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How not to get your phone hacked

July 14th, 2011 | 3 Comments | Posted by Sarah Marshall in Mobile

In the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal some major news organisations have sent out emails to journalists and other members of staff advising them to protect their phone against hacking.

As this blog post by mobile phone security expert David Rogers points out, hacking is a misnomer. What went on at News of the World was “illicit access to voicemail messages”.

Rogers’ post points out various methods that could have been used to do this. Here are ways to keep your voicemail secure. Okay, so it is unlikely that journalists will be voicemail-hacking in the future but conmen and women may now have ideas.

How hacking took place:

1. By using default PINs

Mobile phone voicemail boxes are set up so they do not require a PIN or use one of several default codes which can be worked out by a two minute internet search.

Solution: You’ll need to set up a PIN by following the advice from your phone company. There are step-by-step instructions on how to do this for Vodafone, O2, Orange, and T Mobile. A quick search will help you if you are with an alternative carrier.

You can also set up or change your voicemail password on your handset. (On an iPhone this is found in settings / phone / change voicemail password.)

2. By using default PINs and remote access

Rogers explains in his post:

Operators often provide an external number through which you can call to access your voicemail remotely.

This was one of the mechanisms allegedly used by the News of the World ‘phone hackers’ to get access to people’s voicemails without their knowledge.

Solution: Find out the remote access number for your voicemail from your phone provider and set up a PIN using the links above.

3. By calling your own phone

When you want to access your voicemail remotely you can do so by calling your own phone number and interrupting the voicemail message by pressing *.

Rogers points out:

Claims about the voicemail hacking scandal say that one journalist would call up a celebrity to engage the phone while another would then go into the voicemail using this method.

Solution: Set up a PIN using the links above.

There is more advice and a more detailed explanation on how voicemail hacking took place at this link.

This Mashable post on how to protect your phone is also worth reading, particularly if you are an Android user.

Image by John Karakatsanis on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Tags: mashable, mobile phones, naked security, security

How newspapers can use Facebook more effectively

May 25th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Sarah Marshall in Editors' pick, Handy tools and technology, Social media and blogging

The New York Times, which is conducting an experiment and no longer sends automated tweets, has admitted it has not yet “cracked the code” of using Facebook, according to Liz Heron, social media editor of the newspaper, speaking at the BBC Social Media Summit.

Our journalists have not figured out how to interact with it just yet. We’re working to bring Facebook journalism onto the main page.

The NY Times has started experimenting with “gamification”.

Facebook will give you a lot of info, so we were able to show what kind of person was going in for the Kings Speech, for example, so got some interesting visualisations. In a way we therefore used a form of gamification to engage users. We want to do more to build platforms around our journalism in this way and allow our content to not only get distributed further but get some interesting information back on our key readers from it.

So what else can the newspaper – and all brands – learn from Facebook success stories?

Mashable has published an article on “eight brands that have found success on Facebook and what we can learn”. Here are its eight lessons.

1. Ask your staff, customers, vendors, and partners — who already know you and like you — to “Like” your Facebook page first.

2. Ask a lot of questions. You’ll get valuable feedback, plus you’ll be more likely to appear in your fans’ newsfeeds.

Here’s another article from 10,000 Words to tell you how to use Facebook’s new questions feature to do just that.

3. Share lots of photos, and ask your fans to share photos. Facebook’s Photos remain the most viral feature of its platform.

4. Find the resources to respond to your fans questions and inquiries.

5. If you have a physical location, use Place Pages and Deals to drive traffic through your doors.

6. Know your audience well, and when you make a mistake, quickly own up, do right by your audience and fix the problem.

7. Integrate Facebook outside of your Fan Page, on your website, in as many places as you can. Create more compelling opportunities for people to buy your product based on their friends’ Likes.

8. Find synergy with other organizations and entities, and then work together to promote each other’s Facebook pages so that everyone benefits.

Mashable’s full post with examples is at this link.

Tags: 10000 Words, bbcsms, Facebook, mashable, New York Times

Mashable: Social media is reinvigorating the market for quality journalism

April 13th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Sarah Marshall in Editors' pick, Online Journalism, Social media and blogging, Traffic

Mashable says Twitter and Facebook are promoting quality journalism.

A recent survey of tweets with links to stories in the iPad-only newspaper the Daily demonstrated people are more likely to tweet hard news than softer stories, the article says.

The incentive to share quality content is simple: a person may be more likely to read gossip, but they may share a news piece to shape their followers’ perception of them.

They may even view it as a public service. I tend to believe it’s usually the former rather than the more altruistic latter.

As a result, news organizations producing quality journalism are being rewarded with accelerated growth in social referral traffic — in some cases, growing at a much faster pace than search referrals.

