Tag Archives: mashable

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

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.

Mashable: Monday is the worst time to post and tweet

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.

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

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

Mashable: Converting a Facebook profile to a Facebook page

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.

Hyperlocal news source EveryBlock relaunches as community site

EveryBlock, which was first launched in 2008 as an address-based news feed, has been redesigned as a “community-empowered” site.

EveryBlock has been developed so that people can make connections with those living nearby and then share news stories, crime reports and events. It is only available in 16 US cities at the moment but the relaunched version of EveryBlock has expansion on the horizon.

As Mashable reports, EveryBlock has partnered with Groupon in the US for revenue and has plans to integrate Foursquare‘s API in order to make further connections between neighbours with similar tastes and habits.

“We’re shifting from a one-way newsfeed to more of a community-empowered website,” says EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty. “Instead of going to the site to passively consume information, we’re going to offer a platform for posting messages to your neighbors, to discover who lives near you.”

10,000 Words looks at what the redesign, which includes badge incentives and ‘following’, tells us about the future of hyperlocal sites:

“Following” is the new “liking”: Crucial to Everyblock’s redesign is the functionality of the “Follow” button; users can now follow blocks, zipcodes and even specific businesses. A “Get to Know Your Neighbors” sidebar displays links to the profiles of users who follow the same places that you do, making it super easy to meet new people with similar interests.

Mashable: Facebook brings its Comments plugin to outside publishers

Mashable reports on Facebook’s updated Comments plugin and its use by publisher partners, including the Economist.

Facebook released Tuesday its updated Comments plugin, which includes a robust set of new features. The social networking site also announced that a slew of publisher partners will now integrate the plugin as their commenting platform of choice.

See the full post on Mashable at this link

Mashable launches new personalised news service

Technology site Mashable has launched a new personalised news service: Mashable Follow.

Mashable founder Pete Cashmore says the move is part of a shift away from a “purely editor-driven news site” to becoming a “true news community that seeks to engage our readers in the news process”.

Beyond personalization, we believe that curation is the next great wave in news, and empowering our community to choose the news of the day is the ultimate aim of the Follow project.

Full story on Mashable at this link.

paidContent.org: Daylife working with digital publications

In the past few weeks news aggregator startup Daylife has started to work with digital publications, according to a report by paidContent.org, with new projects at Mashable and text message platform ChaCha launched yesterday.

According to paidContent.org Daylife will set up a topic library for Mashable to help organise its past stories and is also working on ‘visuals enhancement’ with ChaCha.

While Mashable didn’t need any lessons in news distribution, it did need help organising the amount of stories it’s accumulated since launching five years ago. Daylife set up a topic library to help better organise its coverage. The Daylife API gathers everything in real-time and integrates with Mashable’s existing advertising network…

In ChaCha’s case, Daylife is helping to give the site’s visuals greater enhancement. The additional photo choices come from Daylife’s year-old collaboration with Getty Images. The deal with Daylife follows ChaCha’s huge $20 million funding last week, as it looks to dominate the burgeoning mobile search market.

Mashable: Are social networks becoming personal news wires?

To celebrate its five-year anniversary, Mashable is producing a series of posts on developments in social media. The latest looks at the impact of social networking on news consumption and the idea that social networks have become personal news wires.

Following a discussion of online “friends” evolving into our news editors, writer Vadim Lavrusik rounds-up some interesting ideas about ways to measure source credibility in the future for greater transparency online.

Though news is increasingly social and user-generated, the persistent fear is one of credibility and a flaw in measuring a curator’s knowledge on or interest in a topic. This problem could be improved by enabling users to develop more targeted news feeds on personalized topics of interest, but also by identifying specific sources and curators of information as more or less credible than others.

One idea he discusses, put forward by Andy Carvin a senior strategist at NPR,  would be to measure “who is knowledgeable” about a topic being shared.

This could also include sifting sources based on whether they are eye-witness to an event or are experts on the topic, both of which add value in their own way, he said. Such a model could then help establish a credibility index among users as sources, helping consumers better decide what information is credible.

See the full post here…

Mashable: Slideshow on ‘the future journalist’ – what will they need?

Great presentation from Mashable on ‘The future journalist: thoughts from two generations‘.

Created for Mashable’s NextUpNYC event the presentation was part of an on-stage discussion between Sree Sreenivasan, a professor and dean of student affairs at Columbia Journalism School, and his former student and Mashable contributor Vadim Lavrusik, which looked at the skills need by the journalist of the future, their approach to the business side of journalism and their use of social and multimedia: