It seems crazy that the media always seem to have something to say about Twitter. Yet, 99% of us don’t actually care.

Recently, BBC News published an article — ‘Fry ends row with Twitter critic‘. That’s fair enough … but is it really that news-worthy!? What is really annoying is that it is published under ‘Entertainment‘ (it’s not entertaining), and featured on ‘Technology‘ (it’s not really anything to do with technology), and mentioned on the front-page and  ‘UK‘ (where most people don’t care about Twitter [or Stephen Fry, for that matter]). Strangely, in the most suitable place, ‘Also in the News‘, it is not mentioned at all.

I’m not specifically attacking the BBC here (actually, I am): this problem is widespread. We don’t care about Twitter. We don’t care about individual tweets on Twitter. And we don’t care about ‘controversial‘ moves for people leaving Twitter. So, to all media: GET A GRIP!

Many people will turn to Twitter to break and discuss news. However, I feel as-if Twitter, on its own, is not a great medium for distributing and discovering news and events. Although there exists a ‘Popular Topics’ feature, there is no obvious attempt to actually connect with the news and events; rather, there is just short, vague and duplicated statements, lacking the editorial quality we are accustomed to from respected news providers.

In an attempt to resolve this issue, I have been working on a little project to connect Twitter with news. Right Now (http://RightNowFeed.org) is a simple web-service combining data from Twitter and News sites, such as the BBC, CNN and Reuters. While news sites provide the quality coverage, tweets from Twitter are used to rank the items’ relevancy. It is designed to replace any news feed you currently have.

In all, it took less than a week for this project to come from idea to launch. Please give it a go, and tell me what you think — Right Now is a long way from perfect, and you opinion and suggestions will help in getting there.

-Brendon.