MarkLives is tracking SA newspapers using Twitter to try and gauge which if any are implementing strategies that could benefit both users (followers in Twitter tongue) and publication. We published the first data in December last year.
Not much have changed since January in terms of strategic implementation. IOL and News24 continue to dump a thousand plus headlines on their poor Twitter followers every month. An interesting development from News24 though – it launched a Twitter feed for MyNews24 which has a human moderator interacting with users and posts breaking news only. It launched February 4 and has already managed to sign up 69 followers. It did so by getting its name out there – following 228 Twitter feeds itself.
TheTimes knocked IOL off the number 1 spot. It is also making strategic use of Twitters viral power by following 117 feeds itself. The top 4 sites all experienced positive growth in subscriber numbers.
Grocott’s Mail and the Sowetan limited updates. Maybe their interns forgot their Twitter passwords?
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See January 2009 data update. See December 2008 data update.
Follow MarkLives on Twitter @marklives or on the @CABNetwork
If you find other news organisations online let me know so I can add them to the list.