recommend this to anyone with a private account.

Things lots of people don't seem to know about Twitter - some Twitter myths

Over two years ago I rattled off a quick post about what happens when you block someone on Twitter. I didn't think a great deal of it after that but began to notice, from Google Analytics search logs (the search phrases that result in people visiting my site) that a lot of people are mystified by a variety of aspects of Twitter. That post has since gone on to be the really popular one on my blog (450,000 views says Blogger, 130,000 views says the more accurate Google Analytics).

Thanks to the latest change to the Twitter block I've been keeping an eye on tweets that include phrases like "they can't see your tweets" and have been a bit disheartened to see how many people seem to believe this. Quite a few have even declared that they can now "come off private" because no-one will be able to see their tweets. It's not true.

There are a lot of (actually perfectly reasonable) assumptions made about Twitter but unfortunately they seem to be mostly wrong.

I'll add more 'Twitter myths' here as I think of them. It concerns me that lots of people are blithely unaware that if they have a public account ALL their tweets (other than DMs) are searchable and embeddable in blogs and Storify stories etc. Probably very few of these people follow me (I've tweeted about 150 of them since the weekend) so it's hard work getting this info out. Tell your friends :-)

1. Blocking someone doesn't stop them from seeing your tweets
There are so many workarounds including them logging out, creating another account (things like Tweetdeck let you log in to multiple accounts at once), searching for your tweets, they can of course search for tweets from you and see the conversations you're participating in even if you make your account private.

A block on Person X just stops their tweets from being shown to you (you can still go looking for their tweets too). Every now and then Twitter changes its block function and a lot of people seem to think there's been an improvement. With the latest December 2014 if you visit someone's profile on desktop Twitter you're told that you've been blocked and can't view their tweets. If they search for your tweets they can still find them, or they can use a third party app like Echofon on iPhone which, at time of writing, is still showing full profiles.

It's possible that in the next few weeks Twitter will tighten things up so that (a) smartphone apps won't show profiles and (b) desktop searches won't show tweets from the person who's blocked you but I can't see a way round (c) them logging out. Even if Twitter insisted on people logging in to view tweets they could still log in with a different account.

Beyond making an account private I can't ever see a way to stop someone from seeing your tweets (and remember they can still see the other halves of your conversations).

2. Changing your Twitter handle doesn't stop people from finding you - blame conversation threading
I think this confuses a lot of people too. You change your Twitter handle and your previous one stops working. If someone visits the profile of the old account name it tells them the page doesn't exist. Anyone following you at the time of the change will be immediately 'transferred' to following you on the new account.

However if anyone has ever replied to any of your previous tweets then a 'thread' has been set up between the two, and this threading persists even if your name has changed. People can use this to find your new account. I've done this unwittingly by wondering where some annoying person has gone (usually an alternative medicine quack spouting rubbish and trying to avoid being challenged), failing to find their profile page then searching for any tweets I'd sent to their previous account.

In the search results on desktop Twitter (the best search interface) their old handle is no longer a clickable link (cos their page doesn't exist). But if you click on the tweet to unfurl it, and see the threaded conversation, then you'll probably see what their new Twitter name is. That's probably how anyone would have found your new Twitter name, if that's ever happened.

Possibly this will change in future. If you've blocked someone and then changed your name then at the time of writing they can still find you by searching, but if Twitter fixes its search so that your tweets won't show up to people that you've blocked then this could become harder. Though they could still log out or use a different account to check.

The only other way around this is to create a completely new account or delete ALL of your previous tweets (up to about 2009/2010 when I think threaded conversations were introduced).

Twitter's updated its block function but nothing has really changed

It appears that Twitter has rolled out a new version of its block. If you view, on Twitter (desktop) or Twitter for iPhone (I assume it's similar for other smartphones), the profile of someone who's blocked you you'll get a message saying:

"You are blocked from following @Name and viewing @Name's Tweets. Learn more"

It looks like you can't view their tweets and suggests that if you block someone they won't be able to see your tweets either. This is incorrect.

