Indymedia UK has always been at the forefront of technological innovation, but of late it has sadly been lagging behind.

Twitter came of age during the flawed Iranian elections. More and more activists are now making use of twitter, both for information and coordination.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/07/434151.html?c=on

With many people now possessing twitter-enabled mobile phones, my proposal is to place the Indymedia UK newswire on twitter as an automated stream. This enables people to react very quickly to a news story, pass it on and brings the news of the front line to a wider audience. The format would be

news-headline shorturl

Followers would click on whatever news story was of interest, if they liked it or it was of interest, they would re-tweet to their followers, quickly passing the news to a wider audience.

At a later stage the news categories could be added as hashtags. I have mixed feelings on this. Whilst the categories are fine for use within Indymedia UK, I feel they are far too broad to be used as hashtags for a much wider audience.

If this is agreed as a way forward, and it is technically feasible to implement, then may I suggest it is up and running in time for COP15 in Denmark.

The tools are there, it is up to us to make best use of them.

Possible flaw: Indymedia leaves no trace of who is accessing news stories. Or maybe this is only for those who are posting stories. My proposal would leave a trace, at least for part of the route as the request will pass through the shorturl website. Maybe therefore not such a good idea after all.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/07/434151.html?c=on

A way around this perceived problem is to use the full url of the news story. This would place a restriction on the length of headlines, not necessary of itself a problem. The web address and information it relates to is already in the public domain. What we may not wish to see in the public domain is who is accessing that information. Nothing to stop whoever re-tweets the information from shortening the url, but then that is happening anyway.

Also see

IMC-UK, How do you know that Indymedia does not keep logs?, Indymedia UK, 19 February 2009
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/02/422330.html?c=on

Keith Parkins, Should twitter receive the Nobel Peace Prize?, Indymedia UK, 9 July 2009
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/07/434151.html?c=on

Keith Parkins, Can we rank twitter streams?, WordPress, 13 November 2009
 http://keithpp.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/can-we-rank-twitter-streams/

Keith Parkins, When tweets become spam, WordPress, 16 November 2009
 http://keithpp.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/when-tweets-become-spam/