links for 2010-01-15
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Author Archives: Joanna
links for 2010-01-13
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"We will always tell stories. We will always need story-tellers. Bye bye to the traditional ways of doing it – you were great, you really were. Hello wonderfully connected new world."
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"Unfortunately, too many print and broadcast veterans don't want to change their production model. So they instead devote their time and energy toward getting someone to fund another doomed quest to look for their revenue model Holy Grail.
There is no new revenue model for journalism. That's why we have to find new production models that work. " -
"The site, which primarily serves readers in the Black Country and the broader West Midlands, has partnered with Trinity Mirror to use its Local Mole business directory and added a new motoring channel after forging an agreement with Motors.co.uk."
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"The Wall Street Journal was also one of the first organizations to use the Loomia Facebook App to show users which WSJ stories were read by their friends. (They eventually took it down because of performance issues.) Murray disclosed that the paper is in the process of closing a new partnership with Facebook, though he won't reveal details."
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"Labs projects look beneath the surface of the Digg community's activities to expose content you may have otherwise missed. "
links for 2010-01-12
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"For the third month in a row, Facebook has experienced an increase in both the number of U.S. users visiting its site, and the amount of time those users are spending on the social network, according to data from Nielsen. By contrast, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and even Google sites all witnessed month-on-month reductions in unique users, and the amount of time those users spent with their properties during the month of November."
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"So, if social media communications is presented to corporations as something that is directly measurable, corporations can see social media as a means to their end, not as a means of creating better customer relations and direct conversation — two forms of communication that are not easily measured — but just as another broadcast medium for their marketing message. So much for the notion of helping companies to communicate with customers. "
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"That means that one of the biggest, most sophisticated media organizations in the world has identified social media as one of the four most important parts of its operations and put a 27-year-old in charge. Think about that the next time you hear someone dismiss social media as frivolous and a waste of time (as I continue to hear, from some veteran journos to younger ones as well)."
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"Barcode scanning and its applications will grow during 2010, meaning more and more real world data will be connected to the Internet and accessed on your mobile phone."
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"Not all apps get even the basics right. But a few are pushing the boundaries of what mobile news can be, with innovative new features such as info-graphic displays of hot stories, or integrated playlists for multimedia."
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"News about News is a news website about journalism. A new edition of News about News is produced every hour by an authoritative social filter called The Hourly Press created by Steve Farrell and Lyn Headley. "
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"Discover relevant information filtered by the people you follow. "
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"This is an exciting new development from the BBC and freesat, enhancing the content available and ensuring there is always something to watch. The BBC and freesat are working together on this test service ahead of a full launch, and we value your feedback."
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"What does transparency look like? Mostly, it resides with the intent of the publisher, and it might be expressed as a newsroom oversight board or other firewall structure that keeps newsrooms insulated from financial pressures. But to the outside world, it means disclosure of anything that might even hint of a conflict."
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"While broadcasting, chat with your viewers via Twitter right from your broadcast page."
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"Every story of merit is first sent out as a mobile alert, then it goes to the web. After that our publications, editors and journalists use social media to push audience to the web. This process is repeated and enhanced all day with the addition of video and audio. The last step is the printed product."
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"China was once again the leading Internet censor in 2009. Countries such as Iran, Tunisia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Uzbekistan also blocked websites and blogs, and engaged in surveillance of online expression. In Turkmenistan, for example, the Internet remains under total state control."
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"AOL UK would not give a total employee count or the number it expects to cut."
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Conservative Lord Lucas is proposing a specific new clause so that…
"Every provider of a publicly accessible website shall be presumed to give a standing and non-exclusive license to providers of search engine services to make a copy of some or all of the content of that website, for the purpose only of providing said search engine services …
"A provider of search engine services who acts in accordance with this section shall not be liable for any breach of copyright…" -
"Coca-Cola just released a new social media policy — and it’s full of common sense wisdom that every company can learn from. "
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"The researcher estimated marketers spent $800 million in 2009 on social network, word-of-mouth and conversational marketing, up more than 23% over the previous year. Further growth of 35% is expected for 2010 to more than $1 billion."