More notably, social media is enabling the citizenry to be active participants in producing journalism by giving them platforms to publish to the social audience.

This has made journalism more efficient and, in many ways, enhanced the quality of storytelling.

The post goes on to demonstrate how social media could provide a more engaged reader.

In a recent analysis of Mashable’s social and traffic data, I found that Facebook and Twitter visitors spent 29 per cent more time on Mashable.com and viewed 20 per cent more pages than visitors arriving via search engines. This may suggest a more engaged or exploratory reader, at least in terms of how much time they spend reading the content.

The article also predicts how Google’s +1, which adds a social recommendation layer to Google searches, and how +1 could influence the stories people share by ‘likes’ and tweets.

Though +1 isn’t a social network, it is certainly a big step toward building one. But perhaps most important is its implications for quality. The number of +1s on a story link affects its placement in search results.

Mashable’s full post is at this link

Tags: Facebook, Google +1, mashable, social media, Twitter

Mashable: How paywalls are changing social media strategies

April 13th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Sarah Marshall in Editors' pick, Online Journalism, Social media and blogging, Traffic

Mashable has taken a look at three paywalled sites: the Dallas Morning News, the Economist and the Honolulu Civil Beat.

It has talked to community editors on the titles about how they promote stories via social media without incurring the wrath of angry readers who follow links to then find they are blocked by a paywall.

Dallas Morning News

Travis Hudson, a Dallas Morning News web editor, manages the site’s Twitter account and Facebook fan page, where he shares both free and premium content.

Like any good social media strategist, transparency is key for Hudson.

He designates whether a link is behind the paywall when posting it on Facebook or Twitter.

The Economist

Social media helps the site reach subscribers, regular readers and new readers by the means most convenient to them, while providing an opportunity to spark discussions around the Economist’s coverage areas.

“Readers who are empowered to participate are likely to spend more time with the site, return more often and become more active advocates of our work,” [Mark Johnson, The Economist's community editor] says.

With the metered model, Johnson and other web producers can share any articles on social networks without experiencing the backlash of readers’ inability to access the site. Perhaps more importantly, they’re able to bring in more traffic.

“Referrals to the site from social networks, and the pageviews generated by such referrals, have grown almost every month since our social strategy began,” Johnson says. “Nor is this growth slowing. If anything, it’s speeding up.”

Honolulu Civil Beat

Online-only local news site the Honolulu Civil Beat is coming up on the one-year anniversary of its launch.

Though content is and always has been free through email, the site initially gave only partial access to visitors who came through social networks.

Beginning January 2011, however, all visitors can read all articles until they visit regularly enough to be asked to become a member.

“We figured, if they’re reading us that much they would be happy to become a member, and we’d be happy to have them,” says Dan Zelikman, the Civil Beat‘s marketing and community host.

There is no specific threshold number. Rather, the site runs a custom program that asks a reader to subscribe based on how often and how much he or she reads.

“Basically, if you read a couple of times a week, it will take a while before we ask you to register,” Zelikman says.

Reading access aside, the Civil Beat’s subscription model fosters community by only allowing members to comment on articles. In addition, subscribers experience the site without advertising, a perk that’s particularly popular with the community.

Mashable’s full article is at this link.

Tags: Dallas Morning News, Facebook, Honolulu Civil Beat, mashable, paywalls, the Economist, Twitter

Mashable: What impact has the NY Times paywall had on traffic?

April 12th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Sarah Marshall in Editors' pick, Online Journalism, Traffic

Mashable has been attempting to discover the impact of the New York Times metered-paywall on web traffic.

It is early days as the wall only went up on 28 March but the analysis suggests a reduction of between five and 10 per cent in traffic and a fall in pageviews by up to 30 per cent.

It is perhaps not surprising that pageviews have taken a greater hit as the metered-paywall model allows readers to access up to 20 articles a month free, so users may be deterred from clicking as many pages .

So here’s the big question: Is NYT’s paywall a success or a failure? When it comes to this big-picture question, we still don’t have enough information to make a conclusion. The paywall simply hasn’t been around long enough and we don’t have the financial data to see whether the paywall has made up for the loss in advertising revenue.

Mashable’s full article is at this link.

Tags: mashable, New York Times, online traffic, paywall

Mashable: The New Yorker puts story behind ‘like’ wall

April 11th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Sarah Marshall in Editors' pick, Handy tools and technology, Online Journalism, Social media and blogging, Traffic

Mashable is reporting on how the New Yorker has employed a music industry technique to engage with its readers by demanding that they ‘like’ a Facebook page before they can read a story.

The magazine has put an article by author Jonathan Franzen behind a ‘wall of likes’ by making it necessary for Facebook users to engage in order to gain access. Franzen’s piece, which is about coming to terms with the death of friend and fellow author David Foster Wallace, appeared in the print version of he magazine but not on the website.

