Good riddance to Google Wave.

I never understood what the fuss was about.

Wave may have been clever programming, but it didn't do anything other applications already did better. In fact Google has better tools for most Wave tasks.

It did instant messaging although Google already had one and a half tools that do the same job very well.

Wave did communications. Why bother when Gmail is so much better?

Wave was a collaboration tool. Who needs that when collaborating on Google Docs is so easy?

There was a social media twist to Wave, but Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are all simpler to use and way more polished.

Wave had a bad user interface and was difficult to use.

More importantly, it was difficult to understand what was going on and what one was supposed to do.

My New Zealand media on Twitter list is still available on this site. It has been updated many times with two new entries yesterday and four updates. If you think you should be on the list, or if you are on the list and think your entry needs to change, please get in touch.

In addition to the HTML list I've also created a Twitter list:@billbennettnz/new-zealand-media-people.

Everyone who is on the HTML list is now on the Twitter list.

Update: The list name has changed to NZ media on Twitter

Liam Tung wasn't the only Australian journalist providing up-to-the-minute coverage of the trial between Perth-based ISP iiNet and the Australian Federation against Copyright Theft (AFACT). See: When Twitter is great journalism.

Until Monday Andrew Colley from The Australian was also tweeting regular reports in addition to his regular reporting duties.

Colley ran into technical problems. But he was ultimately ordered to stop by managers at the News Corporation newspaper.

Although it may have got him into hot water, Colley deserves praise for pioneering what is already proving a viable alternative news channel.

Twitter isn't going to replace conventional journalism – 140 character tweets are not enough to convey complex ideas – but it does complement traditional news reporting.

Hidebound? timid or sensible?

Some commentators see The Australian as hidebound or out of touch with modern technology for banning tweeted reports. They have good reason.

However, the newpaper's representatives have a point when they say there are legal risks associated with a high profile publication sending unfiltered messages directly from the scene of a breaking news story.

On the other hand, this doesn't bother the BBC, which allows tweets and even provided Twitter coverage of The Ashes cricket series earlier this year. And it clearly doesn't bother ZDNet.

Where's the money

It's all too easy to forget journalism is a trade and newspapers, web sites and other media outlets are businesses.  News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch, the founder and owner of The Australian newspaper has already voiced his concern online news sites don't pay their way.

But at least web sites can display advertising and earn some revenue. There's no obvious way to make money from offering a Twitter news feed.

ZDNet is experimenting. It also publishes Liam Tung's tweets on a conventional web page with online advertising. There's some value and traffic coming from the feed – but on its own it's probably not enough to pay Tung's salary.

It's safe to say The Australian will have higher overheads than ZDNet. There's a danger a Twitter feed could not only fail to generate revenue. It may replace revenue-generating news reports.

This is an issue that goes beyond the current paid content argument and something likely to stifle Twitter's growth as a new channel.

In June I asked Can Twitter be journalism? At the time I concluded Twitter could be journalism, but that's not how most journalists use it.

Over the past week, Liam Tung at ZDnet Australia has shown just how powerful the 140 character messaging service is in the hands of a skilled reporter.

Tung is providing daily coverage of the trial between Perth-based ISP iiNet and the Australian Federation against Copyright Theft (AFACT).

He is also providing frequently updated tweets from the court room.

You can follow Tung's tweets through Twitter from his home page (LiamT) or by tracking the #iitrial hashtag.

ZDNet also publishes the feed on a web page. This makes sense because it's hard to make money from a Twitter feed, but a popular web page traffic sells plenty of advertising.

Gist cuts through the deluge of incoming email, tweets and other messages. It sorts, highlights and presents your most important material in a simple format.

After one day of using the application I can see it has potential. It may become a lynch-pin. But I'm not yet  convinced I'll use it over the long-term. Here's why:

Gist works with Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook inboxes, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Salesforce. The software is a free web-delivered or cloud application. There's a paid subscription version in the pipeline.