If someone's tweets are public then anyone can view those tweets by using any of the following methods
(a) using a different browser
(b) logging out of the blocked account and using the same browser while logged out
(c) logging into a different account
(d) using a different smartphone app - at the moment Echofon for iPhone lets me see the profiles of a couple of homeopathy quacks who've blocked me
(e) search for their tweets (or if they're using a hashtag you'll still see their tweets there) on desktop Twitter or with Hootsuite / Tweetdeck.

If you want to ensure that someone cannot see your tweets you'd need to
(a) make your account private and

(b) be careful who you allow to follow you (is it them under a different name?)
(c) hope none of your followers get phished or hacked, or leak your information

Remember that anyone can see tweets sent to you (by searching for to:yourname or @yourname on Twitter dot com, search).

What does a block do then?
It's acts as a mute, it's really nothing more than that.

If you block me any tweet I send you won't show up in your timeline or mentions, so I am effectively silenced. You'll be able to go looking for my tweets if you want to but they won't be delivered to you.

If I look at your profile I'm told I can't see your tweets but I can use the methods above to see them, as you can if I block you.

Blocking someone doesn't ever stop them from seeing your tweets. It just means you don't have to see theirs if you don't want to (and they can't favourite or retweet you - well they can manually retweet you).

You can see all the accounts that you have blocked at https://twitter.com/settings/blocked

Read more about private Twitter accounts

How to view private tweets - and what to be aware of to protect your account (7 December 2013)

Don't assume that your private Twitter account is all that private (7 December 2012)

Read more about Twitter blocks
What happens if you block someone on Twitter? What happens if they block you? (7 June 2012, updated 4 January 2014 and again today (12 December 2014).

Does anyone actually see your tweets?

Twitter has updated its Twitter Analytics and opened it to everyone (go here and see what your tweets have been up to http://analytics.twitter.com).

It previously used to look like this, and it now gives you information on the number of people who've apparently seen the tweet, the number of people who've clicked on it to see it in full and the number of people who've interacted with it (favourited, replied, followed you etc - there's a list of the available metric options at the end).

For the last few years I've shared all my Blogger and Google Analytics info for this particular blog (Blogger overestimates things threefold so while it says on the right that this blog has had 1.4m views at time of writing, assume it's one third of that!) and I thought curious people might like to know what my tweet's have been up to.

Here's some sort of overview (screencaptured from a couple of weeks ago).




Tweets that are posted when lots of people are online will obviously be seen more than tweets that are posted when fewer people are online (eg 3.15am on a Tuesday morning) but tweets posted at a 'busy' time may have to compete with other fascinating tweets.

The new analytics hasn't really told me anything I didn't already know. For me (and it may be different for others of course) posting a link on Twitter to this blog results in relatively few hits - over 80% (probably 90%) of my traffic comes from Google searches. One way around that of course (and one of several methods used by better and more popular bloggers) is to repost the same link throughout the day while slightly varying the 'wrapper' tweet that accompanies it. Remember that someone might not see your tweet from 10 minutes ago but might see the one you post now. Another good way of re-promoting your link is to acknowledge that you're doing this by saying "for the afternoon crowd" or "in case you missed it" (aka ICYMI).

According to Twitter analytics each of my tweets is seen by between roughly 180 and 350 people at any average time, typically about 250 see them - there's a huge variance as you can see below. There are some outliers that become very popular (into the thousands and several thousands) and some that are less so. Clearly if a tweet is retweeted this increases its number - but it's important to remember that the figure for a tweet's views are always going to be much lower than the number of people that follow you because they won't always be online at the same time.

(Note picture below is not a continuous run of tweets but a selection)
 

Above and below are a couple of edited screenshots showing some popular tweets and some less popular tweets. In each case the number of people who see it is always more than the number of people who do anything with it (in some case no-one clicks on a link, *tiny violins*).

I am extremely pleased to see that the guidance for people wanting to report misleading homeopathy websites did reasonably well with over 200 'engagements', although poor old 'pet dinosaur' which only had 28 views. The FoodBabe tweet was retweeted by a few others so is about three to four times more popular than my other tweets.  

The following are fairly typical...

Sometimes a tweet's "success" surprises me, in both directions, for example I can't understand why the one below has had over 3,500 views - it was retweeted a couple of times but it's fairly niche. I suppose it was published on a Tuesday afternoon so possibly a lot of people are online then!

