Greenwald not Greenwild: Another Twitter misinformation blunder

A fake Twitter account and some quick-reacting tweeters spread the false news of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s death Wednesday morning.

Since Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald on Twitter) has been leading the groundbreaking coverage, someone created a @ggreenwild (notice the “i”, and in the bio below, the lack of a second “n” in “Glenn”) account to share a link claiming Snowden was killed, along with 11 others, by a drone at a Hong Kong hotel.

This is not a real article:

Usually looked to as a go-to breaking news source, even former Reuters social media manager (and soon-to-be Circa editor-in-chief) Anthony De Rosa retweeted the bad information.

De Rosa later deleted his tweet and was transparent about it.

I think this is exactly the way he should have handled it, and is an interesting pivot from the firmer stance he has held in the past, which is that you never delete a tweet unless someone’s life is in danger. (He said as much in a Reddit AMA.) I don’t think anyone’s life was in danger here, but despite De Rosa going against what he said in the past, I still think he handled fixing the mistake the best way.

A quick look at the fake account makes it pretty obvious it wasn’t Greenwald.

Especially when compared to Greenwald’s real account, which is verified.

Ironically, the real Glenn Greenwald gave his followers a heads up Tuesday night about a fake Edward Snowden account.

Here is the bio for that fake account.

What are some clues – even ones we have heard ad nauseum – that can help us avoid this in the future?

• See if someone is verified (that’s the checkmark in the turquoise circle). If they aren’t verified, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad account, but the entire reason Twitter verifies accounts is for cases like these, where someone is being impersonated.
• Check how many followers they have. If it’s a prominent reporter/figure like Glenn Greenwald and they only have triple-digit followers, it’s probably not that prominent person.
• Check how many tweets they have sent. Again, if it’s someone important, especially a reporter, and they haven’t even tweeted 100 times, let alone thousands, that’s another red flag.

Do you have any social media verification tips?

Klout Chrome extension shows Twitter user influence

There isn’t a fail-safe social media influencer measurement tool out there, but Klout is probably my favorite.

That’s why I was excited to discover the Klout Chrome extension, which shows any Twitter user’s Klout score in real-time.

Now it only works on Twitter.com, so if you’re a rabid TweetDeck user like me, you’ll have to filter your streams to display Klout scores. (A subject for another post.)

Klout’s formula takes a number of social media platforms into account. The highest possible is 99. Justin Bieber is 93 and Barack Obama is 98.

This could be really useful during breaking news situations or large-scale searches so you know which person, over a long period of time, has apparently built up a good deal of influence, which hopefully means their information is more trustworthy.

Is Facebook blocking journalists from posting?

The Huffington Post’s Craig Kanalley tweeted frustrations Wednesday that Facebook might be restricting his posting ability for something he didn’t even do.

Worst. Day. Ever. twitter.com/ckanal/status/…

— Craig Kanalley (@ckanal) May 15, 2013

Newsweek social media editor Brian Ries also lost access.

Has anybody else been banned from posting to Facebook for 24-hours?

— Brian Ries (@moneyries) May 15, 2013

Kanalley thought it was because of something on a Facebook page for which he is an admin, but did not post.

@megroh @kristinlubben apparently 1 of HuffPost pages I’m listed an admin on posted something inappropriate. I didn’t do anything! Annoying

— Craig Kanalley (@ckanal) May 15, 2013

@jsmeudt @gobobbo @mylesnmiller can’t post, period, anywhere – not personal, not anywhere – can’t even like things, anywhere

— Craig Kanalley (@ckanal) May 15, 2013

@lheron not sure; has never happened to me but apparently one of the HuffPost pages I’m listed an admin for posted something inappropriate

— Craig Kanalley (@ckanal) May 15, 2013

Ries’s was later reinstated.

Update: I’m back on Facebook.

— Brian Ries (@moneyries) May 15, 2013

Anyone else having trouble posting to Facebook?

What’s your game, Foursquare?

In the midst of a fight to prove itself as a sustainable, revenue-generating business, Foursquare released a share-friendly app update early Wednesday. Version 6.1.1 has “made it easer to share the insights you see after you check in on Twitter, Facebook, and more.”

You can see the “Share” button at the bottom of this screenshot:

“Just tap the share button to show off your 30-week gym streak, an awesome special that you unlocked, or a great tip from a friend.”

(SocialTimes talks about the new feature.)

The location-based app released a Windows Phone 8 app recently, too. This comes about a week after the “leaking” of an internal document that outlines plans to sell user check-in data to advertisers.

(What if you never had to take your phone out to check in? Wouldn’t that be creepy?)

My problem with Foursquare is that Yelp is better when it comes to discovering new places. If I don’t know where I am, or where I’m going, Yelp is my go-to app. The search is stronger, more reliable and easier to sort through. When I search on Foursquare, I feel like I’m trying to decipher a treasure map.

If I do know where I’m going, though, Foursquare is great. More of my friends are on there (or if a lot of my friends are on Yelp, we’re not connected and/or they seldom check-in), so I’m more likely to see whether people I know and trust have been to a business, and what they think about it. And best of all, Foursquare seems to have more and better check-in specials. (Free beer shots!)

I also like the quick access to digestible tips, as opposed to sifting through longer reviews and tips on Yelp, which aren’t as useful on mobile. Especially considering the possibility that any given Yelp reviewer could have been bought by the business owner.

