norton, brian

Things to do when the Fail Whale appears:

• Write a blog post
• Read a book
• Download music
• Do laundry
• Go outside (you can check TweetDeck to see if Fail Whale goes away)
• Enjoy the silence

Conference expansion has been a wild and crazy ride for all involved – from the schools involved to the journalists covering the situation. With Nebraska’s official move to the Big Ten on Friday, it placed our sports department right in the middle of the fire. Our online sports team (two of us with some advice from Nick, one of the ASEs) is still relatively new (we only official took the reigns over posting our own content about a year ago) and, with our coverage this week, I feel like we finally found our footing.

We’ve had a few other opportunities before (Dana Altman to Oregon and the hiring of Greg McDermott at Creighton) but there had always been some issues with our coverage. Either we were slow to get the story or we didn’t spend the time planning how best to present the information. This time was different, although to be fair this was much easier to see coming.

So what did we do:

• We built a page to house all of our conference expansion information
• On that page we have a Publish2 widget that shares links from across the country. It’s been fun linking to some of the great work being done on the subject
• We hosted an all-day (well 10 to 6) live chat/blog on Friday during the meat of the news. This was the second time we’ve done an all-day chat (the first was on Signing Day in February). The first few hours were largely readers chatting, then when the actual news broke we switched to a live blog format (almost no reader questions at that point).
• Lee Barfknecht broke the story early on (although I believe KC Star beat us by a little bit).

Overall it was definitely a success and I look forward to seeing the site-wide numbers when all is said and done. The chat was extremely successful with over 21,000 readers joining in at some point during the day. It was a lot of fun to interact with eager fans all day and they were very quick to thank us for our coverage. I think this went a long way in improving the view of our staff on online (along with our daily chats as well).

Now I don’t make this post just to toot my own vuvuzela. Sure, I am proud of what we accomplished. But, with that said, we could done a better job as well. Some things that could have been better:

• The conference expansion page only launched on Thursday (and I only came up with the idea on Tuesday night).
• Our main story was not updated for awhile after we got the initial scoop.
• Not having message boards really hurt us, considering the interest in the live chat. Ideally the message board could have been used for chatter and rumors/speculation from readers and the live blog could have been used to better curate the news. Plenty of readers loved the chat, but a lot were turned off during the first few hours when it was just a chat room (with some news sprinkled in).

Any suggestions on how we can make our breaking news coverage better? We are always looking for ways to improve.

There has been some discussion recently about whether Twitter is a social media site or a news website. According to a PC World story, Korean researchers analyzed Twitter and found that Tweeps use the site more as a traditional news site and not as a social network. This got me thinking about how, and why, I use Twitter (I’m a bit of a Twitter junkie).

I think the Korean researchers got it half right. I do believe that a lot of users get news from Twitter. But, as anyone that has noticed Justin Bieber’s permanent home in Twitter’s trending topics has discerned, there are plenty of Tweeps that use it as a social networking site. And, frankly, I think that is what I love about Twitter so darn much. It’s both. I can get all of the latest news as fast as possible and converse with my friends at the same time. All in short, quick bursts.

I wasn’t an early adopter for Twitter. In fact, like many first time Tweeters, I signed up, sent out a confused Tweet and then didn’t use it again for months. But I was an early adopter for another social media juggernaut – Facebook. I’ve been on Facebook so long that I can remember when it was thefacebook.com. But my loyalty towards Facebook has run cold – from the constant stresses on privacy of information to the fact that I really just don’t like Mark Zuckerberg all that much – and I have changed my habits to focus on Twitter. If not for the number of people still on Facebook, I am sure I would close my account.

Instead I use Twitter to communicate with college friends that have moved away. I have found out about most of the biggest news through Twitter (the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, the floods in Tennessee, the Times Square bomb) before hearing reports elsewhere. I have won contests – including a trip to New Zealand, a couple free books and a gift certificate for free food. And, maybe most importantly, I have met new people that have helped inspire me everyday.

Twitter helps make this big world small again. Sure, I might not like the fact that Justin Bieber is always a trending topic or that Kim Kardashian has over 3.5 million followers, but the benefits more than outweigh those negatives.

I tweet because I have never felt so connected to the world as a whole. How do you tweet?