Tag Archives: social networks

Social Media Journalist: “The problem with most news organisations is a lack of editorial understanding of social media” Kevin Anderson, Guardian blogs editor

Journalism.co.uk talks to reporters across the globe working at the collision of journalism and social media about how they see it changing their industry. This week, Kevin Anderson, Guardian.co.uk.

1) Who are you and what do you do?
Kevin Anderson, blogs editor at Guardian.co.uk.

My title is misnomer seeing as desk editors handle most of the commissioning.

My role is two-fold. I spot newsworthy items bubbling up in social media – blogs, social news sites, Twitter, etc – and report on that or pass it along to the appropriate site editor.

I also seed and develop strategies to promote Guardian content in those social networks. My current focus is what I call real-time innovation. I use emerging tools for editorial purposes and feed back lessons we learn into our editorial development process.

2) Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?
People ask me how I stay on top of it all, and I say that my network is my filter. I have Twhirl and IM on constantly, sitting in the background. New media professionals and contacts around the world pass me things I need to read or stories I need to follow up on through Skype, Twitter, IM and Del.icio.us.

Popurls.com is a great one-stop site for buzz, especially for the US elections, which I’m following right now. NetNewsWire, Flock and Ecto are my blogging tools of choice.

The Flock browser is good in a number of ways. Its Flickr uploader is great – better than Flickr’s until recently. It also allows you to add sites to multiple Del.icio.us accounts.

You can go from reading your RSS feeds to blogging instantly in Flock, as it pulls NetNewsWire functionality into the browser too.

For publishing, a combination of Ecto and any good blogging platform creates the best multimedia journalism tool that I’ve ever used.

I recently got a Nokia N82. With its stellar camera and integrated Flickr uploader it has a lot of promise , but it’s hampered by poor data plans in the UK.

The mobile carriers are focusing on USB-based data plans to link computers to the mobile web, which maybe a good start, but there are still too few good data plans for phones.

I end up relying on WiFi, which on the N82 is much better than on previous phones.

3) Of the thousands of social media tools available could you single one out as having the most potential for news either as a publishing or newsgathering tool?
I think in terms of editorial objectives and then find an applicable tool. In 12 years of doing online journalism, I’ve had to learn hundreds of desktop tools, content management systems and now a dizzying range of social media tools.

You have to be aware of them to work effectively. Knowing about the tools allows me to do something on deadline without worrying whether it can be developed on time.

However, the problem with most news organisations isn’t a lack of tools or technology but a cultural lack of editorial understanding of social media, internet media and internet culture.

Most news organisations continue to try to force their existing editorial strategies into the social media space instead of considering editorial strategies that are appropriate for the space.

Online video isn’t television on the internet, just as blogs are not about publishing a newspaper with comments.

I can use Twitter both as a newsgathering and promotional tool, or I can just use it to broadcast headlines at people.

Social media can increase loyalty from visitors to a site and increase the time they spend on the site, but it’s not about the tools but the way that journalists use them.

4) And the most overrated in your opinion?
I hate to sound like a broken record because others have said this before, but I really think Facebook is overrated for the majority of our audiences.

Traditional journalists who had never seen, much less used a social network before, hyped it because it was a revelation to them.

However, for those who had used social networks before, it was YASN – yet another social network – only shinier, with 20 per cent more Web 2.0 goodness.

I believe in freeing content and making it available where the audiences are, so it makes sense for content to be easily available to Facebook users and for news organisations to have a presence there.

News organisations can learn things from the success of Facebook, but they should also study the life cycle of social networks and learn not only from their successes but also from their failures.

Allowing like-minded readers or viewers to connect and interact using your content as a focus is a good social media strategy.

Hosting and taking an active role in the conversations around your content is also a good social media strategy.

Building a site or service that externalises community and keeps the ‘unwashed masses’ at a safe distance from journalists creates nasty overheads. It also means managing communities and brings nothing to your journalism and very little to your site visitors.

Why would Facebook users decide to move to InsertNewspaperHere-book?

