#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Set up a Twitter ‘email digest’

Image by shawncampbell on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Twitter announced on its blog this week that it had launched the ability for users to set up a “weekly email digest”, offering “the most relevant Tweets and stories shared by the people you’re connected to on Twitter” to your inbox.

Find out more on Twitter’s blog.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link– we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Guardian’s n0tice launches Facebook sharing app

Online noticeboard n0tice has launched a Facebook sharing app, allowing users to “amplify activity” and spread posts virally.

The Guardian set up n0tice as a platform to utilise developments in social, local and mobile. It allows hyperlocals to brand their own noticeboard and keep 85 per cent of the revenue generated by charging for small ads.

A blog post published today states that n0tice’s new Facebook app allows users to automatically post content to their Facebook activity stream.

n0tice will automatically update your Facebook page when you follow people and noticeboards, star things you find interesting, or post reports, events or offers to n0tice.  The app does not share passive actions to your Facebook page such as what you are reading on n0tice.com, only explicit actions that you trigger such as following, posting, reposting, and voting.

The n0tice app for Facebook will help spread things you are doing on n0tice further around the world and help others to discover what’s happening.

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#jpod – How the social media community can shape the news agenda

Image by shawncampbell on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

This week’s jpod looks at how Al Jazeera English programme The Stream, the new ITV News website and NME.com are embracing social media contributions.

Journalism.co.uk hears examples of how the social media community can set the news agenda, participate in the story, and how news organisations are using the passion and enthusiasm of the audience to shape output.

There are also examples of how a reader comment can turn into a headline and how the outlets are harnessing live activity streams.

Journalism.co.uk technology correspondent Sarah Marshall speaks to:

• Malika Bilal, digital producer and co-host of The Stream
• Jason Mills, editor of web development at ITV News
• Luke Lewis, editor of NME.com

Podcast: Download

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

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#jpod – How to engage a subscriber community: Lessons from the Times and Financial Times

Image by Dreamer, via Wikimedia Commons

Community management is a key part of an online news outlet’s operation, and in this week’s podcast we speak to two people at the heart of community operations at the Times and Financial Times, to offer a unique insight into engagement strategies for subscriber communities.

Ben Whitelaw, communities editor at the Times and Rebecca Heptinstall, community manager at the Financial Times, discuss how subscribers use comment facilities to interact with journalists, the ways to recognise the value of subscriber through greater interaction and involvement in feedback and what community engagement really means both on the news website and on social media platforms.

Podcast: Download

For more on the topic of community engagement, this previous podcast looks in more detail at managing reader comments and here’s a feature on how the New York Times is using social media for “deeper” engagement.

And here is a link to the FT’s LinkedIn Readers’ Group referred to by Rebecca in this week’s podcast.

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

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Tool of the week for journalists: Muck Rack

Tool of the week: Muck Rack

What is it? A site that aggregates Twitter and social media feeds for thousands of professional journalists.

How is it of use to journalists? Journalists often break or share vital information first through social media. Muck Rack allows you to monitor trending topics among journalists in real-time. Its aim, according to Muck Rack’s creators, is to deliver “tomorrow’s newspaper to you today”.

Launched in 2009, Muck Rack now draws content from thousands of journalists who use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other sources to break news on a daily basis.

Built around a central directory of verified professionals, Muck Rack now boasts an extensive directory of top journalists from around the world which can be searched by name, publication or even beat.

Professionals only need a valid Twitter account to apply for verification, although the process is heavily vetted to ensure certain standards are met such as relevance of tweets or posts and consistent activity.

The site also emails out a daily analysis of what journalists are saying called the Muck Rack Daily, which is pored over by its editorial team.

Muck Rack dovetails well with previous Journalism.co.uk tool of the week Press Pass, which organises journalists by beat, media outlet or region.

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#jpod – Advice on verifying social media content and correcting errors

In this week’s podcast we collect together practical advice from those working in digital journalism on the best techniques and tools journalists can use to verify content posted on social media platforms.

The experts emphasise that wherever possible journalists are encouraged to make contact with sources of content directly, such as by phone, but there are also additional checks journalists can make as part of the verification process.

