Identified by KerryJ, sufferers exhibit intense feelings of alienation after missing out on viral ‘event’, e.g. Twitter Cartoon Day. See also: FOOcamp anxiety.
Wit Anxiety Gloom Syndrome (WAGS)
Identified by Sarah Hartley: “The sufferer feels what they have to add to the world is so humourous it must be shared - but only after every one of the 140 characters has been considered in depth. Stems from a deep-rooted phobia of “comment shame”.”
Community Disconnection Attack
Patient experiences disorientation upon becoming stranded from social media ‘anchors’ such as Facebook groups, Twitter, blog community etc. Triggers include: service outage; power or battery failure; loss of wifi signal.
User Account Phantasm
Patient is haunted by the ghosts of user accounts created but never used, or long since abandoned. Symptoms include random friend invites from imaginary MySpace users; emails from Plaxo; and Pownce files from the ghostly Dave Winer.
There’s been an earthquake in China, and the Twittersphere is alive with it. I’m going to write a post on this and keep adding to it through the next hour or so. Let me know anything interesting you’ve spotted @paulbradshaw
The first interesting point is Tweetburner: its most-clicked links shared on Twitter are almost entirely about the earthquake, and show some interesting uses:
Here is crowdsourcing without the editorial management. How quickly otherwise would a journalist have thought of using Twitterlocal with a Google translation? And how soon before someone improves it so it only pulls tweets with the word ‘earthquake’, or more specific to the region affected? (It also emphasises the need for newspapers and broadcasters to have programmers on the team who could do this quickly) (more…)
Over at Press Gazette you’ll find my latest article on using social bookmarking for journalism - split into three areas: managing cuttings; sourcing information; and publishing. Let me know if you have any personal experiences with bookmarking services - are there better services than Delicious?
I’ve recently been playing with Seesmic once again, having briefly dabbled with an alpha invite a few months ago and stupidly written it off as a vague video blogging platform.
Share advertising and syndication revenue with writers.
The plan worked, except that there wasn’t enough revenue to share. Skoeps cash-flow was in the black, which means that, if investors refused to go forward, growth must have been minimal and could not have offset the initial investment in the near future.(more…)
A third year BA Honours Journalism student studying at Middlesex University and based at the Journalism Centre Harlow College has emailed me the following questions. As always, I make the responses public.
1. What effect do you think the increase in Internet news sites will have on newspapers?
It’s already had an effect – increased competition, increased immediacy and reduced costs. But it’s not just news sites – the internet enables people and organisations to communicate with each other without needing news media to do it for them. That’s a real challenge. (more…)
What should the BBC be doing with its news online? Here’s my call for your contributions. Please help spread the word by embedding this video yourself - and let me know where your video is in the comments.