The third in a series of Q&A interviews with media people using Twitter - Matt Ball explains how he makes the most of the platform.
* What did you think about the concept when you first heard about Twitter?
I was sitting next to @jemimakiss at the Association of Online Publishers awards dinner 2007. She was tweeting the award winners as they were announced. I was intrigued and decided to find out more.
* Do you recall your first tweet?
At the time I was blogging about Strictly Come Dancing series five 2007 (http://strictlycomeblogging.spaces.live.com) for the MSN Entertainment channel so my first tweet was about who I thought was going to leave the show that week.
* How did you use Twitter to begin with?
A mixture of what I was thinking about plus some links to the best stuff on MSN UK. I would look at our homepage (http://uk.msn.com) every morning and tweet the things that appealed to me most.
* How has your use of Twitter changed?
I now get a feed to post the top three items on MSN rather than do the same thing manually. My blog posts are also done as feeds though I could just as easily use the Twitter add-in for Windows Live Writer. I’ve changed my bio and generally tweet about the subjects listed in it. I also use my twitter page to update my Facebook status.
* Have you attended a tweetup?
I’ll be attending the London Twestival on February 12
* Have you evangelised Twitter? If so, any success?
I decided that we would use Twitter as a way to connect users to MSN UK content and to the MSN UK editorial team. So now you can get two things from us on Twitter:
Firstly, you can get updates from MSN UK channels such as http://twitter.com/msnents , http://twitter.com/msnstyle , http://twitter.com/msnmoney , http://twitter.com/msnuknews , http://twitter.com/msncars , http://twitter.com/msntravel , http://twitter.com/msnenvironment , http://twitter.com/msntech , http://twitter.com/msnhome .
These are pages displaying latest headlines in the same way that media sites such as the BBC (http://twitter.com/bbcnews) and CNN (http://twitter.com/cnn) use Twitter. You could say that it’s not social media in the sense that you probably won’t get a conversation from pages fed by twitterfeed but users know what they’re signing up to when they follow these pages.
Secondly, you can follow some of the MSN UK editors and join in the conversation. We don’t require our editors to be on Twitter; we support those who want to use it. Here are some of them:
http://twitter.com/msntechjane
http://twitter.com/msnstylemonica
http://twitter.com/winlivematt
Some of the MSN UK portal team senior staff are also on twitter:
* Do you have any self-imposed policies regarding your use of Twitter (follow backs, etc)
I don’t tend to follow people if their bio tells me little or nothing.
* How do you see your use of Twitter developing this year?
I might refine the range of subjects I tweet about.
As for our MSN UK channel pages, we’ll most likely redesign the backgrounds to follow the model http://twitter.com/msnstyle is using as we think that works the best.
I expect we’ll do more coverage of events on Twitter. Our Tech&Gadgets editor @msntechjane got a lot of new followers as a result of her coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, for example.
[+] Matt Ball is editor-in-chief of MSN UK, Microsoft’s online consumer portal, a role he has held since 2005. Follow him on Twitter, or connect with him on LinkedIn.
Tags: social media, twitter
