September 2009 Archives

Social is not new, businesses have known about social for a long time. It's the greater access that we now have (potentially) to learn more about how to do stuff well through collaboration that we are excited about - or we should be. Imagine if you could connect with people who think like you throughout the organization

Of course having comments on the story would have allowed this discussion to take place in public, from the start, and provide readers of the article with some critical context, turning a single-source 'He Said' article into a 'He Said-She Said' piece at the very least. That's a technical issue that is being addressed, but in the meantime the BBC brand suffers.

Why do I believe this? Because I believe there is a fundamental change in how we do business heading our way. Driven by the networked communication tools flourishing on the web, tools like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, not only how we communicate with those who benefit from our services but also how we organise ourselves to produce them will be changed forever.

Last week, though, the prominent political blogger Andrew Sullivan used his forum on TheAtlantic.com to tell readers to subscribe to the print edition of the magazine.
It worked. Within two days after last Monday's post, Mr. Sullivan's appeal pulled in 75 percent of the subscriptions that the Web site draws in a typical month, the magazine's publisher, Jay Lauf, said.

• Oh, my science
  Interesting write-up of a debate about the coverage of science in mainstream media.
  (tags: science reporting newspapers)
• 5 [rules | steps | ideas | propositions] on Social Networking | Loudmouthman
  About as good a five point guide as you're every likely to see.
  (tags: socialnetworking)

Our comments routinely point us in the direction of new angles for stories, and in many cases commenters have become sources for future pieces. They do fact-checking for us, which we should be grateful for. And they let us know which stories they care about and which they don't, which is invaluable market research. But those aren't the only reasons why comments are important. Giving people a place to talk about important issues has value in and of itself, and the more we restrict that and impose limits on it, the more we risk losing the trust of the people formerly known as the audience.

As for Critics, those who react to content, this group hasn't grown at all. Looking deeper into the data, this is a result of a small but actual decrease in the number of people contributing to discussion forums. Why? Probably because much of this activity has been sucked into social network sites like Facebook.

The explosion in Joiners from 35% to 51% of online Americans reflects the appeal of Facebook, as both press coverage and invitations from friends suck more of us into social networks. Meanwhile, Spectators -- those consuming social content -- reached all the way to 73% of online Americans, which should end any remaining skepticism about whether this social thing is real.

By and large, news websites still reflect their print heritage. They make the classic mistake of rigidly reflecting their own structure while ignoring the semantic connections that cross desks and departments. Most news web site interfaces obscure the vast amounts of information we produce as journalists. Good interfaces go beyond design and search to issues of information architecture, user experience and discovery.

Improved comment experience

Based on some impressive performance on the beta blogs, we have added a few popular social web icons -- TypePad, Facebook, and Twitter -- on the comment forms. We tested this design in beta for a few weeks and saw a dramatic increase in the commenting activity. By encouraging people to sign in and become a "real" person, we have seen a significant increase in comments. 

• Nieman Reports | Ours, Theirs and the Bloggers’ Zones: Compatible, Yet Different
  Key quote, I think: "We now realize there are three spaces on the Telegraph’s Web site: ours—where comments on articles reside, theirs—My Telegraph, and the bloggers’—our blogs."
  (tags: telegraph newspapers commenters blogging ugc)

• Everything TypePad: Making Your TypePad Blog "Real Time"
  Typepad builds in support for the PubSubHubub real time updating format.
  (tags: typepad pubsubhubbub realtime realtimweb)
• RSSCloud Vs. PubSubHubbub: Why The Fat Pings Win
  There are two technologies in development right now that I think matter to publishers. This is one of them.
  (tags: rss pubsubhubbub rsscloud push realtime aggregator web atom tools)
• Libertylondongirl: Surely newspapers know what they are talking about? Right?
  What's this? National newspaper journalists making factual errors about bloggers? I though it was bloggers that were unreliable!
  (tags: blogging journalism media print online)
• RSS never blocks you or goes down: why social networks need to be decentralized
  A solid argument against the dominance of a handful of companies as the home of social graph information.
  (tags: socialnetworks socialnetworking syndication twitter architecture networking decentralization collaboration)
• Comment: Matt Wardman on Glen Jenvey, blogs and journalism standards
  Journalists completely taken in by fraud, bloggers expose it. What was that about being able to trust journalists but not bloggers?
  (tags: journalists bloggers fraud reputation)
• The Drudge Report: of course it hasn’t lost ‘its edge’ - Telegraph Blogs
  Shane nicely skewers the argument that the Drudge Report has lost its edge.
  (tags: blogging aggregation drudgereport)

I like Steve Jackson. He's a curmudgeon, but the sort of curmudgeon who makes you think. And something he's been quite curmudgeonly about recently, and about which I've come to the conclusion that he's right, is LiveTwittering. It started with a post on his own blog, decrying the pollution of his Twitter stream by hacks tweeting from a Frontline Club event. He followed this up with a post on the Media140 blog, at Dee's invitation.

