We’ve just published an update about this Mastodon trial which has been running for the last 6 months – you can read it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2024-02-extending-our-mastodon-social-media-trial
We are going to continue our trial here for at least another six months while we share our findings internally and seek more engagement from other BBC teams. We are also planning to start researching ways to publish more BBC content using ActivityPub.
Just a reminder that, in case you don’t already, you can follow our R&D colleagues who work on news innovation - @BBC_News_Labs - and our team creating digital tools for creators to explore: @Connected_Studio
And for more regular updates, our colleagues at @BBCRadio4 and @BBC5Live bring you the best of what’s happening on those radio networks!
@BBCRD @BBC_News_Labs @Connected_Studio @BBCRadio4 @BBC5Live
I've pointed out before that you have not added a Mastodon link to your list of socials on your home page. To increase visibility, please add a Mastodon link!!
@enmodo @rotan @BBCRD @BBC_News_Labs @Connected_Studio @BBCRadio4 @BBC5Live
Yes, by promoting those centralised platforms on the websites, the BBC is recommending people join Twitter and Facebook, telling people they are good. Thus driving people to toxic networks. But not towards any decentralised networks.
Then you say you are judging "how many people we’d reach" when you are actually 'influencing' where people are.
I must assume the BBC receive advertising money from those adverts?
This makes the BBC look out of touch.
I had this with following someone, and it turned out it had glitched - they couldn't see the request, but when I unfollowed and followed again, it worked.
Aaah right - well I hope you do get a reply!
@BBCRD @BBC_News_Labs @Connected_Studio @BBCRadio4 @BBC5Live I get wanting to think about News feeds carefully first but one thing I'm curious about is that I have a couple of bot accounts fed from different BBC News RSS feeds, and I know I'm not the only one
Do you have any feel for how many such mirror accounts there might be? I think that sort of discovery can be hard on the Fediverse but can you tell from the web server logs?
@BBCRD @BBC_News_Labs @Connected_Studio @BBCRadio4 @BBC5Live
Thanks for continuing to be a part of the fediverse. If I had one suggestion, it would be to please put more #ElisAndJohn content on the 5 live feed 😁
i like the idea still but would very much like it if there was an official bbc news feed over mastodon
there are unofficial feeds but they could be on servers more likely blocked by other servers and one official feed would make it easier to find comments
@BBCRD Thank you, interesting. I'd be very happy if some BBC journalists with social media profiles on other platforms, for example Steve Rosenberg in Moscow, were present here as well. I very much enjoy his posts, but I do not enjoy having to use X to see them.
Topical news updates would be nice too, of course, but on the other hand we can already get them here through RSS-bots if necessary. I'm more interested in accounts I can interact with than simple news feeds.
@BBCRD This is a very encouraging post.
Your commitment to transparency and carefully explaining what's going on is also admirable.
Hope to see you here for many years to come!
Nice, glad you're sticking around and finding it encouraging.
"...most of the comments and feedback have been positive, welcoming both our interest and the way we have set things up. We’ve had really encouraging levels of engagement(i.e. replies, re-posts and likes) on Mastodon. For some equivalent posts we’ve seen significantly larger engagement numbers for Mastodon compared to X/Twitter, particularly given the relative sizes of different platforms. We think this is partly due to the culture of Mastodon, and partly because of some of the topics we’ve posted about."
@BBCRD This is heartening news, thanks for all the work that's gone into this.
Would love to see 6Music and Radio 3 here.
The link you post is *not* to the BBC at Social.BBC but rather to a content aggregator:
@BBCNews @ press.coop
Press.coop currently has one (1) active user
Here: https://fedidb.org/network/instance/press.coop
It aggregates content (a lot of it as an rss bridge) and publishes as its own
"Press.coop imports RSS feeds from popular press sites to the fediverse, and is operated as a public benefit by hello.coop"
Here: https://press.coop/about
@BBCRD A few small typos :)
"up.We’ve"
"onnews"
Read the report you linked to.
There's a general problem for the British News Media. They may not always be liars, but that's the way to bet.
The current style I see on Twitter struggles to be more than clickbait. The news page and the social media entry amounts to a repeated headline. The alleged AI driving an algorithm might make that work, but can it work for the Fediverse?
It's not the same as the liar problem, but get on to a phone screen and what space do you have? It's not a TV or a newspaper or a computer monitor but it changes how you communicate with the user.
The details and differences matter.
And the I remember that "Read" and "Read" look the same on a screen but have different sounds and meaning and usage. And what was in my brain gets warped because of that.
Jay
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