Don’t press release it, tweet it
A little Twitter milestone for me just now.
I saw the official denial of a story on Twitter before the story. It was a tweet from Ten’s press office saying: “Contrary to todays news, The Simpsons is not cancelled! Its a TEN fixture and fans can look forward to All New episodes – Wednesdays at 8pm.”
It follows the SMH story on The Simpsons which went up at lunchtime.
And it’s the second time today, I’ve seen a press officer tweet in an attempt to scotch a rumour.
Earlier today, Peter Habib of Telstra reacted to a story in The Australian about the company working on a secret content project. He tweeted: “”Glad to see #TheAustralian grossly behind the times: #BigPond has had a not-so-secret content division for year”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large. He returned to Mumbrella as Publisher in January 2025
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Are you sure they were denying an SMH story before the SMH hit publish?
Could it have been a tweet response to the news.com.au story about it which has been up since 7.43am this morning?
http://www.news.com.au/enterta.....29,00.html
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Rowan is right. The Simpsons story was broken by the Courier Mail on Monday morning.
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Hi Rowan/ Amanda,
The SMH story was up a couple of hours before the tweet. The reason I linked to that one in particular (and this may say something wider…) is that when I put the words Ten and Simpsons into Google News, that was the first one that came up, and it only needed one story to illustrate to the reader what the tweet referred to.
But the main point I’m making isn’t about who was first with the story, so much as the fact that press officers for big brands are starting to routinely use Twitter as a channel to make statements from.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Bearing in mind that the story has fallen apart and was based on someone misreading a press release, I don’t think I’d be rushing to claim it for News Limited if I were you, Rowan & Amanda
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Seems fair enough to do things this way, doesn’t it? The immediacy Twitter offers can get the facts out immediately in 140 char, then you can fill in the details with more thorough details when you have a chance with a more deciated press release or similar.
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