Social media news and TV – Current.com Blog – Your guide to Current

Approximately one month ago we launched an experiment called twitterbot. Over the course of one month, twitterbot gathered tweets related to items being discussed on current.com and posted them as comments. It racked up a total of 308 comments, and proceeded to spark a debate in the community about whether or not the twitterbot was useful, or just a nuisance.

You spoke, we listened.

As of a few days ago, twitterbot has posted it’s last tweet on current.com for a while. We still have a pretty definitive set of plans we intend to work on for twitterbot, which means it will return one day, but for the time being we felt it was best to pull the plug.

Here are a couple examples of plans we have for the twitterbot:

Tie current.com profiles to twitter profiles and allow our community to post items and comments via tweets. these wouldn’t appear as “twitterbot” posts, but instead as your own post/comment on current.com. just another way to participate

The twitterbot would continue to scan twitter for tweets related to articles, but once the tweet has been posted as a comment, the original twitterer would get an @reply informing them of the discussion going on over in the current.com community. They could then have the option of signing in on current.com via their twitter profile, and reclaim the tweet as their own comment.

A few of you might be thinking, “Aw, those ideas sound sweet! Why kill twitterbot if that’s the plan?”

The answer is pretty simple. We have a lot on our development plate, and in order to get where we are going we needed to make some compromises. In my opinion, the twitterbot test was a success. However, it did rub some of our community members the wrong way. We have a somewhat lengthy road ahead of us working on some unannounced projects like xxxxxxx xxxxxxx, xxxxxxx xxxxx, and xxx xxxxxxx xxx. We want to get our “bumps to TV” concept back in action, and this is proving to be a pretty big endeavor. In addition, after groups launches we will have another cycle dedicated to added group functionality. All of this stuff takes time and resources, so we decided to forgo some of the twitterbot work for the time being.

Plus, it felt wrong to keep it plugged in and active when so many were frustrated and/or confused by it in the first place. Thank you guys for the feedback, we certainly take it into consideration, and when twitterbot finally gets plugged back in you can rest assured it will be a different experience.

Hey Currentians,

Last week our community cried out for the return of Vicky the Robot and Current News, and in response I posted some details about the return of “bumps to TV” on the Current.com blog. We’re still working hard on these and when we’re ready to update, you’ll read it here first.

The sad part? Vicky won’t be returning to the airwaves alongside our “bumps to TV” for various reasons. We’re going to miss her dearly, but I’ll have you know, the split was amicable. When we approached her with the news of our intended plan, Vicky surprisingly replied:

We honestly had no idea how hard Current:News was for her. Her reaction to the news definitely shed some light on the situation, and the more we discussed it the more this change made sense for everyone involved.

As she mentioned, Vicky is going to take some time out for herself. She’s planned a trip to tour Europe, and she might even do some self-upgrading. We’re sad to see her go, but this isn’t the end for Vicky and Current. She’s agreed to check in every once in a while via Facebook, and she plans to keep a close eye on the re-launch of our “bumps to TV.” She’s invested in it, and wants to see it all work out.

So, here is where you guys come in. Let’s send Vicky off with some love directly from the Current community. We’ve set up a group for Vicky specifically, titled “Current [hearts] Vicky.” Head over there, submit a webcam, and tell her what you think. Let’s send her off in style.

Please use the button below [make sure you're logged in] to head over to the Current.com clipper and add a webcam, photo, or comment for Vicky:

In case you haven’t checked it out yet, take a look at DeliaTheArtist’s post about bringing back Vicky and Current News. First of all, a HUGE thanks to everyone who has taken the time to weigh in, comment, or vote on this story. We love hearing your feedback and we appreciate that you continue to support Current.com.

Question: Will the “news on TV” concept return?

Mario: Yes. It’s certainly taken longer than we’ve hoped, but bringing back community-submitted stories to TV is definitely on our (long) list of things to do — we’ve got some serious work to do to get things running smoothly.

Question: What needs to be done?

Mario: Right now Current.com ranks popularity based on a site-wide score across all of the items submitted to the site. We’re actively working on this, and I’ll quote myself from a previous blog post in an attempt to explain things:

“This actually relates to one of the reasons we needed to pull down the “get on TV” portion of Current News. We recognized that our community is comprised of people who share varied “news-related” interests that span a broader spectrum, which is why we rolled out our channel structure. However, our algorithm and scoring for items is sitewide, which causes complications when calculating popularity on individual channels. We have a PhD on staff named DrGary who will be working on a vastly improved classifier and channel-based scoring system, but this is pretty involved work.”

It’s going to take some more time before we’re ready to flip the switch, but we are working on getting there as quickly as we can.

Question: Will it be the same?

Answer: As I’ve said from the get-go, when we flip the “get on TV” switch back on it will be somewhat different. First of all, the sad news: Vicky won’t be returning.

BUT, your submissions on air will return, and in greater volume. We’re aiming to stick with the hourly update format, but the difference is we plan to pull more stories from our channels each hour. For those familiar with the old version of the site, only one story would be picked at a time, AND these picks would occur sporadically (sometimes the next pick would be one hour away, sometimes two or three). Our goal is to stick to new picks every hour, PLUS more picks at a time from a broader collection of channels (not just news).

We haven’t finalized all of this just yet (still needs to be tested and worked through), but this is the general plan.

Question: Cool, but seriously…no Vicky? That’s weak.

Answer: Well, yes. The truth is, teach Vicky how to speak took a lot of human hand holding. We’ll be pulling more stories at a time, and we’ll be attempting to stick to a much faster-paced turnaround. This means, more community submissions on TV, but unfortunately to pull this off it also means dropping Vicky from the bumps on TV. You can still follow her on facebook, and she’s built up a pretty respectable following.

Question: So how will this work with the new homepage, I’m confused.

Answer: The goal of our last homepage revamp was to introduce the concept of channels to the Current community in preparation for groups. Our first iteration of groups is just about ready to launch, and when we relaunch the community submissions to TV concept our homepage will need to make room for that as well. Nothing has been finalized, but we’ll let you know as things develop.

Thanks for all of the support, you guys. We really do hear and appreciate all of your feedback, suggestions, and comments. Please continue to share this info with others on the site, and remember…the Current.com blog is really the best place to keep up to speed on the latest stuff happening in the Current.com community.

If you have any suggestions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below or click on the “feedback” button on the left side of the page.