South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper has substantially revamped its website, in the process introducing a series of new features to improve usability.

M&G Online’s general manager Matthew Buckland blogged recently about the use of Thompson Reuters Open Calais semantic tagging technology to organise and cross-reference all the site’s content for the relaunch.

In addition to this the revamp has introduced a number of key features:

Registration and dashboard

• Like the Guardian in the UK, the new M&G site now allows users to save clippings of favourite articles and story history while browsing.
• Comment on articles and debate with other readers

New features

• It has also introduced a topics A-Z: A list of people, places, subjects and organisations covered by the site
• Added a feature – NewsSwarm – that allows users to see who is viewing which article in real time
• Integrated articles with Google Maps
• Make the popular cartoon sections searchable and tagged
• Added easy exploration of e-commerce areas: jobs, cars, dating, property and shopping
• Allowed users to view related articles from outside the news website.
• Added video feeds

Semantic tagging – a key new element

• Tag clouds of subjects, people and places on the home page and news sections
• Articles regionally organised and can be viewed by country or city with South African news at town, city or provincial level
• Articles are also tagged with names of cities, countries, companies or organisations, and people, which can be viewed in the Topics A-Z section

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South African newspaper the Mail & Guardian has added a third blog to its website – Sports Leader.

The sports blog will mix opinion and insight from 30 professionals, academics and ‘armchair commentators’, a release from the paper said.

The English Premier League will be covered alongside news from the Springboks rugby team and Bafana – the country’s national football team.

“There is a need for a space where people interested in a diverse range of sports can discuss and debate their sporting passion. What the Mail & Guardian brings through its editorial policy is quality debate and critique and what Sports Leader offers even further is interaction between the fans and their heroes,” Vincent Maher, online strategist at Mail & Guardian Online, said in the release.

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Journalism.co.uk talks to reporters across the globe working at the collision of journalism and social media about how they see it changing their industry. This week, Matthew Buckland from Mail & Guardian, South Africa.

1) Who are you and what do you do?
I am Matthew Buckland, the GM of Mail & Guardian Online.

As head of the online division I am responsible for the overall online and mobile strategy, with an overview of editorial, production, technical and online sales.

I am also involved quite heavily in our social media strategies and sites.

2) Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?
I use Twitter, both web and mobile. I blog on my own blog about online media, web 2.0 and technology, thoughtleader.co.za and sometimes on Poynter’s new media titbits.

I use Mybloglog on my blog quite a bit. I use Facebook web and mobile… but less and less these days. At the end of last year I began using Slideshare to share my presentations and see others. I Digg every now and again, and use a local version, Muti.co.za.

I also keep half an eyeball on Linkedin – but don’t really do it justice. I am an occasional Del.ici.ous user. I use both Flickr and Picasa as online photo albums/photo sharing.

For video sharing I use Youtube, obviously. I’m also a wikipediaholic.

I used SecondLife for about a week, but realised it would be best for my health to shut it down and never look at it again

Generally I find these social media tools are a good way of networking, sharing ideas and content, and building relationships with people. They also waste a lot of time and create noise in my life.

3) Of the thousands of social media tools available could you single one out as having the most potential for news either as a publishing or newsgathering tool?
I think of all the hyped up social media tools we’ve seen, blogging has shown that it is more than just a fad, but here to stay.

We’ve seen how mainstream online publishers have embraced blogs both as new publishing formats and newsgathering tool with considerable success.

4) And the most overrated in your opinion?
I’m beginning to think Facebook is overrated. The novelty is wearing off and people are getting bored, very quickly.

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