First up, the Financial Times has announced a new RSS service for corporate users – an add-on for those paying subscribers who signed up for the site’s direct licence system introduced in April last year.
The customisable RSS feed will be available to corporate customers, who under the licence arrangement are entitled unlimited access to FT content on FT.com and third-party services, and can be tailored by specific search terms, a press release from the title said.
Well, we could have brought you ‘Flocking Around the Twitmas Tree’, ‘We Three Nings’ or just a straightforward end of the year list (if only to add to our list of lists), but instead we chose this: your sing-along treat to round-up 2008 is the ‘Twelve Days of Online Media Christmas’ (hyperlinked to relevant stories, but bear in mind it’s a selection of picks and not comprehensive…).
On the first day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … An editor in a law court
… Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the ninth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Nine strikers strikin’
… Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the tenth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Ten blogs a-blooming
… Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the eleventh day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Eleven papers packing
… Ten blogs a-blooming, Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the twelfth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Twelve sites a-starting
… Eleven papers packing, Ten blogs a-blooming, Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks and an editor in a law court!
“Apparently blogging is dead, it’s all about microblogging. Blogging is hard now. How do you compete with blogs created by established media empires who create blogs? Find a niche. What’s the future of blogs? According to Pete it is about how do you aggregate the dispersed conversation that’s on FriendFeed and Twitter, or do you want to completely distribute content as a brand?” Anne writes in a post, which appears in full on her own blog
The Associated Press didn’t know what it stepped in when it sent a lawyer’s letter to the blog Drudge Retort (a Drudge Report parody) demanding that it take down headlines and excerpts from wire-service stories as short as 33 words long. This set off a bl
The supervisory board of Wegener, the Dutch newspaper group 87 per cent-owned by Mecom, resigned on Friday in a row with David Montgomery, the company’s executive chairman over the appointment of a new chief executive.
Monthly page impressions for the website of Britain’s biggest selling regional newspaper have topped the four million mark – a rise of more than 60 pc.
We are really excited to announce that we have just integrated with Twitter. What that means is that when you make a prediction on Hubdub you can then immediately drop it into your Twitter stream. Additionally, you can opt to save your Twitter log in deta
It was a picture that would make many blush: Cristiano Ronaldo, in swimming shorts, nestling between the legs of his bikini-clad girlfriend on a beach in Sardinia, a fig leaf for her dignity. The Daily Mail ran it on page 23, in among other less racy shot
“[W]ith the introductions of Rooms, FriendFeed is no longer a lifestream aggregator anymore – it is the perfect platform for sharing and discussing content with groups focused on a specific topic.”
“There appears to be no compromise. The BBC feels it is acting logically by fulfilling its public service remit. Regional owners are also acting logically by defending their turf. In truth, both reflect the fact that none of us know what the future holds.
Trinity Mirror Group has warned that its full year profits will be 10% lower than expected, blaming deteriorating conditions in the advertising market.
1) who are you and what’s it all about?
YackTrack is a service written by Rob Diana that allows a user to enter the URL of an article or blog post they want to find conversations about.
The conversations can be occurring on blogs (WordPress only so far), Digg, Mixx, Technorati (in the form of “blog reactions”), Disqus, StumbleUpon (in the form of “reviews”) and FriendFeed.
2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
Based on the feedback I am receiving it seems to be useful to almost anyone. For a journalist, you can pick up a story from another site and run it through YackTrack, then get the all comments [made about the story] from other sites.
Most important in that list are the links you can get from services like Technorati. Those links are really just other articles or
blog posts talking about the same topic. If the topic if popular enough, you can grab several URLs from a service like TechMeme and run all of them through YackTrack and you could get a really good list of researchable articles.
3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
Yes there is more to come. Some things I cannot really talk about yet (as there has to be some suspense) and others are fairly straightforward.
Registration and saving of URLs to track are a logical step forward. RSS and email notifications are also a popular request. More service support is necessary as well. I have also had requests for blog plugins, specifically WordPress.
4) Why are you doing this?
A few weeks ago, there were a number of blog posts on where comments were being posted and whether the fragmented conversation was a good thing.
I think the fragmentation leads to more thought provoking conversations, but many bloggers do not know that their post was submitted to Mixx, Digg or StumbleUpon. Given that different sites have different cultures I thought it would be really interesting to have all of the conversations visible in one spot. I am getting the feeling that other people feel the same way.
5) What does it cost to use it?
Right now it does not cost anything to use. The service is simple to use and I would like to keep it available in that way.
6) How will you make it pay?
I would like the service to pay for its own hosting, but I do not really want to charge the users. I do have Google AdSense on the site now, but that is more to see if there is any minimal revenue available.
I am going to be looking at direct advertising as a revenue stream as well, as that could cover the hosting fees as well.
