Facebook trumps Twitter in clicks, says NPR
More than ten thousand NPR Twitter followers filled out a survey, and there are some interesting findings in the results — especially when you compare them to NPR’s earlier survey of its Facebook users. NPR says its Twitter followers are “more news centric” than its Facebook fans, asking for hard news and breaking news above [...]
Study: What works for hyperlocal news sites
J-Lab has published a solid study that examines what works — and what doesn’t — for community and hyperlocal news sites. “One of our biggest learning curves is this: It doesn’t pay to train whole classes of ‘citizen’ journalists,” explains J-Lab’s Jan Shaffer. “Citizen journalism turns out to be a high-churn, high-touch enterprise — one [...]
Facebook improves its ‘live stream’ widget
Facebook has rolled out a few welcome additions to its live stream widget, which allows users to engage in a real-time conversation alongside a live event — usually a live video stream. Probably the biggest complaint of the old widget is it published every chat comment straight to the respective user’s Facebook wall, which can [...]
Media companies invest in social news startup, Ongo
The New York Times Co., Washington Post Co. and Gannett have each invested $4 million in a yet-to-launch news startup called Ongo, described as a “consumer service for reading and sharing digital news and information from multiple publishers.”
Ongo is run by Alex Kazim, who headed up Skype while he worked at eBay. “We are building Ongo to reflect the many ways consumers prefer to read, organize and share digital news,” he said in a rather cryptic press release. The Wall Street Journal reports that Ongo filed for a patent that described itself as a “computer and telecommunications software for use in aggregating and viewing news and syndication feeds.”
So perhaps, a social aggregator that protects its partners’ interests? Publishers are increasingly wary of the Huffington Post, which has moved from an aggregator to more of a news competitor. Ongo says they’ll launch later this year.
Ongo press release follows below…
Startups among Online Journalism Award finalists
The finalists for an Online Journalism Award have been announced, and beyond the usual characters, there are a few journalism startups in the running, among them: VoiceofSanDiego.org (three categories), ProPublica (three), TexasTribune.org (two) and one of our personal favorites, WestSeattleBlog.com, a popular neighborhood news site that’s a finalist in the community collaboration category. “Everyone who’s [...]
AOL continues content push with TechCrunch
What what suspected yesterday became true today — AOL announced it’s acquiring the TechCrunch network of sites for an undisclosed sum. One of the biggest blogs on the web — and a big social media brand — TechCrunch will join AOL’s growing stable of content sites under the “MediaGlow” advertising umbrella: over 70 sites that [...]
Twitter to sell followers in ‘promoted accounts’
Need some Twitter followers? Beginning tomorrow, you can pay for them as part of Twitter’s new promoted accounts, according to a report by AllThingsD. “Twitter will try to help corporations and brands increase their Twitter following by inserting them alongside other Twitter users it suggests in its ‘Who to Follow’ feature,” writes Peter Kafka, who [...]
New Twitter means new backgrounds
The new Twitter has rolled out to a much broader set of users over the last few days, and one thing you’ll notice is less available space in the margins: This is a 1024 pixel-wide display, which is still the most common among web users. The left margin has shrunk considerably, “chopping” the branding on [...]
’60 Minutes’ asks for YouTube questions
The news magazine 60 Minutes has launched a channel on YouTube featuring the segments that air every Sunday night. The new channel also includes a franchise called “Ask 60 Minutes” where users can upload questions on a particular story of the week, like Lara Logan’s story from the Afghanistan/Pakistan border that aired last night. “60 [...]
A summary of the Block by Block summit
The Block by Block Conference in Chicago attracted over 100 local site owners, foundations, academics and others whose livelihoods and/or obsessions revolve around on-line local news operations and how to sustain them.
Because this conference is organized as more of an on-going conversation groups than of podium lectures, I thought it might be useful to put some of those threads and insights into bite sized pieces (click through below for full coverage):
CNN partners with Foursquare for ‘Heathy Eater’ badge
CNN has teamed up with Foursquare to promote a week-long series on healthy eating. Starting on Sunday, if you friend CNN on Foursquare and check in at one of 10,651 farmers markets across the globe, you’ll get a “Healthy Eater” badge. “We’ve seen time and time again how Foursquare can be used to drive people [...]
Watch the ‘Block by Block’ summit live
A great list of community and neighborhood news bloggers are attending the Block by Block summit in Chicago today and tomorrow, and you can watch a live stream right here. You can also follow the discussion on Twitter with the hashtags #cnm2010 and #bxb2010. Lost Remote’s own Polly Kreisman is there and will be filing [...]
Chicago Tribune relaunches TribLocal.com
A brand new TribLocal.com launched overnight, the Chicago Tribune’s hyperlocal site. “So what’s different? First of all, more news about your town from our growing staff of journalists, and all the news we collect from other local sources,” explains Nancy Munson, digital managing editor, in an online tour of the site. The new TribLocal has [...]
Ever wonder who those commenters are?
Just about every news site or blog has them: a handful of frequent commenters who have something to say about almost everything under the sun. So hats off to the Las Vegas Sun which did a story on their prolific commenters, bringing real names and faces to their comment handles. From the story, which profiles [...]
Twitter to roll out analytics… for free
Twitter’s Ross Hoffman announced today that the company will soon launch a much-needed analytics package for free. Reports WebTrends in a blog post: Twitter is planning to release a real time analytics dashboard in Q4. Like their releases of ads and the new UI, this will likely start as a beta release and have a [...]
Journal Register to launch ‘hyperlocal portal’
The Journal Register announced today it’s planning to launch a hyperlocal portal, yet to be named, in the Philadelphia market. The company owns 20 community newspapers and magazines in the greater Philadelphia area, and the new portal will pull together its coverage along with content from its partners. The portal will also surface links to [...]
Seattle Fire Department tweets from active stories
A big three-alarm fire broke out on Monday afternoon in Seattle’s industrial district, and as usual, the Seattle Fire Department’s public information officers responded to the scene. While most PIOs post news on the web after the story, Seattle Fire posted a series of updates on Twitter during the blaze — including news that a [...]
Security flaw makes rounds on Twitter
Update: Twitter says this is now fixed. It announced the fix on a little-known Twitter account instead of its main feed, which to me is a little odd given all the publicity. Earlier: A security flaw that triggers tweets of code when you “mouseover” a link on Twitter.com has affected thousands of users this morning. [...]
