London 2012 was proclaimed to be the first ever ‘Social Media Olympics’, with athletes, broadcasters and spectators all using social networks to get their message across and opinions heard.

Athletes were able to communicate directly with their fans like never before, creating a new forum for support – or, in some cases, criticism. A rogue tweeter maliciously tweeted Tom Daley; British athletes tweeted their support for badminton players from South Korea, China and Indonesia who were disqualified after making a series of basic errors in matches; Australian swimmer and BBC pundit Ian Thorpe, who only created his Twitter account due to demand mid-way into the Olympics, had over 95,000 followers at the end of the Games; and the opening and closing ceremonies were played out as much through Twitter as they were in the Olympic Stadium.

What this highlights, albeit through a major global event, is the growing impact of Twitter as a means to communicate directly with individuals and audiences, bypassing traditional media altogether.

It struck me that there have been a few instances in recent months of this in action locally too.

When in June, Jersey experienced a major power cut, Jersey Electricity turned to Twitter to effectively keep the public informed of what was going on. This was particularly useful at a time when there was no power, as people intuitively turned to their battery powered mobile devices, and Twitter feeds, for updates.

Likewise, when there was a gas explosion in Jersey in July, Jersey Gas were quick to create a Twitter account for the sole purpose of keeping its broad range of stakeholders up to date of what was going on. It turned out to be an excellent way to quickly keep the media and the general public informed of a constantly changing, and potentially dangerous, situation, where public information such as evacuation zones and school evacuations were important.

Slightly further away from home, but still pertinent to the Channel Islands, it was interesting that, in the whole ‘Jimmy Carr tax avoidance story’ played out in the national newspapers in June, Jimmy Carr decided to issue his statement of apology through Twitter and not, as might have been done in the past, through an interview, issued statement or press conference. The result was a quick, widely distributed, well picked-up apology.

These broad examples of the use of social media all demonstrate the use of Twitter as a means for individuals, organisations and businesses to directly and successfully engage with audiences that are of most interest to them – and quickly. Whether in a crisis, to address a situation quickly or to engage in live events, Twitter can be an extremely useful tool.

If they haven’t already, businesses would do well to consider how they might use Twitter to their advantage if the situation arose. The chances are, when that situation does arise out of the blue, the rest of Twitter might well be talking about you already, and by then it might be too late to keep it under control.

For more about Twitter, see the latest results from the Crystal PR IFC Media Tweet-dex.

A recent erroneous claim that foreign companies were registered at an Indian restaurant address in Jersey shows the threat posed by unchallenged online content.

An article was published in the New Statesman political magazine in June in which it was claimed that an Indian restaurant address in St. Helier was home to no fewer than 800 registered companies.

Some days later a Guardian journalist researching a feature on Jersey’s economy quoted the same allegation from the New Statesman about offices registered at the Indian restaurant calling into question Jersey’s regulatory standards.

Some weeks later the Island’s regulator, the Jersey Financial Services Commission, announced in a statement that there was no truth in the allegation. There is no restaurant with offices registered and never has been. There had been a trust company based nearby, which had since moved to a new address, where indeed companies had been registered and were properly regulated.

But what happens next? Both the Guardian newspaper and the New Statesman continue to publish this untrue claim within its content online. There is no retraction, no apology for getting the facts wrong. How long before another journalist researching an article on Jersey makes the same claim? So myth can become fact through repeated use.

For international finance centres it is an illustration of the extent to which they need to be proactive to counter the misinformation and inaccuracies that pervade leading media publications. Unless these claims are challenged directly with these publications, they will remain online gaining momentum until it is believed to be true.

The Crystal PR IFC Media Tweet-dex was launched at the beginning of 2012 to get a better understanding of how media in different International Finance Centres (IFCs) are using one of the most popular social media platforms, Twitter.

The Index seeks to identify two things: 1) the most followed media, and 2) the keenest media users of Twitter across the chosen jurisdictions. The objective is to shed some light on how Twitter is being used by media organisations and what role Twitter plays in the news agenda in the different jurisdictions specialising in international financial services.

The IFCs currently being monitored are the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Malta.

The key media in each jurisdiction are included in the results. When the Tweet-dex was launched at the beginning of the year, it included a select group of 13 media. In this second set of results, this has been expanded to include a much broader selection of 31 different media – largely prompted by the significant uptake of Twitter by different media groups. The range of the jurisdictions and media in the index may in due course be extended.

The following results are for the period April – June 2012.

Tweet Frequency of IFC Media

This measures the number of tweets by each media on Twitter, both as an accumulative total and for each quarter. The key findings are as follows:

• Channel TV (@channelonline) was once again the most prolific media tweeter in the second quarter of 2012, having tweeted 1,348 times between April and June. The Guernsey Press (@guernseypress) came in second place with 1,006 tweets and Malta Today (@maltatoday) came third with 986 tweets during the quarter.

• Half of the top ten media tweeters were Channel Island-based

• INews Cayman (@inewscayman) tweeted the least, with no tweets in the quarter despite having racked up 2800 tweets overall.

• Isle of Man radio station 3FM is the biggest tweeter overall, with 81,271 tweets to date

Followers of IFC Media

This measures the popularity of each media Tweeter through the number of followers they have in total and the rate at which they are growing their number of followers. The key findings are as follows:

• The Times of Malta (@thetimesofmalta) was the media that increased its number of followers most during the second quarter of 2012, by 48.8% to a total of 954 followers. The Gibraltar Chronicle (@gibchronicle) came in second, increasing its number of followers by 39.1%, Gallery Isle of Man (@galleryiom) growing its followership by 27.6%.

• IFC Feed (@ifcfeed) grew its number of followers the least during the quarter, by 1.5%, despite reaching a total of 2,077 followers.

• Channel TV (@channelonline) remains the most followed media across the jurisdictions covered, with a total of 4,313 followers.

• Despite having the third biggest quarterly increase in followers, Gallery Isle of Man (@galleryiom) is also currently the media with the least total number of followers (125).

Having started this Tweet-dex with a fairly select of key media, it’s interesting to broaden our scope in this second quarterly analysis to give us wider picture of how media, and not just the most obvious ones, are using media across the jurisdictions. Whilst there are clearly certain media, such as Channel TV in the Channel Islands, that are really focusing on engaging with their viewers, listeners and readers through Twitter, the general trend is that media across the different jurisdictions are all making a concerted effort to use Twitter.

Interestingly, there is no clear distinction between type of media increasing their use of Twitter – print media, television, radio and online media are all engaging with Twitter quickly. Equally, there is no one jurisdiction that appears clearly ahead of the others – Cayman, the IoM, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar media are all focused on using Twitter.

All in all, this would support the idea that Twitter is becoming an increasingly necessary complementary means of communicating with audiences to their traditional routes of communicating.

We are looking at further ways to evaluate the use of Twitter by media for future Tweet-dexes, to reflect better both the use of Twitter and content too.