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Twitter on the CNET home pages

Over the last few weeks, we released new versions the CNET and the CNET News home pages. With these redesigns, we are using Twitter as a new way to bring you news.

Daniel Schmidt Senior Product Manager
Daniel Schmidt is a Senior Product Manager for CNET. His focus is on CNET News, the CNET.com home page, the editorial publishing tools, and developing CNET's social web strategy. Follow Dan on Twitter at @danielfschmidt.
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Daniel Schmidt

Over the last few weeks, we released new versions of the CNET and the CNET News home pages. With these redesigns, we are using Twitter as a new way to bring you news.

While many news organizations aggregate their reporters' tweets and display them in dedicated Twitter modules, CNET now folds a curated set of tweets into the listing of latest news, placing tweets on the same level with everything else that CNET publishes.

Twitter on the CNET home page.
An example of Twitter on the CNET home page. Screenshot by Daniel Schmidt

How it works
It is up to the discretion of the reporter to decide which tweets are worthy of your attention. If a reporter deems a tweet newsworthy, they will include a "#cnet" hash tag--only tweets with this tag will appear on our home pages. This system also enables CNET editors to use Twitter as a tool to curate news. If they find a tweet they think is relevant to CNET's audience, they can retweet it with the hash tag to share it.

Twitter is an effective medium for disseminating information and sharing ideas, and can be a valuable component of a reporter's toolset. We believe it is important for CNET editors to participate on Twitter as much they see fit. Thus, we think it is a significant milestone that CNET reporters are now able to reach their Twitter followers while simultaneously serving the readers of CNET.com.

Let us know what you think.