I’m rooting for Foursquare, and I’ll continue to use it, but I’m just as interested to see what it turns into as more updates are pushed.

Change Your Headline on Facebook Posts

Here are three reasons you might want to change your headline on a Facebook link post:

• The article has been updated
• You made a mistake
• You want to withhold some information to tease readers to click through (don’t do this for serious crime/deaths)

And here’s how you do it.

Drop the link to any article into the status update box.

Hover over the headline until it turns yellow, then click.

Type whatever you want.

Click back outside the box.

Hit post, and you’re done! (Well, I would actually delete the short link from the post since the thumbnail will turn into a link, and I would add some context to give users a reason to click, but as for changing the headline you’re done.)

(You can do the same thing with the dek.)

Why do people start tweets with a period?

Ever wonder why some of the people you follow begin tweets with a period?

I’m guessing 99.99 percent of the time you have seen this, the . was immediately followed by someone’s @handle, like here:

Want more tips. Like my Facebook page and follow me on Twitter.

A tweet that begins with the @handle, meaning the first character of the tweet is the @ symbol, is considered “semi-private.” Tweets that begin with any character – spaces don’t count – other than the @handle, though, are fully public. Meaning…

Let’s say you follow someone. Maybe you follow me. (You probably don’t, but you should!) Every time I tweet a fully public tweet, it shows up in your timeline. But if I start a tweet by mentioning another user – let’s say @NYTimes – you’ll only see that tweet on your timeline if you follow me and @NYTimes. But if you only follow me, you’ll only see that tweet if you go to my profile*, or if someone else you follow retweets me. Here’s an example of that with another user:

Semi-private tweets ≠ direct messages, which are only seen by you and the person with whom you’re messaging. But as we learned from Anthony Weiner, best to keep private communications off Twitter.

To break it down: When you follow someone, you see all their public tweets in your timeline, but only see replies if you follow the person to whom they’re replying. By putting the period in front of a @handle so the @ symbol doesn’t lead the tweet, it’s no longer a reply, it’s now a mention, and everyone who follows that user will see it in their timeline.

*The one exception in seeing all of someone’s tweets if you go to their profile applies to verified users. If someone is verified (the checkmark inside the turquoise circle on their profile), by default, their replies are hidden. But a quick toggle from “No Replies” to “All” will allow you to see everything again.

Filter Twitter Searches by Verified Users

If you don’t use Advanced Twitter Search, you’re missing out. But even there you won’t find this cool trick Mark Luckie, Twitter’s manager of journalism and news, showed me last week.

You can enter any search term on Twitter and add “filter:verified” and your results will only show verified users and tweets from verified users.

When might this be useful? During big events like the Boston Marathon Bombing when a search like #BostonBombing was producing an unmanageable stream of tweets. While you’ll certainly miss a lot of the conversation, because only so many users are verified, you’ll also get results that are much easier to digest.

Twitter Lessons from Boston Marathon Explosion

The New York Post’s report of a Saudi suspect in custody seemed to be the most irresponsible, unconfirmed claim made after Monday’s Boston Marathon explosion. The news was quickly disputed by police and other media outlets, and this morning we now know that a young Saudi man is under watch at the hospital, but is not in custody, nor has he been named a suspect.

Overall, though, the media appears to have made significant strides in restraining itself during breaking news, unlike during Newtown when Adam Lanza’s brother was misidentified as the shooter, and to pull a lesser example, when Joe Paterno was pronounced dead before he actually died.

Here are a few more good practices that were cemented yesterday:

Turn off your scheduled tweets (even I let one slip out before I could turn the rest off):

Turn off autotweets. This is not the time to be tweeting about a sale.

— Mia Aquino (@SocialMia) April 15, 2013

Don’t promote your brand:

No words for the brands still running sponsored tweets. Well, except these words: what are you thinking?!?

— Adam Schweigert (@aschweig) April 16, 2013

You don’t have to participate if you have nothing to add. But as an alternative:

Instead of needing to know everything that happened, let’s help if we can and appreciate what we have.

— Josh Hara (@yoyoha) April 16, 2013

Most importantly: Confirm, confirm, confirm – in case you have the wrong information such as in this tweet:

Boston Police say there was a third explosion at the JFK Library that they believe was related to those at the #BostonMarathon

— Neal Mann (@fieldproducer) April 15, 2013

Mountain Animation G-Train Performance in Brooklyn

Maybe this isn’t exactly social media, but I did upload the video to YouTube.

I was waiting for the G Train tonight, St. Patrick’s Day, at Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn. I came down the stairs from the L-train transfer and heard some pretty good instrumentals from across the platform.

As I leaned around one of the beams to get a better look, I realized the subway performer was actually a duo – one on each side of the platform. I made a couple Vines, then realized the performance deserved much more than six segmented seconds of attention.

I emailed the group to see if I could talk to them. Seems like they would make for a fun feature.

Mountain Animation:

• Website
• @MtnAnimation (They only have 11 followers – show some love!)
• Facebook

This is annoying, Twitter

Devs: Please don’t do this when you update your apps.

Just because I DL the @twitter app update doesn’t mean I want every notification turned back on. #BadUX

— Brad Gerick (@BradGerick) March 17, 2013