Spleak apps deliver politics and sport news to social networks

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Spleak Media Network has launched two new applications for delivering short-form sport and political news to social networks.

SportSpleak and VoteSpleak will serve up news headlines and gossip to users on social networks and instant messaging services, who can then comment on the updates to their friends.

Both will function along the same lines as CelebSpleak, which offers ‘tattles’ or short snippets of celebrity news to users including content from Hearst’s digital titles.

Content deals for SportSpleak and VoteSpleak, which have been launched in time for the forthcoming Olympics and US presidential election, will be announced shortly, the company said in a press release.

Spleak’s applications, which currently have over 100,000 active daily users, are available on AOL’s AIM, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Facebook, MySpace and through SMS alerts.

Innovations in Journalism – Opinion Tracker

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We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. Today, it’s monitoring what people are talking about on the web with Opinion Tracker.

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?
Hi, I’m Chris Quigley, managing partner at Delib Ltd.

Opinion Tracker is a new form of opinion research that shows what people are thinking and saying around the internet by monitoring conversations taking place in forums, blogs, social networks and video sharing sites.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
For a journalist it provides useful insight into what the general public are thinking about issues. Opinion Tracker is very different to traditional polling, it provides live data as to what people are really talking about online.

The data from Opinion Tracker can either be used on its own, or as the back-story to what polls say about issues.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
Opinion Tracker’s a newly launched service, and is still in beta, so there’s definitely much more to come. So far we’ve been restricted as to how much information we can present, so over time we’ll be adding more – for example, graphs and trend analysis.

4) Why are you doing this?
Opinion Tracker is a commercial product, so in short money. In addition, as a company we’re very interested in innovation, and are always looking at new ways of doing things.

We saw a great opportunity to do opinion research in a different way with the increase in usage of the internet as a social space.

5) What does it cost to use it?
For the general public it’s free. Our business model is based around developing bespoke Opinion Trackers to monitor specific issues in detail.

For example, the government may want to monitor what people think about Climate Change, or a brand may want to monitor what people are saying about them.

6) How will you make it pay?
It will obviously take time to return our initial investment, however we’re confident in breaking even in the first year, and then turning profitable after that.

The European News Interactivity Index

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Nicolas Kayser-Bril, contributor to the Online Journalism Blog and Observatoire des Media, has created an index of the interactive tools used by European news websites.

The index compares and contrasts which media organisations make use of tools such as Twitter, mobile alerts and social networks, as well as noting their policy on user registration for interactive services.

News sites from the UK and France, to Macedonia and Hungary are featured – entries for additional organisations should be submitted to nicolas@observatoiredesmedias.com.

Below is the index’s comparison of interactive features used by Sky’s site vs Guardian.co.uk:

The project is an extension of the work by Birmingham Post reporter and blogger Joanna Geary, who looked at the use of interactive tools by business news sites.

Social Media Journalist: ‘Social networks are an echo chamber rather than a way of being exposed to anything new’ Adam Tinworth, RBI

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Journalism.co.uk talks to reporters across the globe working at the collision of journalism and social media about how they see it changing their industry. This week, Adam Tinworth, RBI.

1) Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Adam Tinworth, and I’m currently head of blogging for business publisher Reed Business Information.

2) Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?
I’m a Twitter addict, and am constantly keeping up with the discussions there, either on my laptop or my iPhone.

More stories “break” to me through Twitter right now than any other sources. It’s so quick and easy to publish out with it, you can get news to people before you’re even on the second paragraph of a traditional news story.

I couldn’t live without my RSS feeds. I’ve been an RSS junkie for long enough that I predate Google Reader. I keep my subscriptions in Newsgator, so I can access them in NetNewsWire on my Mac, FeedDemon on my work PC, and the iPhone web version on my, well, iPhone.

While once upon a time I was a heavy forum user (and a Usenet/Mailing List guy before that), most of my conversational reading is in the blogosphere now.

