The Twitter Feature to End All Twitter Corrections Mishaps for Newsrooms

If there is one thing I do over here, it's complain about how news outlets correct themselves, rant about the ethics of reporting news on Twitter, and wonder about best practices on social media. Now, Twitter has added a feature where you can embed a tweet within a tweet, and my head has exploded. This changes everything about the do's and don'ts of reporting breaking news and correcting yourself on social media. It still has to be done manually and only from the desktop version of Twitter or the official iOS and Android apps. But it's easy: you copy the entire url of the tweet you want to embed, add a little comment, and voila: the original tweet is there. The original tweet, including media, is passed along for prosperity. If you embed another outlet's or user's tweet, they get a notification. And if someone embeds your tweet with an embed, it's all connected so you can follow the train of information. One thing I noticed is that if you want to embed a tweet with an embedded tweet (there has to be shorter way to say that), somewhere besides Twitter, you end up with just a link to the original tweet, and not the full image if it, whereas currently you can decide to include media that goes with original tweets when you embed them, and for journos, more information is always better. This is nit-picking, but it does require more work from your readers. Then again, maybe we shouldn't be embedding tweets on our websites anyway. I'm just practicing embedding my tweets. Does it work? https://t.co/g76icRzBm8 — Karen Fratti (@karenfratti) July 31, 2014 As our colleague Shea Bennett points out over at AllTwitter, it's also a step towards a full roll-out of a "retweet with comment," which would be just as useful for journos, in that it makes it easier to attribute tweets, gives you more characters to work with, and share them. How do you feel about the new feature or have you already been using it during tests? Any downsides for newsrooms? Let us know below or at @10,000Words.

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The Twitter Feature to End All Twitter Corrections Mishaps for Newsrooms

Karen Fratti

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Karen Fratti