Mfarhanonline Social Media News: A new tool makes Twitter a better backchannel for events and panels. Bill Couch, a software engineer at Twitter, demoed the new tool at SXSW on Friday during the “ Design from the Gut ” panel. Panels often use a Twitter hashtag as a way to accept audience-submitted questions. The problem, however, is that these tweets from panel attendees show up in all of their followers feeds — whether or not those followers care about the panel. During the panel onslaught of SXSW, this can become very annoying. “Experiencing the event second-hand became a common frustration of Twitter users — myself included — especially as hashtags and retweets gathered momentum as a way to post live updates, and share others' thoughts,” Couch wrote on a blog post that describes the new tool. Dubbed Osprey, the tool collects the questions and thoughts submitted through @ replies to a Twitter account set up for the event. It then tweets them from the account. One panel attendee at the demo, for example asked, “What are some of the most surprising or counterintuitive successful designs you’ve seen?” The account tweeted this message with “From @BakoInd:” posted in front of it to show who submitted it. From @ BakoInd : what are some of the most surprising or counterintuitive successful designs you’ve seen? — Design from the Gut (@dftg) March 9, 2012 People at the panel can follow the Twitter account to get updates in their streams. Outsiders can opt to get all of the conversation, rather than bits and pieces from the people who they follow. Osprey also creates a way for the audience to rank questions and comments using the Twitter favorite function. Those with the most Twitter favorites at the SXSW panel were ranked on a leaderboard, which was projected on a screen in the room and ac! cessible to everyone else online. The question above ended up getting the most votes (11). As a moderator, I imagine the ranking function would be useful. Tools like Google Moderator also provide this functionality, but it’s not open to the public. As a panel attendee, it was about as easy to follow along with a Twitter feed as a Twitter hashtag, but I’m sure my Twitter followers appreciated the opt-in conversation. Couch tells Mfarhanonline Twitter may add the code to its open source library . Have you seen any effective backchannel management strategies at panels or conferences? Let us know in the comments. More About: backchannels , hashtags , moderation , sxsw , sxsw 2012 , Twitter For more Social Media coverage: Follow Mfarhanonline Social Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Social Media channel Download our free apps for Android , Mac , iPhone and iPad Social Media reviews series maintain by Mayya
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