Advice featured in the podcast ranges from how to effectively monitor platforms, how to investigate both the content and source of material and then, once it has been reported (with clear reference to the level of verification achieved), what to do if material later turns out to not be as it first seemed.

Interviewees include:

• Claire Wardle, director of development and integration, Storyful
• Malachy Browne, news editor, Storyful
• Fergus Bell, senior producer and UGC lead, Associated Press
• Paul Bradshaw, course leader of online journalism MA at Birmingham City University, visiting professor at City University London and publisher of Online Journalism Blog and HelpMeInvestigate
• Craig Silverman, founder, Regret the Error, now published on Poynter

Podcast: Download

Background reading/resources on verification:

• Paul Bradshaw, Online Journalism Blog: ‘Content, context and code: verifying information online’
• Craig Silverman, Columbia Journalism Review: ‘Best Practices for Social Media Verification’
• Peter Verweij, Memeburn: ‘Seven top tips for verifying tweets’
• Craig Kanalley, Media Helping Media: ‘Trusting Tweets, a guide for journalists‘
• Journalism.co.uk: ‘#media140 – Al Jazeera’s early start reporting revolutions’

During my interview with Craig Silverman this week, we spoke about the use of crowdsourcing in verification. His comments on this are in the audio below, in which he also refers to some of the advice shared with him by Andy Carvin from National Public Radio:

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

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Economist seeks to build relationships with 1m Facebook fans

The Economist has today announced that it has clocked up one million fans on Facebook.

The fans come from 180 countries, with the largest number living in the United States, followed by India, the UK, Pakistan and Canada, the Economist states in a release.

Last week Nick Blunden, global publisher, digital editions told the Guardian’s Changing Media Summit that “people want to belong and we can monetize that”.

It’s about building relationships on Facebook and monetizing outside.

On the subject of charging for access to content, he said that people will pay for the experience of “being informed”.

Today’s release states:

The Facebook community regularly discusses, debates, comments and share posts, with those regarding world leaders and international events generating the most responses. One of the most popular posts of all time focused on the Economist’s 2009 “The Man Who Screwed An Entire Country” cover and received over 130,000 likes in just a few days.

The Economist states that it “reaches over 3.5 million people through all of its social media properties, including 2.1 million individuals on Twitter and 400,000 users on Google+” and a “growing global circulation” (now 1.5 million including both print and digital), according to figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

The news outlet is now asking readers how they consume the title’s content.

To mark the milestone, the publication has asked its Facebook community to tell or show how they consume Economist content. Fans have been posting their experiences and photos, which include reading indoors, outdoors, by the pool, floating in the dead sea, on tablets and even reading in diapers for one young adopter, aged 13 months.

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Searchmetrics: Financial Times is news outlet with most Google+ followers

The Financial Times has the largest number of followers on Google+, while the Daily Mail and Telegraph websites get the most Google +1 recommendations from readers, according to a release from analytics software firm Searchmetrics.

Searchmetrics has looked at the Google+ presence of 13 national newspapers which have “a combined total of 544,545 followers”.

This compares with a total of 1,284,674 followers (fans) on Facebook, currently the world’s biggest social network, for which all 13 newspaper sites maintain official pages.

The social network, which was launched nine months ago, has more that 100 million user accounts, according to Google.

At the time of the Searchmetrics study, which was carried out on 19 March:

372,159 people were recorded as following the Financial Times’ page on Google+ (or having the newspaper’s page in their Google+ ‘Circles’) beating the Guardian’s page which came second with 75,255 followers. The Independent came third with 60,195 people having its page in their Google+ circles.

In the release Searchmetrics points out that the Times, the Sun, Daily Express and Daily Star have not created a Google+ page for their news sites.

Searchmetrics found stories and content from the Daily Mail website received the most recommendations from people using the +1 button, with approximately 10,493 +1s a week on average.

Second came the Telegraph website with around 5,822 +1s a week and third was the Guardian with around 3,367 +1s a week.

While the Financial Times has the most followers it averages around 670 +1s a week, probably due to its metered paywall.

The most frequently +1′d article on Daily Mail site was “a story (with images) about how the majority of runway models meet the Body Mass Index (BMI) criteria for anorexia”. It had been +1′d 837 times.