Similarly this next one took me by surprise - it was retweeted 12 times (what?!) and over 600 people clicked on the photo. There's not even an informative link from which to find out more information, I'd have expected this one to be pretty minor.

I sent what I thought was a better tweet, with a proper link, but it wasn't nearly as viewed as the one from the day before. I suppose the main difference is that the first one I sent was 'first', but also quirkier than the second slightly duller and more factual one. It might have done even worse had I not hashtagged it pretty well.

If I send a tweet to another person (tweets which start with the @-mention format, so they are sent to someone rather than just ccing them into a tweet) this means the number of people who see the tweet drops considerably.  

The number of views can be as low as 7 but tend to be around 30 to 50. This is because only the people who follow both me and the person I'm talking to will see it (unless someone looks at my profile, or searches the other person's mentions). I did once send a tweet to a well-known singer ("haha" I said) and that got over 900 views but I certainly can't take any credit for that.

I suppose if you want to send a tweet to someone but want to make sure it's seen by others it's a good idea to use the .@ format (where you 'break' the To function of the unadorned @ at the start of a message) or just be more popular on Twitter than me and the people I talk to ;-)

Now of course I shall share this post on Twitter (on a Sunday morning as well - no-one will see it, haha) but I wonder if you'll have come across it via another route... and if you want to tell me please do so in the comments, thanks :)

Further reading

• Twitter's experimenting with showing how many people saw your tweets (21 March 2014) The Verge
• (Almost) no-one is reading your tweets (13 December 2013) AllThingsD
  That post is not about Twitter analytics but the fact that the 'average' Twitter account has 61 followers so - for most people on Twitter - hardly anyone is paying attention. When you sign up to Twitter as a new user it seems to encourage you to follow celebrities, who often tend to broadcast rather than engage, and brands (who do engage a bit more) so it might be giving people a rather strange overview of the service:

"Twitter’s official messaging still promotes the idea that you, ordinary you, can find your voice on Twitter — its newly tweaked welcome screen invites new users to “start a conversation.” But Twitter’s business plan — based on its “asymmetric follow model” — assumes that you and Twitter’s other 230 million users will spend almost all of your time reading about the conversation, not leading it.

Check out Twitter’s onboarding sequence for new users, for instance, which is dedicated to helping you “find and follow well-known people.” (Twitter seems particularly interested, by the way, in helping you find Neil Patrick Harris.)" 

Below are the 'key metrics' that Twitter analytics offers everyone - you can see these when you click on the tweet on the analytics page.

Impressions
Number of times users saw the Tweet on Twitter

Embedded media clicks
Clicks to view a photo or video in the Tweet

Detail expands
Number of times users clicked on the Tweet to view more details

Link clicks
Clicks on a URL or Card in the Tweet

User profile clicks
Clicks on the name, @handle, or profile photo of the Tweet author

Retweets
Number of times users retweeted the Tweet to their followers

Favorites
Number of times users favorited the Tweet

Hashtag clicks
Clicks on hashtag(s) in the Tweet

Replies
Number of replies to the Tweet

Follows
Number of times users followed you directly from the Tweet

Permalink clicks
Clicks on the Tweet permalink (desktop only)

Shared via email
Number of times users emailed the Tweet to someone

Sharing a link to a tweet may now notify that person, some suggested workarounds

by @JoBrodie, brodiesnotes.blogspot.com (this is an update of an earlier post)

Recently I was surprised to find a tweet in my notifications page that didn't @-mention me, it got there because the tweeter had included the link of an earlier tweet that I'd sent.

I use desktop Twitter (Twitter.com) and Echofon on iPhone and have only experienced this notification on the desktop version. It seems that others have also been experiencing it for the last few weeks and it may be something that Twitter is rolling out to everyone.

What is it?
If you include in your tweet an address link that looks like this
https://twitter.com/JoBrodie/status/514147218799222784 
then the person whose name is in bold may well hear about it, on their notifications page / tab.

Why is this of interest or concern to anyone?
People have previously used the method of including a tweet's address to draw attention to a tweet's content indirectly without notifying the person. When this is done to point to something that someone's said, covertly, it is sometimes known as subtweeting (the term "subtweeting" covers a range of Twitter behaviours though).

