I’ve written on occasion about the extent to which publishers will need to develop new skills to make sure content is discoverable, accessible and consumable in the future. An object lesson in those new skills was recently posted on one of O’Reilly Media’s web channels.
Most publishers have at least opened Twitter accounts, and some have been inventive in using them to promote their content. That said, much of what happens on Twitter emulates the ages-old broadcast model: “We have something to say; please listen.”
We could do better. O’Reilly has a book out, 21 Recipes for Mining Twitter, that gives publishers and marketers tools to better understand what is happening (and why) on the social-media service.
It doesn’t quite look like old-school marketing. “How to Crawl Followers on Twitter to Approximate Potential Influence” offers a 49-line script to help identify who makes a difference among the masses on Twitter.
That’s one of the skills we’ll need going forward. We can buy those skills, build them or borrow them, but we’ll need them in spades to help us listen across the media that help us (all) talk.