I find the much stronger sense of a huge range of personalities you get on people’s blogs much more appealing than the handful of dominant personalities that tend to dominate forum-like discussion places. And I speak as someone who has been one of those selfishly dominant personalities in the past. I also occasionally flirt with social networks (note that that’s “flirt with” not “flirt in” :)), but find them limited and frustrating.

That said, both Seesmic and Flickr, which have strong similarities with forums, are sites I wish I had more time to explore the true potential of.

3) Of the thousands of social media tools available could you single one out as having the most potential for news either as a publishing or newsgathering tool?
Honestly, I think we’re only just scratching the surface of how blog-based CMS could completely change the way we deliver news to interested people.

I suspect that the news sites of the future will have much more in common with blogs that than monolithic sites with clunky, slow back-ends we build right now.

4) And the most overrated in your opinion?
Facebook (and social network sites in general). I think they’re interesting “walled garden” communication tools, but their strength is also their weakness: they only expose you to the thoughts and recommendations of those you already know.

They are something of an echo chamber, in which existing relationships are reinforced, rather than a way of being exposed to anything (or anyone) new.

Online Journalism Scandinavia: Should public broadcaster seek competitive advantage online by offering users content for free?

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Kristine Lowe is a freelance journalist who writes on the media industry for number of US, UK and Norwegian publications. Today Online Journalism Scandinavia asks if public broadcasters should be more restrained in the content they offer for free online.

The head of the online division of Norway’s public broadcaster (NRK) has admitted that it intends to use its public mandate of supplying content for free as a competitive advantage on the web through increasing activity with file-sharing and social networks.

“I believe all public broadcasters more and more think along the lines that it is a competitive advantage that they can deliver content without charging it for it,” said Bjarne Andre Myklebust, head of the online division of NRK.

He added that the organisation is actively working to use its public mandate as a competitive advantage to strengthen its position online.

Not only are they working to make NRK’s content more easily available to download and share on social sites, such as YouTube and Facebook, but are also experimenting with file-sharing services such as BitTorrent and Joost.

NRK recently made its first programme series available to download in Bit Torrent, they liked it so much, they are thinking of doing more. (You can read about their experiences so far here.)

The broadcaster has also been working to get its own channel up and running on Joost, a project that has been delayed somewhat by the challenge of obtaining permissions from all the copyright holders involved.

In addition, it has recently made some of its footage available to use under a creative commons license on Flickr. Something Germany’s public broadcaster has also dabbled with.

So is this the way forward? A good way to give value back to all its license fee payers, or just a way of completely skewing the competition in the broadcasting market?

What if the BBC, in a time of intensified competition, started extending its own free delivery of content across Facebook and bit-torrent sites? It’s probably only a matter of time, but is it an unfair advantage over commercial broadcasters, news and otherwise?

Is it a way of better fulfilling its public mandate, or just an outright example of the rampant commercialism of public broadcasters using public funding as an advantage against others that find it more difficult to distribute content for free?

DNA 2008: Guardian to use Pluck to monitor users online

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The Guardian is working on a project to monitor user interaction with their website more closely.

This ‘attention data’ will then be reflected in content and community areas of the site, Tom Turcan, general manager and head of digital media development at the Guardian, told Journalism.co.uk.

Turcan would not be drawn on specifics of the plan, but said the project would involve social media firm Pluck – whose SiteLife technology is to be introduced to the community areas of Guardian.co.uk later this year.

“The principle of tracking how people use things and then reflecting it back on the site is a way to build community,” he said.

Most recommended/most e-mailed lists are basic examples of how the analysis may be used, said Turcan, but emphasis will be placed on representing ‘crowd wisdom’ in a ‘bespoke’ form.

Turcan was speaking on a panel discussing news on social networks, during which he announced the following figures for Guardian.co.uk (they are all per month):

2 million podcasts downloaded

0.5 – 1 million videos viewed

2 million RSS clicks

50,000 blog posts

Innovations in Journalism – Seesmic.com

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1) Who are you and what’s it all about?

I’m Cathy Brooks, Seesmic executive producer.

Seesmic is a platform for global conversation. We take all the best of blogging, IM, Twitter and social networks and bring them together, creating a rich environment for debate and discourse using video as the medium.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?

