Location-based games for foodies and photogs
The Location-Based Frenzy The buzz around location-based gaming is electric. New applications and companies are popping up daily to get in on the craze. Dennis Crowley, one of the founders of Foursquare, often notes in interviews that “…check-in functionality is going to become a commodity.” Crowley’s statement isn’t meant to deter people from entering the location-based space. As [...]
Notes: ProPublica, CNC, WaPo’s $1.99 app
A “reporting recipe” to dig up dirt like ProPublica (Nieman) Chicago News Cooperative has some impressive talent (AJR via Romanesko) Index pegs Facebook at $11.5B, Twitter at $1.4B, LR at 2.2 B(eers) (BizJournals) A year of the WaPo for $1.99? Gotta admit, that sounds reasonable. (PaidContent) And, to go with this week’s theme of hyperlocal [...]
Who’s tops on Twitter in local TV?
We all know that local TV loves its Twitter. Since there’s no easy way to search for the answer, we’ll just throw it out in the form of a question: Which local TV sites and anchor/reporters have the most followers on Twitter? For example, Jenni Hogan, a traffic anchor at KIRO-TV, has 15,500 followers. Sure, [...]
Huffington Post may reconsider local expansion
The Huffington Post first launched a local vertical in Chicago in August 2008, and since then it’s expanded slowly into New York, Los Angeles and Denver. Always billed an experiment, Arianna Huffington says she’s not sure where local will go next, reports All Things D. “This year [we] have prioritized launching other sections, which has [...]
Thousands more cities added to Facebook Ads
Facebook’s local advertising tool has rolled out thousands more cities that advertisers can target, in the U.S. and across the globe. Facebook didn’t provide a list, but I found Issaquah, Bothell and dozens of other surprisingly smaller cities near Seattle. When I created a fake ad for Issaquah, a town of 24,057 people, and targeted [...]
The ‘Glue’ that holds together more social networking
There’s another social networking site out there now. That may be a ho-hum way to begin an essay, but stay with me for a moment because the new site does many things well. “Glue” works because it takes a new approach to sharing – that is, the sharing of things you like, in large lists. [...]
RTDNA to FCC: Success comes from reinvention
RTDNA President Emeritus Barbara Cochran speaks at the FCC’s “Future of Media” workshop today, and she brings a message about transformation and reinvention. Barbara uses many examples of the good work that local stations are doing as they transform themselves: “To continue to provide high quality news for their communities at a time when revenues [...]
Raycom to add neighborhood sites
Add Raycom to the growing list of companies partnering with DataSphere on neighborhood blog sites. In a press release, the company announced it will launch local sites in 35 towns and cities, using DataSphere’s LocalNet service. DataSphere is hot right now, having raised almost $11 million in funding recently. Raycom, which owns 46 television stations, [...]
Heaton: ‘Kicking butt with Continuous News’
LR Blogger Emeritus (and my business partner for three years) Terry Heaton writes about why Continuous News is the way to go in his blog entry “Kicking butt with Continuous News.” Continuous News, for the uninitiated, is the publication of news as it comes in, rather than in the traditional style of having a conventional [...]
Notes: Facebook ads, NBC to stay broadcast, WiFiPads
Facebook ads: sometimes, a little creepy (NYT) Comcast says it has no plans to move NBC to cable. (Ad Age) AT&T thinks people will favor the WiFi-only version of the iPad and not the 3G version. Or, at least, it really hopes so. (ReadWriteWeb) Comedy Central pulls “Colbert Report” and “The Daily Show” off Hulu. [...]
E.W. Scripps blames low online advertising on print
There’s an interesting tidbit to be found in the latest quarterly earnings report from E.W. Scripps. Nieman points out that the company seems to be blaming its lower online ad revenue on its newspapers. Nieman found this telltale quote: “The decline in online revenue…is attributable to the weakness in print classified advertising, to which roughly [...]
Video: The State of the Internet
Some amazing stats in here about how we use the internet. Well worth your time. JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.
Virtual goods meet physical environments
The virtual goods economy is here to stay. When virtual food and clothing first appeared on social networks a few years ago, I thought that the fad would come and go. Whereas the collection of virtual goods had grown into a full-fledged market in Asia, I remained skeptical of the long-term lifespan of consumerism around digital items in the U.S. With [...]
It’s time to stop ‘demonizing’ aggregation
Much has been made by mainstream media about the evils of aggregation. The ability to serve headlines to content that was produced by someone else has been held up as exhibit No. 1 for how legacy news companies are at a disadvantage when competing with pureplay (web-only) enterprises. The fact is, aggregation existed long before [...]
Liveblogging trials: where do you stand?
Southern Methodist University prof Jake Batsell raises a thought-provoking discussion over at Journalism 2.0, as he presents the pros and cons of liveblogging (or Tweeting, or whatever) a courtroom trial. Batsell presented a case study to his class: “…examining the Bakersfield Californian’s Web coverage of a quintuple-murder trial in 2007. The young reporter was under [...]
Notes: Patch’s bucks, Twitter local, hyperlocal hooch
Also noted: The Bruins haven’t won a home game since they played at Fenway Park on New Year’s Day. Freaky. AOL is pouring $50 million into Patch, its hyperlocal effort. (WaPo/TechCrunch) Twitter adding improved geo-location. (Fast Company) Teens Into Social Media, Not Newspapers (More insightful than it sounds) (Mediaweek) Murdoch: WSJ’s New York metro edition [...]
Paid newspaper apps are working in Europe
A sign of things to come? Despite plenty of protest and studies to the opposite, it appears people are willing to pay for digital content from traditional newspapers, as long as the process is easy. AdAge reports that newspapers in Europe are having some success with their apps, something that is likely to increase with [...]
Foursquare on TV and Vegas big screens
A month ago, Bravo TV inked a marketing deal with Foursquare, and now the first TV spot promoting the partnership is on the air: That’s not the only publicity for Foursquare these days. The Miracle Mile Shops in Las Vegas now feature big electronic signs urging users to check in at the mall. The signs [...]
