Friday round up

A selection of digital stories to see you through the weekend.

Tweetminster launches Media Watch channel

The people behind MP tweet-monitoring service Tweetminster have launched a new aggregation service for tracking UK News media, reports Journalism.co.uk.

The Media Watch channel is the latest in a number of launches for the site which also includes health, economy and environment channels.

The homepage of the channel has a "livestream" that includes all Twitter accounts of mainstream media sources and updates as they update.

Alberto Nardelli, Tweetminster founder, told Journalism.co.uk: "The idea behind channels is to make it easier for people to follow news, see what's trending in each topic or within each source, and also make it easier for people to connect with those driving the conversations.

"The longer term goal is an interactive wire - we'll be developing further channels around issues, networks, events and locations and also soon releasing APIs and feeds."

Five free SEO Tools for journalists

Many journalists see Search Engine Optimisation as "the equivalent of writing headlines for robots", writes Alfred Hermida.


But, he points out, it is key to helping readers find what they are looking for. He then provides five free SEO tools that can help journalists make their work easier to find on the web.


These include WordTracker FreeKeywords which provides alternative keyword suggestions with a weighting to indicate their use, and Google Trends which analyses Google searches and works out how many searches have been done for the terms you enter.





Survey reveals digital journalism is tough going but has lots of opportunity

Finally, The Guardian's PDA Blog has a summary of the annual Oriella digital journalism survey.

From the 770 journalists surveyed (from 15 countries around the globe including the UK), around 46% of journalists said they were expected to produce more work, 30% said they are working longer hours and 28% have less time to research stories.

But some 40% said they believed the web provided new opportunities with many looking at Smartphone applications and paywalls as possible streams of revenue. Twitter is also important with 41% running a Twitter feed.