What's changed?
Previously no-one would be notified if this happened, now they will. Of course people have always been able to search your tweets, if they're public, and see what you've written anyway but it wasn't brought to their attention ('surfaced') in quite the same. 

What can be done?
Firstly be aware that sharing tweet URLs now seems to be equivalent to @-mentioning them. Whether or not this is a good way of including people in a conversation or of just annoying them will depend on the circumstances but best to know that they may see it.

Assuming you want to 'subtweet' covertly then the goal is to share the URL without triggering a notification.

Below are suggestions that I think will let you send a tweet without flagging it up. Remember though that if your tweets are public the person you're 'quoting' can always see your tweets (even if you've blocked them) so this isn't a foolproof method to let anyone snark with impunity.

Some methods are a little bit fiddly. To be honest if you want to be that secretive it's probably best to email people! But this post isn't really about the practical, more about the feasible - I'm interested more in the changing ways in which the technology behind Twitter works. 

Sneaky workarounds

1. Take a screenshot
A picture of the link or the tweet won't trigger the notification.

2. Break the address
Twitter treats web addresses (and hashtags) as clickable things - it recognises that a string of words is a web address and automatically turns it blue / underlines it, makes it clickable and makes it point to the relevant address. Just stick some characters in the link to stop this from happening - make sure that the person to whom you're sending the tweet knows how to mend it again (or the link won't work!).

For example http://www.google^^^.co^^.uk will not be recognised as http://www.google.co.uk 

3. Send it by DM
Although Twitter generally doesn't let you send many links via DM it does let tweet links go through fine. (But of course you can actually send any link by DM if you break it, as outlined in 2).

4. Use DoNotLink.com
This hides the URL and means that it probably doesn't currently trigger the notification (I've tried it and it doesn't, but not tested it to destruction, and Twitter is forever tweaking things). Incidentally you can cloak any URL this way so, for example, if you want to share the link of Widget.com's page without flagging this up to Widget Co (if they have a Twitter search running on 'widget' they'd come across your tweet) you can use this.

Note that other URL shorteners (bitly, is.gd, t.co etc) fail on this front. They won't hide the link for anyone searching, though I don't know if they will or won't trigger the notification.

5. Put the tweet you want to share in a Twitlonger post (but not in the first line).
Twitlonger lets you write more of a blog post than a tweet (you just log in by authorising it to interact with your Twitter account and start writing). It then posts just the first 120 or so of your post and adds a link so that people can click and go and read the post on the Twitlonger site. If you ensure that the link you want to share is placed after 120 or so characters it won't appear in the autoposted tweet and so can't trigger anything.

6. Share the minimum info needed to recreate the tweet
This is potentially risky because you'd have to include the person's name and if they have a search for that they'll see it immediately (whether or not this method triggers a particular 'your link has been mentioned' notification - I've not tried it and I don't think it does but not certain). If you and the person know who you are talking about you only need to share the link's string of digits to recreate the link.

All tweet addresses have the same format:
http://twitter.com / NAME / status / NUMBER
- if you know the NAME and the NUMBER you can recreate any link from scratch.

For my tweet above you only need JoBrodie and 514147218799222784 to recreate the full link.

A collection of posts about livetweeting / liveblogging science and other conferences

by @JoBrodie brodiesnotes.blogspot.com

This is an update and a repost of an older post from 2010, copied in full below with redirect on old one.

---

EDIT: 8 July 2012 - this post has gone through several revisions and is now more generally about livetweeting events. There's a nod to practical aspects too as well as a little bit on the ethical aspects of livetweeting conferences, which was my original slant. I've attended (live, or virtually via hashtag) numerous medical research conferences and wince whenever anything is a bit overhyped or, as I say below if "unpublished pilot data is reported as more certain than it is."

A companion blog post to this one is Health charity conferences: policy thoughts on liveblogging and there's another one mentioned below, in relation to capturing tweets during and after the conference (see reference 9).