It's interesting then that when its hacks running the show, and no one to edit, a different tact is taken when social media is involved.

Suddenly there is no concept of news values. Only just how many tools can we use to spread the thin story just about as thinly as possible? There is never any thought of "what is this worth?" or "is this a story?"
Just keep on spreading.

Here's the thing: Twitter is in an explosive boom phase right now, and has been since the beginning of the year. A lot of people are relatively new to it, and they're full of enthusiasm for the new medium. There's been a recurring tendency for people to assume that New Shiny Thing will do everything and replace Old Less Exciting Thing. And over time, that goes away and New Shiny thing becomes just another tool in the toolbox. Look at the recent exodus of all the tech cutting edge adopters to FriendFeed - and their subsequent return to their blogs as the hubs of their activity, with the other services surrounding and feeding that core.

And that's where I'm at.

NEW YORK - As the bid deadline for ailing BusinessWeek magazine approaches the McGraw-Hill title is revealed to have spent $16m on creating its social networking site, which is generating little cash.
BusinessWeek launched its social networking venture Business Exchange in 2007. By 2008 it had spent $16m on the site, which is estimated by the New York Time to have generated just $600,000 in revenues.

Interesting conclusion to a post about a story the traditional media failed to cover:

I would also point out one thing which I am sure will be missed by the "Old Media is indispensable" faction, which is that there is no need for any of these amateurs to ever do any journalism again. It is, in my view, very likely that they won't. It will be other amateurs who do and that is a key unappreciated strength of this thing, that each story can be done not by someone who gets assigned to go through the motions, but by a small set of people passionate about that particularly issue.

The long-term significance of Blogging is that it reverses a trend that had become increasingly worrying in an era dominated by mass media, namely the erosion of what the cultural critic Jurgen Habermas called "the public sphere" - an area where citizens gather to generate opinions and attitudes that affirm or challenge the actions of the state. Mass media offered the illusion of diversity while narrowing the range of real choices available - the "600 channels and nothing on" syndrome. Blogging has revived - and begun to expand - the public sphere, and in the process may revitalise our democracies.

Security analyst David Kierznowski at BlogSecurity has a list of more than two dozen known vulnerabilities in all versions of WordPress. A 2007 survey of 50 WordPress by Kierznowski found that only one of the sites was running the latest version of the software, leading him to warn that the WordPress community was vulnerable to attacks. So maybe the question isn't whether WordPress is more likely to be hacked but whether WordPress users are less likely to upgrade.

Here's the deal:  I'm running a business - a speaking and consulting business that is focused on the use of social media by entrepreneurs, and this blog is the cornerstone of my content. I need to be sure there is is a team of experts looking out for me - testing technology before throwing it out there to the community, and most importantly, keeping me protected against issues like this one that is wreaking havoc for some Wordpress users.

• Survey: Average iPhone user has spent $80 on apps
  Interesting. That's a fair chunk of cash.
  (tags: iphone iphoneapps mobile)

...let's think about what might happen when magazine publishing is no longer a river in its own right, but is just a current in the digital ocean. Magazines are starting to appear on the Web, but since they are just a number of interconnected pages in a world of interconnected pages, the boundaries between 'magazine' and 'not-magazine', or indeed between 'magazine A' and 'magazine B' are, from the Web browser's point of view, rather vague. Once we drop the idea of discretely bound and sold sheaves of glossily processed wood pulp from the model, what do we have left? Anything useful? 

1. The link rot is pretty bad, for three and a half years. The BBC and national newspaper links are all still good, as are most of the blog links. But Channel 4's links are long gone, as are most to the start-ups of the era. The permalink is nowhere near as perma as we would like.
2. My blog was so much more personal back then. Less of a focus on journalism, although it was still a major theme, but a lot more random stuff that would hit Twitter or The Rest of My Life these days. I miss that random element a little.