This contrasts with the Mail’s most “liked” story of 2011, which saw more than 62,458 people click the Facebook like button. This story was headlined “the 9/11 rescue dogs: Portraits of the last surviving animals who scoured Ground Zero one decade on”. See our story on the top 10 Facebook stories of 2011 (we used Searchmetrics to gather the data).

Marcus Tober, Searchmetrics’ CTO and founder said in the release:

Google+ is still a relatively young social network but Google is very positive about its future and we’re already seeing a large number of people on the site, so it’s important for newspapers and other big brands to get in early and have a strong presence on the network.

Frequently +1′d articles from national newspapers:

DailyMail.co.uk, 12 Jan 2012, 837 +1s
‘Most runway models meet the BMI criteria for anorexia’, claims plus-size magazine in powerful comment on body image in the fashion industry’

Telegraph.co.uk,  18 Nov 2011, 1110 +1s
EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration

Guardian.co.uk, Comment is Free, 25 Nov 2011, 1,142 +1s
The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy

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Social predicted to overtake search as Guardian traffic driver

The Guardian’s Facebook app has been downloaded eight million times since it was launched six months ago, seeing around 40,000 downloads a day.

Speaking at the Guardian Changing Media Summit, Tanya Cordrey, director of digital development at Guardian News and Media, said the news outlet has been “blown away by the results”.

The “frictionless sharing” app works by readers opting in to share all articles they read with their Facebook friends, generating more traffic for the news site with “no editorial curation”.

She later explained that the Guardian has generated more money through ad revenue from the app than the news organisation spent on building it.

Six months ago months ago Google provided 40 per cent of the Guardian’s traffic. The launch of the Facebook app resulted in a “seismic shift” with social exceeding search as a driver on several occasions in February (see above photograph).

Cordrey predicted:

It’s only a matter of time until social overtakes search for the Guardian.

She said that the audience becomes more global everyday, providing “an amazing opportunity to learn about this new audience”.

It’s the audience we want to learn about rather than the platform [Facebook]

Readers are in “habitual grazing mode”, Cordrey said, traffic peaking in “the middle of the afternoon”.

Addressing those who believe the app has implications for privacy, Cordrey said “we are acutely aware of the critics” but readers are not being driven away or removing content they have read from their Facebook timeline.

“Once people have it, they use it,” Cordrey said, explaining “only a tiny percentage of people” have taken up the option of hiding their reading habits.

Earlier in the day Karla Geci, strategic partner development for Facebook said that it would be “just weird and awkward to read a whole article inside of Facebook”, saying Facebook’s role is enabling “distribution and discovery” rather than taking traffic away from publishers.

Asking herself if frictionless sharing “is creepy”, Geci said:

People are quite interested in being an influencer in their circles. Sharing what you are reading is something you did any way.

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Digital news editor @fieldproducer leaving Sky News

Sky News’s digital news editor Neal Mann, known to 43,000 people on Twitter as @fieldproducer, has announced he has decided to leave the broadcaster.

Mann announced on Twitter on Friday night:

I’ve decided to leave Sky News. I’ve had a brilliant 3 years, but the time has come to discover what else is out there.

— Neal Mann (@fieldproducer) Mars 16, 2012

Another Sky colleague, former social media correspondent Ruth Barnett, is also leaving to become head of communications for Android app producer SwiftKey. She wrote on Friday:

But this isn’t over any alleged Twitter rules row, just a decision to seize an opportunity to learn new skills and take an exciting risk.

— Ruth Barnett (@SkyRuth) Mars 16, 2012

Sky News introduced new guidelines for journalists about the use of Twitter last month, including the line: “Do not retweet information posted by other journalists or people on Twitter. Such information could be wrong and has not been through the Sky News editorial process.”

Reuters’ Anthony de Rosa commented at the time:

These new rules will hamstring Neal and make it difficult, if not impossible, for him to continue to do what he did to garner so much appreciation from people like me. I suspect Sky will come to their senses and realize the error of their ways. If not, they’re going to lose one of their best ambassadors in Neal, and I would suspect many people working at Sky may wonder if they’re working for an organization that is writing policies that will drive them into obsolescence.

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