Over at Mashable it’s reported that Netvibes is increasing its presence on Facebook from October 23.
Netvibes had had a Facebook widget since August 2007, but according to the Mashable report, a new facility will allow users to integrate all their Netvibes activity feeds into Facebook and use the features that allow commenting, interaction and sharing.
Wednesday’s edition of the Exploding Newsroom: Jim Willse, the editor of the New Jersey based newspaper, the Star-Ledger, talks about the future of the newsroom now that the conditions have been met to avoid a sale or closure of the paper.
“We face a significant challenge,” he says.
You can follow the online editor John Hassell’s Exploding Newsroom on Facebook, at the blog, and over at Kyte TV.
As reported all over the shop, yesterday saw the launch of the online news aggregator site, The Daily Beast, captained by former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair and The NewYorker, Tina Brown, and backed by Barry Diller, of IAC/InterActiveCorp.
PaidContent had managed a sneak preview, but the likes of Roy Greenslade, and Journalism.co.uk had to wait till its official grand unveiling yesterday afternoon.
Named after the fictional tabloid in Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 novel, Scoop, Tina Brown describes The Daily Beast, on her site, as: “the omnivorous friend who hears about the best stuff and forwards it to you with a twist.”
Her motley crew boasts the satirist Chris Buckley, former McCain adviser Mark McKinnon, Project Runway’s Laura Bennett and Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg.
The site’s bold red and black design has a large list of contributors and features a collection of news, opinion, blogs, links and video.
Over at Cyber Journalist Net they reckon it’s ‘about 30 percent original content’ and Gawker is having fun speculating about Brown’s spending habits.
Opinion in the US seems to be split on the site: Deadline Hollywood’s Nikki Finke thinks it ‘sucks’, but as the New York Observer points out she said that about Huffington as well.
Steve Johnson at the Chicago Tribune reckons there’s irony in the choice of title but doesn’t think that necessarily matters.
With absolutely no advertising on the site, it will be interesting to see whether The Daily Beast can survive in the online jungle. It seems to have had a lion’s share of initial hype at least.
Even children can’t concentrate on television anymore, says Clay Shirky, the US-based internet educator, consultant and author of ‘Here comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations’.
In his speech at yesterday’s AOP Digital Publishing summit Shirky told an anecdote about the four-year-old daughter of one of his friends watching a film: “[S]he jumps round behind the TV and [starts] rooting around in the wires, looking for the mouse.”
Today’s television ‘may not be worth sitting still for’, but the computer is for everything.
The problem for media professionals is that the industry still holds the perception that everyone sees publishing in the same way, he explained.
But, he said, citing the example of Flickr, material may be ‘in public but [it’s] not for the public. The cost of putting something out in public has fallen so low.’
“This is a reversal of the usual pattern,” he said. ‘Gather and share has been the usual pattern [of publishing] since time immemorial’, but now grouping comes first.
He split his talk into three categories: the sharing culture of Flickr; the collaborative nature of Wikipedia; and the collective action of internet groupings, citing the use of a Facebook group to force HSBC to reverse its decision on withdrawing students’ interest-free overdrafts.
These examples, he said, show the ‘the environment that’s coming’ and a need to re-think the model’.
“If you wait to hear what the business model is you will hear that your competitors have perfected it,” he said.
Shirky compared today’s media trends to London’s 17th-century gin craze: at first people didn’t know what to do with what they were consuming, but they then learnt how to share, collaborate and collect.
“The action is where people are going after the consumers. Not just consuming, but producing and sharing.”
‘Oh my god, we read the same newspaper!’ It’s like Guardian soulmates, but Stateside, and not necessarily for single people. Ok, so it’s not at all like a singles website at all.
In fact, today saw the public launch of the New York Times social network, TimesPeople. As we reported in June it’s a social network that links up the NY Times audience through their shared interests.
It’s a free service, which allows:
“We created TimesPeople as a community built around sharing news and information, giving our readers a way to connect with other like-minded readers,” said Marc Frons, chief technology officer of digital operations, at the New York Times, in the release. “TimesPeople is a great way for our readers to discover content on the site they might not have otherwise.”
