Lessons from the journalist who burned himself on Twitter
There’s one golden rule of social media for journalists — if you wouldn’t write it in the newspaper or say it on TV, don’t send it out on Twitter. And one journalist who didn’t follow the rule went on CNN over the weekend to offer some advice for others. A week ago, Washington Post sports [...]
Traffic from (most) social sites skyrocketing
Gawker has released a chart that shows how much traffic social sites are sending the blog network, and the numbers are enlightening for news publishers: The first observation is Facebook referrals are way up, which is pretty consistent across the online publishing world these days. Gawker’s numbers from StumbleUpon are rather surprising, and there’s a [...]
Will hyperlocal competition doom newspaper paywalls?
The rapidly-intensifying competition in the local and hyperlocal news space will doom newspapers’ chances to charge for their content, argues Alan Mutter on his blog Newsosaur. This is a fact of life here in Seattle, where hyperlocal and local news efforts grow on trees — I can’t imagine any of the major news sites charging [...]
News stories appearing in Facebook search
It looks like Facebook has added most-liked stories into its on-site search results. This search for the word “Discovery” brought up a TBD.com and WashingtonPost.com story on the Discovery gunman. Clicking on the headline takes you straight to the story. The stories are ranked by “the number of likes and the number of friends who [...]
A busy week for Twitter news events
From the Discovery gunman — which first “broke” on Twitter — to the New Zealand earthquake, it’s been quite the week for Twitter on the news front. The Washington Post wrote a timeline story on how the Discovery story played out on Twitter, and Paul Farhri writes this: “TV can offer live pictures of an [...]
Hyperlocal coupon site LivingSocial expands
LivingSocial, a group-buying coupon site, is expanding its services to three regions of the DC area and four regions of the New York City area. This brings their concept of hyperlocal advertising to a new phase – one that isn’t merely limited to cities but drills down into neighborhoods. The idea is similar to Groupon [...]
The entire universe must have shared this story
Seen in the Facebook module on CNN.com‘s home page this morning: Clearly a bug of some kind. Or a supernatural event, perhaps?
Fwix: ‘We are automating Patch’
While AOL spends mega-millions on rolling out patches of hyperlocal sites across the country, Fwix is debuting a new strategy that focuses on aggregating news and information about places – automatically. “We are automating Patch and building richer places pages and city pages,” CEO Darian Shirazi told TechCrunch. Fwix lets users zoom from cities to [...]
Anti-Google ad running in Times Square
What do you do when you disagree with the privacy policies of one of the largest companies in the world? In the case of Consumer Watchdog, a non-partisan public interest group that runs the website “Inside Google,” you purchase advertising space on a 540-square-foot digital billboard in Times Square. Consumer Watchdog describes its “Do Not Track Me” [...]
Props to TBD for Discovery Channel hostage coverage
Of all the sites I looked at, the nascent TBD.com did the best job of covering the Discovery Channel hostage situation on Wednesday. It was all over the story. But more than that, it put its information into a river of news. That meant constant updates – even a sentence or two – as the [...]
Advertisers pulling out of Times following paywall implementation
There is mounting evidence that putting up a paywall is bad for business. That’s not much of a surprise to most people, but London’s The Times is – for now – sticking with its paywall. The paper implemented the paywall in early July, and traffic has plummeted to 10% of what it was. Unsurprisingly, advertisers [...]
Disappointed by new Apple TV?
I sure am. I woke up yesterday morning excited about the potential announcement of a next generation Apple TV device. Following Apple’s launch event, I was psyched about the addition of front and rear-facing cameras to the iPod Touch, but I was less than thrilled about Apple’s vision for the future of television. As far [...]
New Apple TV features TV show rentals
As expected, Steve Jobs took the wraps off the new $99 Apple TV today as his “one more thing.” Admitting that it’s “never been a huge hit,” Jobs announced that the new unit features TV show rentals from Fox and ABC for 99 cents each — a new development that local TV affiliates are watching [...]
Hyperlocal network Neighbortree raises $120,000
Just one month into the hyperlocal biz, and startup Neighbortree has $120,000 in angel money. The company hopes to build out a network of hyperlocal sites. I should say “hyper-hyperlocal sites,” since the company’s goal is to have sites as micro as neighborhoods and apartment buildings. The company offers its services for free to anyone [...]
Skip-ipedia, pt. 2
As a follow-up to our Monday post on the limits of Wikipedia, please consider the following. This list is compiled by an historian in my area: Below is a list of about 50 articles that have been cataloged as having been deleted without cause from Wikipedia. It also includes some articles that still remain but [...]
