Out With A Bang

I’m sure there will be fuller post-mortems in the days and weeks that follow after ‘backchat’ made its derby ‘debut’ at Carrow Road this afternoon.

By and large – IMHO, of course – it did well; the platform proved pretty stable; no major crashes; the odd, glitch when it appears to go from ‘37 mins ago…’ to ‘2 hrs ago…’ in something approaching an instant.

But, overall, OK.

And, besides, it’s never been designed as a match-day only device; it’s a 24/7 conversation tool; sparking new conversations into life every day of the week.

Now it is going to be a case of working the numbers; pushing the traffic flow up to see how and when we might need to start filtering and channeling the conversation; how do we cope if everyone piles in at once…

There is, however, one point worth making; which this afternoon’s fun and games underlined.

‘backchat’ is not just a ’social media’ tool. It is very much an old media tool in terms of its ability to deliver/publish news instantly.

Team news was the classic; in my hand some 45 minutes before kick-off; there you go, two ‘newsy’ type tweets slapped onto the site as others are still phoning teams over to the copy-takers… pick out a couple of the best post-match quotes and tease them up re articles to come and away you go…

That’s Twitter/jaiku/backchat as a tool for the journalist, not the community; a breaking news device par excellence.

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