“Sanitation Updates is the first thing I read in the morning”, says Murat Sahin, Advisor, WASH in Schools at UNICEF.
Murat doesn’t mention if this is before or after he has breakfast – some of the 1,800 posts published since Dan Campbell began the blog in 2008 can spoil your appetite.
Murat is now one of over 1,000 subscribers to this blog, as the little reader counter icon on our home page indicates.
To mark this milestone we have launched SaniTweets and E-Source Sanitation News. SaniTweets is a public Twitter list feed, collecting live updates from 30 key sanitation initiatives, organisations and experts. The ten most recent Tweets appear in the left-hand column of the blog. If you want a SaniTweets RSS feed for your website, blog or news reader, use this link.
The SaniTweets list is also the main source for the experimental E-Source Sanitation News on paper.li, a great site to create your own newsletter based on Twitter and Facebook feeds. See other examples like the Daily WASH, WaterAid Daily and toilet.and.tap.
The aim of Sanitation Updates remains simple: providing daily updates of the latest sanitation news and resources. Many readers take the trouble to comment (nearly 1,100 comments have been posted so far) and sometimes conservations emerge like the “open marketplace” for sanitary napkins.
So which articles have attracted the most readers?
- this week – Reinventing the toilet: Gates Foundation launches new sanitation strategy and grants (652 views)
- past year – surprisingly – “ USA – Raccoon waste seriously dangerous (5,534 viewers)
- all time – that’s our own item about the winners of the 2009 Sanitation Updates Global Handwashing Day Slogan contest (5,741 views).
Finally, we need more contributors to Sanitation Updates so that Dan and I can go on holiday. The WSSCC and WSUP joined up recently. Please join our team too. If you are interested, send a mail to Dan or me.
If you have ideas or suggestions on how to improve Sanitation Updates, please add a comment below.
Cor Dietvorst
Congratulations!
Yes, let’s push this Twitter thing forward. But also keep in mind that Twitter is also about conversations, not only about pushing news through a new pipeline.
I’d love to join the team
Hi Juergen,
Yes, the power of social media is that can increase transparency by making conservations public. The intention of the SaniTweets list is also to show which conservations are taking place among sanitation experts.
It would great to have you on board. If you have a WordPress.com, please let me know which e-mail address you have used to register and I will give you editing rights.