Jeff Jarvis on the use of Twitter by news organisations to get 'breaking news' information using a citizen journalist type concept...

It's like having a million (or whatever the numbers of Twitterers there are) eyes and ears monitoring the world. At a time of tight budgets it is like having a mass of foreign 'stringers'. Journalists back at a remote location can make a call to physically go to the news or leverage the resources of local citizen journalists with the professional journalist acting as editor.

Pluck has announced via BusinessWire that it will be supplying its software solution to the Guardian Unlimited to allow the development of a social media community. Pluck allows the integration of blogs, forums and user generated content such as articles, images and videos, all within a self contained environment.

Plucks functionality will allow GU to implement 'citizen journalism' as a rich media experience in the near future.  

The Press Gazette has announced Citizen Journalism Awards to be presented in March 2008. Rather than award a prize for photos or videos from private individuals they are looking for examples of ways that journalists and publications are collaborating community groups to develop what they call “hyperlocal” level of coverage. 

I subscribe to the blog by Richard Sambrook, Director of BBC Global News. His update on how the BBC is opening up its programme content to its audience is very interesting. The news teams are not yet at the stage of using 'citizen journalists' (and not sure they ever will) but their use of blogs and podcasts to supplement traditional news programme production is very interesting.

When I am asked for examples of a social media site and citizen journalism and how it can work I give the example of TripAdvisor.

There was an excellent balanced review – warts and all - in the Wall Street Journal recently.

There are many worthy travel reviewers out there but they are paid to give a review either by the industry or a publication. Some travel undercover to avoid any impropriety but equally hotel management are on the look-out for those people so they can be given extra special service.

Many guide books and even holiday companies provide ‘satisfaction’ rankings on hotels and places. These are very useful but tend to be tied to publication dates and so are many months and sometimes a year or more out of date.

What is good about TripAdvisor is the sheer number of reviews produced covering so many places. The real power of social media would come to the fore if some sort of profiling is provided. A sort of ‘people like me’. A young couple with kids may have different needs and values on services and facilities to an older couple travelling without kids. Knowing more about the people helps improve the potential ‘matching’ of their review.

It certainly appears that many businesses have woken up to the fact that they can be being vetted by anyone. They post comments back about problems now being addressed. One can only hope that such constant inspection will help improve service overall where it is necessary.