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"…there also are several services that will filter your stream and the collective content on Twitter so you can get the most important (or at least the most popular) news and information shared by users."
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"There was a clear divide, however, between Mail journos whose main interest was in which celebrities were having the most sex and those (a majority) who disturbed by the thought that anyone was having sex at all, a fact they put down to the prevalence of alcohol, drugs and images of scantily-clad women in British society."
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A map of hyperlocal websites from independent publishers across the UK.
links for 2010-01-11
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"…consumer preference is moving away from this kind of deep, direct engagement with content providers, and towards engagement with each other, with socially-mediated content helping to facilitate that.!
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"Admire it. Link to it. Comment on it. Favourite it. Tell me you like it, you value my work, you think it’s funny/clever/well-composed if you like, but don’t take it and pass it off as your own work."
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"And this faster dissemination of news was tied to three other trends. As news is posted faster, often with little enterprise reporting added, the official version of events is becoming more important. We found official press releases often appear word for word in first accounts of events, though often not noted as such. "
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"A report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the accountant and business adviser, suggests that consumers’ growing appetite for VOD could lead to broadcasters losing a further £280 million from annual advertising revenues if they continue to focus their efforts on cost-cutting and fail to cash in on the boom."
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Today's most tweeted links. This list is refactored every minute.
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"We all agree that it’s important for journalism students — and journalists — today to understand the economics of news. Some of us add that it was irresponsible of our institutions not to teach this in the past. We agree it is important to bring entrepreneurship into the industry. "
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"We are also just beginning to see experimentation with the form of news, moving past the articles the study measures. News is becoming more of a process than a product; it is being disseminated in new ways thanks to search and social and algorithmic links. News is changing. "
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Now, the daily responsibility for operating the blog covering Fort Greene and Clinton Hill will rest not with Times journalists, but with professors and students at the CUNY program.
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It was yet another trailer that impressed us the most, though. An interactive trailer was presented as an Adobe Air (adobe AIR) application. It required a download, but it was worth it for Avatar fans.
links for 2010-01-07
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"There's no good reason why incumbents can't devote a similarly minuscule amount of energy doing so as well. Because the question is not whether to stick with your current offerings or bet on a new, high-risk one. The question is how much time will you have before someone else comes up with the same innovations your bright, clever staffers have thought of — and what will happen to your customer base when they do? "
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"An experiment in sharing and visualising my television-watching habits. by Dale Lane "
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After an emergency meeting yesterday morning, around 100 print workers took unannounced strike action over potential job losses at their plant after Le Monde said that it was considering selling the factory, which employs 270 people.
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The social web mantra of “authenticity” and “transparency” is a load of crap. Nobody is truly authentic. Nobody is truly transparent. Nor should you be! However, there is an urgent need for civility, tolerance and honesty in this space.
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The content has to be somehow better than what can be read on a Kindle. That’s made easy almost out-of-the-box given the iPod Touch software base. Here’s the potential for content that actually does something. I think that’s key. For this device to succeed it has to have a large volume of content that simply does more than you’d generally expect on other platforms. Otherwise why buy the reader?
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Enter Steve Jobs, stage left, proffering an appealing concept (I make lots of money selling content: look at iTunes), embodied in an attractive package (the Apple tablet/reader/thingee), and suggesting an exciting outcome (the salvation of Big Publishing). And his mojo is having some effect.
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My question is prompted by recent conversations with some of those who know Mr Lebedev well. They confirm that he remains in deadly earnest about buying the Independent and – more germanely – that he would turn it into a free newspaper.
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"Smart newspaper publishers once knew this, back when most papers were owned by someone in the community and not by some far-flung chain. They supported community causes and made sure that the community knew about the paper's support."
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"The ads only appear when the pages are printed, with the theory that users who print the page are inherently committed to the content. "
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"The real challenge for magazine publishers in this joint venture may be to find ways to truly innovate. Though the "iTunes for magazines" concept and its primary use on state-of-the-art tablet devices might seem innovative enough, the fundamental question is whether this new distribution and business model fully utilizes the advantages of the digital format in exciting, engaging and creative ways. "
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",,,once it was automated, every algorithm-generated piece of content produced 4.9 times the revenue of the human-created ideas. So Rosenblatt got rid of the editors. Suddenly, profit on each piece was 20 to 25 times what it had been. It turned out that gut instinct and experience were less effective at predicting what readers and viewers wanted — and worse for the company — than a formula.