To read the story online (it will appear in print, but not in full on the New Yorker‘s website), users have to go on the Conde Nast title’s Facebook Page and “Like” it. The title’s Facebook Page has about 200,000 fans. “Our goal with this isn’t just to increase our fans,” says Alexa Cassanos, a spokeswoman for the New Yorker. “We want to engage with people who want to engage on a deeper level.”

Mashable’s full article is at this link.

Tags: Facebook, Jonathan Franzen, mashable, New Yorker

Mashable: Monday is the worst time to post and tweet

April 11th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Sarah Marshall in Online Journalism, Social media and blogging, Traffic

Mashable reports on research looking into when readers are most engaged and when is the best time to get traction on posts and tweets.

Thursdays and Fridays are the best days of the week to engage with users via Twitter and Facebook whereas Monday is the “noisiest” and therefore the worst time to engage, according to the study.

Analysing more than 200 of its clients’ Facebook pages over a 14-day period, Buddy Media found engagement on Thursdays and Fridays was 18 per cent higher than the rest of the week, and that engagement was actually even better on Thursday than on Friday. Meanwhile, Twitter chief revenue officer Adam Bain — speaking at the Ad Age Digital conference earlier this week — said that Twitter users are more engaged with tweets on Fridays.

The reason is fairly obvious, says Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at the Altimeter Group: “People are heading into the weekend so they’re thinking about things besides work. They’re mentally checking out and transitioning to the weekend.”

However, [Rick] Liebling [director of digital strategy at Coyne PR] adds that there might be another factor at work: There may be fewer posts overall on Fridays, which means a greater number of average click-throughs.

The above idea, of engaging when there are fewer people tweeting, is reinforced by this article on the best times to tweet posted on Nieman Journalism Lab last month. It states mined data on retweets and blog posts suggests the optimum time to get traction is at 9pm at night when other traffic has died down.

Mashable’s full post is at this link.

Tags: mashable, nieman journalism lab, online community, tweets, Twitter

April Fools’ Day part deux: More hoaxes from the headlines

April 1st, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Sarah Marshall in Editors' pick

Now that the US has woken up and we’ve seen a few more April Fools’ pranks from both sides of the Atlantic, here’s a second round-up to round off the day. See the first at this link.

First in this list is news that the Huffington Post has put up a paywall – to New York Times journalists.

Fancy a homemade ‘iPad clutch’? No need for sticky back plastic but it does involve common household items. Mashable has written this ‘how to’ guide.

With DIY infused in my DNA, I am programmed to create things that make my life more beautiful and fun. Inspired by all of the bold striped patterns and color blocking styles seen on the runway this season, I thought it fitting to make my own iPad clutch out of common materials.

And staying with the Apple theme there’s a PlayMobil Apple Store, according to this article on I4U News

Closer to home, organisers of the Bath Comedy Festival placed a mock Russian submarine in a river, This is Bath reported.

And the Metro had a second April Fool in addition to the edible newspapers reported earlier, a report of smelly tickets to be issued for the 2012 Olypmics.

Fast Car magazine has invented a pheromone car paint which attracts members of the opposite sex.

Real Business launched a new political party. The E party was inspired by the success of the Tea Party in the US, according to this article.

Worcester News warned of a swarm bees descending on its library in this article.

Security measures are being taken at Worcester’s new library and history centre to protect it from the swarms of bees attracted to the building during the recent warm spring sunshine.

Appropriately called the Hive, the complex off the Butts is proving irresistible to the furry flyers because of its gold roof tiles laid in a honeycomb pattern.

And City Wire Money has this report than bankers have a ‘greedy gene’.

Thanks to everyone who sent their April Fools’ hoaxes to @journalismnews. A special thanks to @hugh_d @AlyMaynard @CongnitianAgency @caroldtravels @Natasha1985 @Real_Business @Sherb13

Tags: april fools day, City Wire Money, mashable, Metro, Real Business, This is Bath, TNT Magazine, Worcester News

Mashable: Converting a Facebook profile to a Facebook page

March 31st, 2011 | No Comments | Posted by Sarah Marshall in Editors' pick, Handy tools and technology, Social media and blogging

Mashable is reporting on something that will come in very handy to anyone who has created a personal Facebook ‘profile’ rather than a ‘page’ for a newspaper, news website or other organisation: a Facebook profile can now be converted to a page.

Though the terminology is often muddled, a key difference between the two features is that users can simply “like” a Page while they must “friend” (establish a mutual relationship with) a profile, which makes Pages a much better solution for businesses and public figures.

Using Facebook’s new tool any ‘Friends’ from a profile will be transferred to become ‘fans’ of the new page.

Mashable’s full post is at this link.

Tags: Facebook, facebook page, facebook profile, mashable