Like Xobni, Gist digs through your past emails and organises information, appointments and correspondence. Unlike Xobni it pulls together a range of information sources. That's smart, email is only one of a number of information channels most people deal with.

Gist displays data on a dashboard where you can quickly see what the software decides is your most important messages. You can also view the information by the contact name.

Gist analyses your contacts then ranks them based on the number of communications with each person. The idea is to help you automatically filter out noise and focus on the most significant material.

Gist simplifies

In practice, it works, but only up to a point.

Here's what it does well:

• Gist does a great job of pulling together incoming material from different sources. I'm testing it with Gmail, Twitter and LinkedIn. Between the three I may have hundreds of incoming messages each day — in fact these are mainly tweets. Putting them all in one place is helpful.
• My contacts have been automatically ordered in a league table, with the most important at the top. The list is good, but it's not perfect. The people I'm working with are all on the first page, but there are people on the page who I don't know well.
  And I'm not impressed to see Gist's TA McCann as my most important contact.
• I don't use Salesforce and I haven't yet tried Gist with Outlook so I feel a bit of a fraud for including this under the what Gist does well heading, but the software appears integrate smoothly with these applications – which will certainly make it a powerful option for those people using either product.

Here's what's not so great:

• While Gist is good at deciding who your most important contacts are, it can't decide which material from those contacts is the most important. In my industry there's a lot of chatter on Twitter and the occasional gem. Material from LinkedIn contacts is important but not vital, but most incoming emails are vital. I'd like to tell Gist to give incoming email more weight than tweets – perhaps I can do this and I just haven't found out how, it's only been on my machine for 24 hours.
• I still feel deluged. It's easier to get at some of the important material. I could use Gist instead of Tweetdeck. And it's a better way of checking out LinkedIn updates than the RSS feed I use. But Gist is probably not going to replace my email inbox soon.

Better than Xobni

The headline says Gist is better than Xobni. The last time I looked Xobni only worked with Outlook, although it can pull personal information from Facebook and LinkedIn. Gist adds Gmail and Twitter putting it way out in front.

Xobni integrates with Outlook, but the composite screen is cramped on my desktop display and hard to view on my laptop. Gist on the other hand is browser-based (although there are integrated versions) and is easier to read.

Lastly, I found Xobni was slow to use and I suspected it slowed down Outlook as well – although I couldn't quantify this.

So. Farewell
Then
Twitter.

Social networking
and
micro-blogging
service.

Whatever that’s supposed
to mean in English

Keith’s mum used to
Tweet things.

Like “I had
cornflakes
for breakfast”

And other
pearls
of wisdom

EJ Thribb age 17 1/2

(with acknowledgement to Barry Fantoni and Private Eye magazine. I was inspired to write this after reading that 'Twitter is dead').

Canadian public relations practitioner Dave Fleet says Twitter has moved through the Gartner Hype Cycle to the point where it will now quickly become unfashionable. In his  Five Potential Effects Of Twitter's Shift To The Trough Of Disillusionment Fleet charts the technology's progress and predicts what will happen next.

Fleet's analysis is on the money. But there's something else going on with Twitter. After a period of stability, the service is changing. Earlier this week the company altered the way users propagate messages – a process known as retweeting.

In other words, Twitter is still evolving. It will probably be a different beast by the time it resumes its progress through the later stages of the Garter Hype Cycle. Or maybe something else will replace it.

New Zealand journalists and media organisations on Twitter:

Newspapers, radio and TV stations:

Magazines

Public relations and communications

Bloggers and online media

This list is not comprehensive, if you’d like to be included, or you know someone who should be added, please leave the twitter name, link and a few descriptive words in the comments below and I’ll make the additions when I have time.

Also, please let me know if any corrections are needed.

There's a similar list of Australian media people at The Earley Edition: 501 Australian Journalists and News Media People on Twitter

You may be interested in:

Can Twitter be journalism?
More on Twitter as journalism