Added 13 March 2017
35. Livetweeting WOW (the festival)
@bitoclass
13 March 2017
http://bitoclass.tumblr.com/post/158330593375/livetweeting-wow 
Practical tips on pre-event preparation (familiarise yourself with names, pics, bios & Wikipedia, subject, programme) and using Storify to gather tweets and add context. 

I've also written a brief overview and more detailed post on using Storify.

Added 1 March 2015 
34. Let's have a discussion about live-tweeting academic conferences
Green tea and velociraptors (Jon Tennant)
13 November 2014
http://blogs.egu.eu/network/palaeoblog/2014/11/13/lets-have-a-discussion-about-live-tweeting-academic-conferences/ 
"To tweet about someone’s work without their knowledge or permission is disrespectful and unethical. Several people have stated that they consider the default to be ‘tweetable’ – are the authors aware of this? If not, and you haven’t checked, you better show some god damn courtesy in future and not do anything you are not explicitly permitted to do." 


Added 6 October 2014
33. EIGHT tips for using Twitter around health-related events
Health Summit / Inis Communications
Date unknown but seems to coincide with #mHealth13 event 
http://www.iniscommunication.com/PDF/mHealth13.pdf
I like (8) Be a Twitter advocate - remind other advocates that they can also tweet from the event.

 Added 1 September 2014
32. Ten simple rules of live tweeting at scientific conferences
PLOS Computational Biology
21 August 2014
http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1003789

10 tweetable (140 chars) rules with advice for science-conference tweeting.

Added 19 January 2014
31. Ten tips for tweeting at conferences
ProfHacker / Chronicle.com (Brian Croxall)
6 January 2013
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/ten-tips-for-tweeting-at-conferences/54281

Added 6 April 2013
30. Healthcare social media: the return of #twittergate
Talking about speech and language blog
30 March 2013
http://slt2b.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/healthcare-social-media-return-of.html

29. Out of the ivory tower and into the crowds: how social media has transformed academic conferences
Evidently Cochrane blog
28 March 2013
http://evidentlycochrane.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/out-of-the-ivory-tower-and-into-the-crowds-how-social-media-has-transformed-academic-conferences/

Added 25 March 2013
28. Thwarting spammers on hashtag livetweeted events
My own blog
22 March 2013
http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/thwarting-spammers-on-hashtag.html 
Type into Twitter's search, or smartphone Twitter apps' search boxes a keystring that tells Twitter to return tweets containing the hashtag but not the spam links, eg
#hashtag -x.co 
where x.co is the root of the spam addresses (Twitter will ignore x.co/abcd and x.co/efgh)

27. Twitter guidelines for #ukcc21 in 2013
Oxford2013, The Cochrane Collaboration
Date not given but assume March 2013-ish
http://oxford2013.cochrane.org/twitter-guidelines 
Encouragement to tweet at the conference with a useful reminder not to assume everyone following you knows what the hashtag you're tweeting with means, so tell them every now and then.

Added 20 July 2012
26: Using free tools to capture a handful of tweets or a bunch
My own blog
19 July 2012
http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/using-free-tools-to-capture-handful-of.html
Bit self-serving I suppose (given that I wrote it) but I have made quite a study of capturing event / hashtagged tweets and I think this is a pretty clear explanation of how to use some of the free tools while acknowledging that there are other paid-for options. 

Added 20 July 2012
25: Gender discrimination at CHI 2012
Oopsohno blog
19 July 2012
http://oopsohno.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/gender-discrimination-at-chi-2012/
Although my collection of posts is now more about some of the technical and social media aspects of running an event its original direction was more about the ethics of sharing (via social media) live comments from speakers at scientific events, in relation to unsettled science particularly in the area of medical health research. Sarah's post covers a different type of ethics - the way that gender  differences can be unwittingly reinforced if we don't watch out for it.

Added 20 July 2012
24: Reflections on events
Mark Braggins' blog
24 June 2012
http://markbraggins.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/reflections-on-events/

Themed checklists for different aspects of a conference and unconference events with some good advice and, as the title suggests, reflections on making an event run smoothly for those attending physically and virtually. 

