140 characters in these streets

By Mike Devlin

Tim Whyte, former editor of The Signal, has a great idea. He's putting together local "stories" that pull from news reports and discussions on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. But mostly Twitter. And that's why it's so great.

Twitter is fantastic, or at least it can be. But it's very contextual. It matters who you follow, how you read it and whether you contribute. If you don't get the right mix, you might miss the whole point.

Whyte's new venture is called HashtagSCV (or maybe just #SCV). He'll take a subject like good times at Lombardi Ranch or the Hart school board appointment, and round up the tweets, pictures and articles. He groups them into themes and adds a little narrative. It just works.

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The website says it's in its "soft opening" phase, so expect a lot more to come.

HashtagSCV is on the web at hashtagscv.com and on Twitter @HashtagSCV

Comments (5)

CherylSaturday, October 19th, 2013 at 1:53 pm

Yeah, I don't like it. I expect retweets, etc. within the format, but not republishing of my tweets in a different format on a regular basis. Sounds like using people's writing for free and disseminating to a different audience for a different purpose than the author intended. It certainly shouldn't be done without the tweeters' permission.

JulieOSaturday, October 19th, 2013 at 2:12 pm

I understand Cheryl's perspective but this can only be done with tweets set to public viewing anyway so inherently permission has been given. You can simply make your twitter stream private to avoid being included, or you can avoid using an agreed upon hashtag used by those doing formal or informal reporting on a particular event. I don't mind it (which is good, since my tweets were used LOL). :)

MikeSaturday, October 19th, 2013 at 2:49 pm

Sometimes the conversation is the story. Also, twitter has been like this since way back. A variety of services can republish your tweets under their TOS.

WalkerSaturday, October 19th, 2013 at 10:56 pm

Reminds me of Huff. They love to string together Tweets to create an article.

IHeartSCVSaturday, October 19th, 2013 at 11:20 pm

I'm not so sure this works. It's not particularly compelling to read stuff like "The Lombardi Ranch Pumpkin Patch is honestly the best", and I'm not too deeply moved by the knowledge that 4 people really want someone with whom they can visit Lombardi's (e.g., "Anyone want to take me to Lombardi Ranch for pumpking picking? I'll love you forever!"). I think Twitter and Facebook "work" because the people proffering mildly amusing comments are people we know so we at least kind of care what they have to say...reading that some random Claritan feels "Lombardi Ranch was poppin tonight" is fine, but I don't know that it's really capturing the Zeitgeist of autumnal SCV. But then I hate almost all things Twitter, so there's probably no pleasing me with anything tweet-related.