Think of it as having access to a global pool of expert sources.

With 4,000 people from 25 countries currently in the system Seesmic provides journalists with eyes and ears in virtually every major part of the world.

When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007, the Seesmic community almost exploded with discussion, revealing a deep, rich pool of commentators whose backgrounds and geography would have made them invaluable to a reporter.

Seesmic also can serve as a sounding board for story ideas and topics, often resulting in finding experts whose knowledge can support a journalist’s efforts.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?

This is just the beginning. Seesmic opened its doors in September 2007. We have been in a closed, alpha stage with invite only access to the platform since late 2007 and will be opening more widely to the public in 2008.

We will be building out our community substantially as we open to a more widespread audience. We also will develop and produce both original and sponsored programming as well as create an array of channels for conversations.

4) Why are you doing this?

Because in the massive echo-chamber that is the world of social media there are myriad ways to broadcast thoughts and messages to either one, a few or many people, and there are even some ways to have group discussions, but there is a distinct lack of resources allowing people to truly communicate and converse in a meaningful, rich way.

By leveraging video as the conduit, Seesmic provides a truly personal and human connection.

5) What does it cost to use it?

There is presently no cost to the user and we will always provide a free service. There may, in the future, be subscription level “professional” versions with additional features and functionality but that is still in the future. Find out argos opening times and events

6) How will you make it pay?

Presently we are building our community and our technology. We have several potential options for revenue – from contextual advertising and sponsored channels/programming to subscription level services that provide additional features and no advertising.

BBC stance on pulling images from social networks

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The ease of availability of a picture does not remove the BBC’s responsibility to assess the sensitivities in using it, according to the editor of BBC News online.

Writing on the BBC Editors Blog, Steve Herman stated that the question of the ethics of pulling pictures from social networking sites has bee raised by colleagues during an editorial standards meeting.

As a result of that meeting a newsletter is produced, he wrote, summarising discussions circulated to staff to offer guidance.

The advice offered to BBC reporters is that because material has been put into the public domain does not necessarily give the media the right to use it, primarily because the BBC would bring significantly greater public attention than would normally be expected.

The newsletter added that consideration on the original context and the impact of re-use to those who may be grieving or distressed must also be applied.

Legal, copyright and accuracy of the image should also be at the forefront of reporters minds when considering use of images from social sites.

Innovations in Journalism – Dapper

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1) Who are you and what’s it all about?

Hi. I’m Eran Shir, CEO of Dapper.

Dapper is a company with the vision of unlocking web content and letting publishers and users distribute and use content in new ways, such as feeds, widgets, Facebook apps and many more.

With Dapper, a novice web user can transform websites into feeds etc. within a matter of minutes, no programming involved.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?

First, it allows news and media sites to easily distribute their content on new media platforms such as widgets, RSS and social networks without spending resources on reprogramming their systems.

Second, it allows the individual journalist to keep up to date with many web sources by transforming them into alerts and feeds, to consume on his/her own terms.

Many people also use Dapper to easily create dynamic dashboards and mash-ups that helps gaining insight.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?

We have much more to come, both on the core Dapper service and on related products. Our Facebook AppMaker has enabled creating hundreds of Facebook apps and we constantly add support for new platforms.

4) Why are you doing this?

We have a vision for an open, semantic web, built from the grounds up. A web where anyone can consume and distribute content, and where a content marketplace is thriving.

We would like to see a web where people can easily leverage the web to realise their creativity in new ways, without necessarily being programmers.

5) What does it cost to use it?

The core service is free. We do sell SLAs for businesses who require a higher level of support/performance.

6) How will you make it pay?

We are leveraging the core service to introduce a new level of contextual advertising. Our first take on this will be released in April, so stay tuned.

One point I’d like to add is that we’re taking IP rights very seriously, and have a content distribution platform that allows content owners to define how they would like their content to be consumed and under what terms.

This allows for the first time for publishers to distribute their content while maintaining their needed level of control.