Added; 8 July 2012
23: How to Live-tweet from an Event
Social Media Today
6 July 2012
http://socialmediatoday.com/node/586166
Very good advice for event tweeting, focusing on the three phases of an event: before, during and after (a lot of people post stuff a few days after an event so if you're trying to capture stuff about said event don't 'shut things down' too soon). Also useful pointers on tools you can use on laptop or smartphone to autotweet the hashtag, eg I use Tweetchat on my laptop - sign in with Twitter and whenever you tweet in that window it automatically appends the hashtag, saving valuable seconds ;)

Added: 29 December 2011

22. a4u expo London Agenda

a4u expo

Date unknown

http://www.a4uexpo.com/london/agenda/

I came across this because of the MoreNiche affiliate marketing website which I keep a keen eye on (as they're selling a variety of products but are a bit shy about publishing the evidence for them) and spotted that their people go off and speak at events, including this expo. What impressed me about this was the prominence given to hashtags at the event - each session has its own hashtag and the top of the agenda has a banner which explains what a tag is and reminds people to check the session tag for each event they go to. Pretty good.

Added: 4 December 2011

21. How Twitter enhanced my conference experience

Mark Ryan

3 December 2011

http://smhcop.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/how-twitter-enhanced-my-conference-experience/

Less about blogging at events and more about the social benefits that can arise from Twitter and blogs making it really easy for people who haven't yet met one another in real life to do so. Obviously these tools are helpful in discovering likeminded folk online in the first place.

20. Say Hey to Hashtags and Handles

Susan Sawyer

25 October 2011

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-sawyers/twitter-social-events_b_1028480.html

Good example of a conference getting everything nicely hooked up with the hashtag, delegates' twitter handles, good communication etc.

I think when I started this blog post back in Feb 2010 I was rather waiting for this sort of thing to become the norm. It probably has in the geekier / science-ier conferences, fingers crossed that this trickles to all the other conferences where delegates might like this sort of thing. Obviously I appreciate that some delegates don't give two hoots about tweeting and blogging etc :)

Added: 10 October 2011

19. Live tweeting an AGM: Lessons from @Campbel2412

28 September 2011

http://nhssm.org.uk/live-tweeting-an-agm-lessons-from-campbel2412/

Practical advice for official events tweetists and how best to prepare and parcel up the workload. For example this particular hospital event had speakers whose photos were taken before their speech so that these could be sent out as they started, along with their name and job title. Good points made about linking to stuff on the organisational website (and a reminder to make sure in advance that pages you might want to link to are up to date). Also highlights practical things like being able to point to a page on parking information.

Also it is, as the blog curator has noted, rather well written - very clear. And it's written in precisely the sort of way that managers probably like the look of - what went well, what they'll do differently next time. Good template I should think.

Added: 9 June 2011

18. Wi-Fi checklist for unconference of hack-day organisers

Andy Mabbett aka @pigsonthewing

9 June 2011

http://pigsonthewing.org.uk/wi-fi-checklist-unconference-hack-day/

How to make your delegates happy - pre-empt the most common conference Wi-Fi problems with this handy checklist. Repeatedly having to log in is no fun at all.

Added: 30 May 2011

17. Science Communication and Public Engagement: What Can Twitter Tell Us?

David Waldock

30 May 2011

http://davidwaldock.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/science-communication-and-public-engagement-what-can-twitter-tell-us/

Interesting look at the recording of tweets (by Storify in this case) and subsequent analysis of their content by Wordle.

"So, live Tweets, to me, represent the thinking of people as they are in the situation; there is no time to reflect, to consider meaning or to parse it into an alternate interpretation: a live Twitter feed can approximate being inside the mind of people present at an event, and you can bring a range of tools to bear on this record and use it to notice things which might not otherwise have been obvious."

Added: 1 August 2010

16. The Great ASCO Tweetup

Brian McGowan

1 July 2010

http://meetingsnet.com/social-media/0701-great-asco-tweetup/

Examples of social media, including Twitter, use at a massive (30,000 attendees) cancer conference including guidance on slides from speakers who were happy for their output to be microblogged, and disucssions on setting up some 'best practice' guidelines for organisations. Mention is also made of the real-time tweetstream which might be available as an adjunct during someone's presentation - I am coming round to the idea that this can be more of a distraction than a benefit, although I do quite enjoy seeing them. I like his use of the terms intrasession tweeting (to describe tweeting from within a session), intersession (describing interaction with tweets from another session in some cases leading people to migrate to a seminar with more interesting content) and extrasession tweeting (describing general helpful information, shared via Twitter).