The full list of nominees for this year’s AOP awards, which span 16 categories (courtesy of the AOP):
Launch 2008
Guardian News and Media – guardian.co.uk/katine
Hearst digital – allaboutyou.com
IPC Media – Goodtoknow
James Publishing Ltd – World Reviewer
Redwood – www.yourfamily.org.uk
Channel 4/Zone – Channel 4 Food
Editorial Team – Business
Building – Building.co.uk
Centaur Media – thelawyer.com
CNET Networks UK – silicon.com
Dow Jones & Company – eFN.com
Incisive Media – Accountancy Age
Incisive Media – Legalweek.com
Reed Business Information – PersonnelToday.com
Reed Business Information – XpertHR.co.uk
Editorial Team – Consumer 2008
BBC Worldwide – bbcgoodfood.com
Financial Times – FT.com
Guardian News and Media – guardian.co.uk/sport
IPC MEDIA – nme.com
IPC Media – Nuts.co.uk
Sky News – Sky News Online
Trinity Mirror – Gazette Communities
Research & Insights Project 2008
Guardian News & Media – GNM Total Audience
IPC Media – IPC Media for The Origin Panel – Women’s Space
ITV Online – Ad Innovations-Itv.com
Orange UK – Exposure – Orange UK
Reed Business Information – Travolution
Trinity Mirror – ARRON 2007/2008 Digital Audience Research
Online Advertising Sales Team – Consumer 2008
Bauer Media – Bauer Media Digital Sales Team
Channel 4 – Channel 4
Financial Times – FT.com
Future Publishing PLC – Future Publishing – Digital Agency Team
Guardian News and Media – guardian.co.uk Ad Sales Team
Haymarket Consumer Media – whatcar.com
ITV Online – www.itv.com
Online Advertising Sales Team – Business 2008
CMPi – Building Magazine Online Commercial Team
Incisive Media – Accountancy Age Integrated Sales Team
Redactive Media Group – People Management online sales
Reed Business Information – RBI Job Sites
Reed Business Information – RBI e-Newsletters
UBM – BD & Building Virtual Careers
Innovation 2008
Financial Times – Mockingbird Model
Guardian News and Media – Guardian Publisher Network
ITV Online – Interactive Vouchering – Coronation Street and Harveys Furniture Store
Lonely Planet Publications – Lonely Planet Audio Phrasebooks for iPhone (and iPod Touch)
Jobsite (Assoc Northcliffe Digital) – BeMyInterviewer.co.uk
Lulu Enterprises UK – Lulu.com
TSL Education – TES Resource Bank
Cross-Media Project 2008
CMPI – www.thepublican.com/proudofpubs
Guardian News and Media – British Gas Greener Living Partnership
Incisive Media – Young Professional from Accountancy Age
IPC Media – The WKD Nuts Football Awards
Reuters Media – Bearing Witness: Five Years of Reporting War in Iraq
Seven Squared – ASOS ON FACEBOOK
TelecomTV – Mobile Planet
Times Online – Times Archive
Commercial Partnership
Bauer Media – Bauer Media Zoo Royal Marines 2008
Bauer Media – FHM / Nivea for Men Really Useful Guide
Channel 4 New Media – Ford Bite
Financial Times – Financial Times SST Commercial Partnership 2008
Incisive Media – Adviser Academy – IFAonline and JPMorgan
Reed Business Information – New Scientist Visions of the Future with UniversalMcCann for Microsoft
Telegraph Media Group – Telegraph Media Group and Cisco
VideoJug – Microsoft Office 2007 “It’s a new day, It’s a new office” VideoJug Series
Use of Video 2008
BBC – BBC News website
Channel 4 – Embarrassing Bodies
Financial Times – FT.com
Guardian News and Media – Zimbabwe election: The stolen ballots
IPC Media – NME.COM Video
News Group Newspapers – Sun TV
TelecomTV – TelecomTV
Telegraph Media Group – Telegraph TV
Mobile Site 2008
Brownbook Limited – Brownbook.net
Channel 4 – Big Art Mob
CondéNet UK – Glamour Mobile
CondéNet UK – GQ Mobile
Lonely Planet Publications – Lonely Planet m-site
News Group Newspapers – Sun Mobile
Online Community 2008
National Magazine Company – www.runnersworld.co.uk
News Group Newspapers – My Sun
Reed Business Information – Farmers Weekly Interactive
The National Magazine Co – www.babyexpert.com
Website 2008 – Business
Dow Jones & Company – eFN.com
Faversham House Group Ltd – www.edie.net
MarketClusters Ltd – StrategyEye
Reed Business Information – Hairdressers Journal Interactive
Reed Business Information – XpertHR.co.uk
Reed Business Information – Bankersalmanac.com
Reed Business Information – Farmers Weekly Interactive
TSL Education – www.tes.co.uk
Website 2008 – Consumer
Associated Newspapers Ltd – Mail Online
BSkyB – Sky News
Guardian News and Media – guardian.co.uk
IPC Media – marieclaire.co.uk
IPC Media – nme.com
National Magazines Company – youandyourwedding.co.uk
News Group Newspapers – Sun Online
VideoJug – www.videojug.com
Online Publisher 2008 – Business
Dow Jones & Company – eFN.com
E-consultancy.com – E-consultancy.com
Reed Business Information – Reed Business Information
RICS – RICS
TSL Education – TSL Education
Wildfire Communications – Wildfire Communications Ltd
Online Publisher 2008 – Consumer
Associated Newspapers Ltd – Associated Northcliffe Digital
BSkyB – BSkyB
Hearst digital – Hearst digital
IPC Media – IPC Media
Microsoft – MSN UK
News Group Newspapers – Sun Online
Telegraph Media Group – Telegraph Media Group
The Chicago Tribune’s move into the social media world of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter has result in an 8 per cent rise in page views.
Two new aggregation sites have been set up: Kiyoshi Martinez’s Journalism.me and Darren Stuart’s CrowdStatus.com.
Martinez, who is also responsible for Angy Journalist, is using the site to aggregate feeds from a host of bloggers, news sources, journalism job sites and training centres.
CrowdStatus.com lets a user specify a group or ‘crowd’ of Twitter users and then aggregates their updates on one page. It only works with Twitter at the moment, but Stuart plans to add Facebook updates and Seesmic vids.
On a completely different note (boom,boom!) for anyone who hasn’t come across JournalRhythm, it needs no more explanation than – it’s news to a beat…
Reporters and editors at the New York Times have been told to keep their political affiliations offline and out of sight in the build up to the US presidential election.
A memo received by the New York Observer sent to staff by Craig Whitney, standards editor at the paper, warns journalists that social networks and other websites pose ‘potential political entanglements’:
“When Facebook asks what your political preferences are, don’t answer, and don’t say anything in a blog, video, radio or television program or any other medium that you couldn’t say in the paper or on our Website – about politics or anything else,” the memo says.
An earlier memo from Whitney referred staff to the title’s ethics policy, which states:
“Journalists have no place on the playing fields of politics. Staff members are entitled to vote, but they must do nothing that might raise questions about their professional neutrality or that of The Times. . . They should recognize that a bumper sticker on the family car or a campaign sign on the lawn may be misread as theirs, no matter who in their household actually placed the sticker or the sign.”
A good day for unbiased reporting? A bad day for bumper stickers.