Sky News Orders All Journalists to Install Tweetdeck

Sky News is installing Twitter’s most popular application Tweetdeck on all of it’s journalist’s computers in the hope that it will stir the use of social media for newsgathering and reporting.

Initially hiring Ruth Barnett as their Social Media rep in March of last year, the company has now relocated her to its Westminster Bureau and is aiming to instil the “social media mindset” into all of its writers rather than just the one.

“The big change for us in 2010 is evolving how social media plays a role in our journalism. We no longer ghettoise it to one person, but are in the process of embedding throughout the whole team,” said Julian March, executive producer of Sky News Online, to Journalism.co.uk.

TweetDeck began its life in July 2008, developed by UK’s Iain Dodsworth, and was the first client to integrate “groups” as a means of organising twitter users. Since, Tweetdeck has become a company in its own right taking $2M in funding and expanding its team from one to eight.

The client itself has also grown, integrating Facebook and Myspace as well as adding all of Twitter’s new features, including its lists functionality, replacing it’s trademark groups feature.

It’s no suprise the application has become so popular with bloggers and journalists, the application’s column based layout makes it a remarkably effective way of staying up to date with news. Of course, along with being a great means of news retrieval, Tweetdeck brings a whole heap of procrastination and interruption. Wonder if this gets pulled before it even takes off. :]