Added: 18 March 2010

15. 10 Ways Social Media Will Transform Events in 2010

Samuel J. Smith

12 January 2010

http://www.eventcoup.com/10-ways-social-media-will-transform-events-in

"Attendees will register for your event if their contacts are attending. In the future, knowing if friends or business associates are attending an event will become part of the attendee’s decision process. Social media tools that check to see if my Linkedin connections, Twitter followers or Facebook friends are attending an event already exist. Over time, I think that we will see more of these tools implemented in events."

14. News from Scientific Meetings

Mark Zweig and Emily DeVoto

Date not listed

http://www.healthnewsreview.org/tips-for-understanding-studies.php#tip4

Not about liveblogging but general information about news reports of conference presentations - "The current press coverage of scientific meetings may be characterized as 'too much, too soon.' Results are frequently presented to the public as scientifically sound evidence rather than as preliminary findings with still uncertain validity. With some effort on the part of meeting organizers, journalists, and scientists, it will be possible to better serve the public."

13. How and why should conference organisers use Twitter?

Cathy Aronson

30 November 2009

http://www.thebigidea.co.nz/smart-talk/smart-talk-02-crack-web-marketing/social-media/63375

Perspective from a very different field - discussions on intellectual property, tweeting increasing the marketability of a conference and one of the commenters raises the idea that "obscurity is a bigger problem than piracy." That commenter also found benefit in reading back the tweets from his talk so he could see where he'd managed to get his point across, and where not.

12. spectacle at Web2.0 Expo... from my perspective

danah boyd

24 November 2009

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/11/24/spectacle_at_we.html

Article on a particularly unpleasant experience at a conference where twitter took more of the centre stage than the presenter due to a combination of an unfamiliar set-up, dreadful lighting, fidgety crowd and misunderstandings. Basically, when liveblogging goes bad.

11. Should You Be Tweeting?

Laura Bonetta

30 October 2009

http://friendfeed-media.com/50c126f2ed05e7f3c8a24954f9d03528e07460b5

This is an article from the journal Cell - I put this in just to remind myself that not everyone can be bothered with Twitter etc ;)

10. Screencast: my unsuccessful hunt for the official EASD hashtag #EASD09

Andrew Spong

20 September 2009

http://screenr.com/YD7

Conference organisers might as well take the lead on the social media for their conference - deciding on a sensible conference hashtag (and if it's stupid, delegates will create their own ad hoc) and publicising this on conference material beforehand if at all possible - or at least posting a few tweets containing said hashtag, from their official channel. As the post above points out, it also helps with the social aspect of the meeting.

9. What! No event hashtag?

Brian Kelly

20 September 2009

http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/what-no-event-hashtag/

Post considering the practical benefits of having a clear hashag - social aspects (meeting up, particularly at a smaller event) are important but the long term benefit is that any tweets containing hashtags can be aggregated and stored, as a record of the event and the links that were shared.


Edit: 8 July 2012 - since Twitter changed its terms of service in 2010 it's become much more like hard work to collect hashtagged tweets and unless you use a paid-for service, or have coding skills and a server you'll probably have to do it slightly manually.

For more on this have a look at GrabChat or SearchHash for hashtag storage - for watching tweets in real-time, have a look at things like Tweetdeck, Twitterfall and Monitter. Or see my post on this Watching conference tweets in real time - how best? and Following conference hashtag tweets in real time and saving them for later.

8. Amongst The Science Bloggers

Jack of Kent

23 August 2009

http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2009/08/amongst-science-bloggers.html

A very interesting take from the perspective of a presenter, who read the tweets afterwards. In this particular session attendees were asked not to tweet the substance of the talk because it may have been taken as legal advice (as a lawyer was speaking), this possibly meant that people found other things to tweet about, not all of it helpful.