New York!
Today, in a moment of capriciousness, I booked myself a flight to New York.
New York! How exciting!
I’m going to be there from March 8 to 22 and I’m hoping that I get to meet as many interesting folk as possible while I’m there.
It will be great to meet some of my colleagues at News Corporation HQ and at the Wall Street Journal. Plus, I’ve been increasingly getting the feeling that if I’m interested in journalism and entrepreneurship, NYC is a good place for case studies and ideas.
My plans once I arrive are, as yet, unformed. So, if there are people/projects/places that you think I shouldn’t miss while I’m there, I’d really appreciate the heads up!
links for 2010-01-06
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Facebook has begun testing a system that's in vogue at the moment: Using its own users as a data-crunching system. Nothing terribly new there–except that Facebook's using its crowd to actually moderate the rest of the crowd and stamp out the nasty bits, which is a whole new ethically-intriguing level
links for 2010-01-05
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"Its interesting to note that Facebook's two #1 days both occurred on major holidays. Is there something about holidays that might cause social networking to trump search as the most popular online activity? One possible explanation might be that being home for the holidays might also mean being physically separated from one's social group, leading to greater virtual contact."
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"In all of these interactions, the goal is to find a context for two-way learning. Unless both sides are learning from the interaction, it is unlikely that the basis for a long-term relationship will be established. Reciprocity becomes a powerful foundation for trust."
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We continue our conversation about how economics and technology have shaped the news business.
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"It’s not enough today to have a good rolodex of sources (seriously, who even has a rolodex nowadays?) and a solid recorder, journalists need to be able to make use of every tool in their arsenal in order to stay afloat in today’s almost real-time media landscape"
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" …sociology prevails over technology when it comes to engagement. Essentially, brand managers become veritable digital anthropologists or sociologists in order to identify and document the culture of a community, gather information, analyze data, report findings, apply statistics and surface necessary communication and listening skills."
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"One considerable advantage to building a paywall is that it forces newspapers to think hard about what their customers (as opposed to their advertisers) might really want."
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"A wise editor of mine explained that we should be proud readers came to us with these questions because it meant the newspaper was so intrinsic to people’s lives that it was the first place they went for answers. Newspapers still need to be that today. It’s still their job to explain the changing world to readers. And it’s also their job to imagine what the world will look like, so they can serve the readers of tomorrow."
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""This “cooling off” period is meant as a strong reminder to our online readers: that the reason comments are allowed in the first place is to foster a “spirit of community involvement and conversation.”
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Looking at the newspaper of the future from 1994.
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"If you don’t understand business, especially the business you work for, then it’s time to wake up. The reality for most journalists is that they can no longer exist in a vacuum, as if what they do in their profession is somehow disconnected from the commercial enterprise that pays their wages (one side effect of journalists’ attempts to ‘professionalise’ themselves, according to Robert G Picard). That does not mean compromising journalistic integrity, or turning into solo entrepreneurs; rather it means gaining an understanding of the business they are in and playing a part in moving it forward."
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"I'm thoroughly enjoying my foray into community blogging. I learned more technical stuff in two days than I've achieved in years, and love the thought of doing something that will be of value to my neighbours."
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"There is room – in fact, a desperate need – for an online, heavyweight publication committed to quality journalism. Scotland needs an intelligent title that uses the internet, not fights against it."
links for 2010-01-04
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An experiment that attempts to make reading on the web more enjoable by removing the clutter from around what's being read.
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Create a website using personal content from around the web.
links for 2009-12-30
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Faviki is a unique social bookmarking service that uses semantic tags based on structured information from Wikipedia.
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Offline you have beautifully designed newspapers with eye-popping headlines and ads that don’t get in the way of the content. Online you have sites that could have been designed by anyone. If you can come up with beautiful designs for your offline news then it shouldn’t be that hard to do so online.