7. Live-tweeting the World Conference of Science Journalists

Ed Yong

30 June 2009

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/06/live-tweeting_the_world_conference_of_science_journalists.php

Really positive post on the benefits of liveblogging a conference; the benefit being for the blogger as well as for any public audience. Ed tweeted from #wcsj (World Conf. Sci Journalists) and found it to be a useful experience for himself. Probably the content of the presentations put this type of conference in a very different category from the Cold Spring Harbor one, but this post provides a record of one person's enjoyment at being involved in this way.

This very much echoes my experience of livetweeting from both Science Online conferences in London, #wcsj and a couple of other science communication things I've been at.

6. All the conference stuff that's not fit to print

Isis the Scientist

17 June 2009

http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/2009/06/all_the_conference_stuff_thats.php

Very interesting post - scientists may prefer a forum in which they can discuss pilot data with their peers without the fear of having some, as one of the commenters puts it, 'blogdouche' tweeting everything. Some of the comments are... quite robust.

5. Creating a "blog-safe" icon for conference presentations: suggestions?

Daniel MacArthur

17 June 2009

http://scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/2009/06/creating_a_blog-safe_icon_for.php

Intriguing idea of having some sort of icon on presentations (or abstracts) which indicates that the speakers are happy that their talk can be liveblogged.

Comment 3 is a peach. Comment 5 raises an interesting issue. Comment 13 contains this eloquently brief summary - "Figure out the policy (I'd suggest that bloggers and media follow the same rules and it be the same rule for ALL sessions) state it up front, in the program, on the website and in the registration package. Done. Finished. Put it to rest."

4. To tweet or not to tweet – social media and the scientific meeting

Andrew Maynard

3 June 2009

http://2020science.org/2009/06/03/to-tweet-or-not-to-tweet/

Sensible consideration of the appropriateness, at different types of conferences, of tweeting or liveblogging. Plenty of comments adding additional perspectives and Ruth Seeley's (comment 1) makes very good points.

For me the take home message from all of these discussions is that it's probably important for conference organisers to at least have had a bit of a think about where they stand on liveblogging - I'd prefer that they weren't too restrictive though (however Commenter 8 disagrees with me). In the context of medical research charities (my perspective is from charities who are members of the AMRC - Association of Medical Research Charities) my concern is - perennially - that unpublished pilot data is reported as more certain than it is.

3. On the challenges of conference blogging

Daniel MacArthur

3 June 2009

http://scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/2009/06/on_the_challenges_of_conferenc.php   

Daniel MacArthur's own blog emphasising that he feels Genomeweb's complaint (see #2 below) was a valid one and that conference organisers can't really expect to hold news media and bloggers to different standards. In this case the result was that the conference organisers clarified their policy on liveblogging.

"As the number of scientists engaged in online media continues to grow, it is crucial that meeting attendees be aware in advance of what their responsibilities are regarding communication of results."

There are some really good points in this clearly written post on the wider themes of conference attendees engaging with the presentations - more positives than negatives.

Commenter 3 expresses concern that the CSHL guidelines were unduly restrictive in that they required anyone reporting to gain permission from the speakers (possibly impractical for tweeting purposes). There's perhaps something in the argument that blogged conferences get more publicity...

All other comments are worth reading, some very good points in there.

2. Cold Spring Harbor Wants Scientist Bloggers to Follow Media Rules

Elizabeth Pennisi

2 June 2009

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/06/cold-spring-har.html

News report from Science (magazine) on Daniel MacArthur's experience of liveblogging from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory meeting. The news service Genomeweb was a bit puzzled that journalists had been asked to sign forms restricting what they could report whereas other attendees didn't have this restriction (they're not given a form to sign).

1. Advice for conference organisers

Adam Tinworth

4 April 2007

http://www.onemanandhisblog.com/archives/2007/04/advice_for_conference_organisers.html

A plea from a blogger for conference organisers to provide free wifi. The conference organiser replied pointing out that the venue charged £20 for a wifi connection, although in the US the blogger has experienced conferences where each seat has a power socket and free wifi.

I certainly think free or very inexpensive wifi should be available if you want to encourage people to share content about and related to your conference. Possibly the building itself will dictate the number of sockets but no harm in finding out where they are and letting people know. See also #18 above, which has a checklist for conference organisers.