Tag Archives: community

Telegraph joins the ‘My’ trend

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My TelegraphShane Richmond can’t wait any longer to shout about the upcoming My Telegraph feature, and who can blame him? The screenshot (left, and more on the Telegraph’s Flickr page) suggests this will far surpass MySun and MyExpress (although they are more ‘social networking’ services a la MySpace), demonstrating a deeper understanding of blogging technology than those services with use of tagging and a folksonomy, a personal ‘blogger network’ and an ‘agreement index’. Richmond elaborates:

“My Telegraph allows any reader to create their own blog, store all the comments they make on other readers’ blogs and save articles to read later. Version one of the site, which you can see below, will be ready to go live soon.

“There are even more features to come in later versions but we’re keeping quiet about those for now.”

Interestingly, Richmond mentions at the end that “My Telegraph is just a piece of a larger site”. Another relaunch?

Virginia Tech: more on that ethics question

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I’m still not entirely comfortable with the way blogs/MySpace have been raided by journalists, despite Tony Harcup’s ‘public domain’ defence in my earlier post. The BBC Manchester blog puts it well:

“I’m told by people with years of experience in news journalism that there is nothing at all unique about dozens, perhaps hundreds, of journalists working the phones, sending emails and doing whatever they can to secure stories from the victims of tragic incidents such as this. Nothing unique, that is, other than the fact that because many of those approaches, including a particularly unfortunate one asking the blogger to “shoot” the journalist an email, are, like the blog itself, published there in public for everyone to see. And guess what, just as some LiveJournal users were upset at the use of the post by the mainstream media, some journalists weren’t too happy when they saw that lots of blogs were now quoting them.

“Onemanandhisdog makes an interesting point about the public yet private nature of LiveJournal posts that, I think, is quite worthy of discussion here. He writes:

“”I can’t help wondering if the nature of Livejournal is partly behind the outrage….the characteristic of Livejournal that triggered the creation of this blog was its community nature. Its system of “friends” and the “friends page” means that most Livejournals are read through Livejournal – it’s for talking to a circle of friends, not to the world at large. Barging into that community and asking for comment feels not unlike barging into a pub and asking somebody for comments.”

“Now sure, journalism has a long and dishonourable tradition of doorstopping the victims of tragedies. But in the digital age, the communities around the victims have voices to express their outrage at the media’s behaviour – and that’s what we’re seeing here.”

“I think it’s a valid point. People can and do use LiveJournal, Myspace, MSN spaces and the dozens of other social networking sites to publish content online. But, for many of them, it’s likely they do so only with the intention of reaching an audience consisting of their friends.”

Express relaunches online, Star to follow

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Express website 19 April 07Journalism.co.uk reports on the relaunch of the Express, with the Daily Star to follow, including:

  • “unique content and an archive which allows readers to search past stories and the community areas of the site.
  • “a string of blogs from its Sunday and Daily journalists.
  • “MYExpress facility that enables users to have their own space on the site. This area can be to personalised by filtering some content, such as weather and horoscopes, and uploading pictures. It will also be possible for users to browse through other users’ profiles.”
  • And “a deal had been done with a video supplier and that video and podcasts would be added to the mix in the coming weeks once the initial launch was completed.”

Sounds pretty good for a Desmond-owned publication (not difficult, admittedly), although in reality it’s a website that looks like it was created by someone who was once told what this web 2.0 thing is all about, but wasn’t really listening. Or, in other words, new media through an old media hack’s eyes.

The blogs are basically opinion columns (no links), I can’t find the “community areas”, and of course there’s no video yet. MYExpress is the most impressive – I can imagine Express readers too dazzled by MySpace social networking away with other Disgusteds, although there’s not much to it apart from a blogging service, personalised homepage and ability to search other profiles. Oh, and the online journalists are ghettoised in a separate team.

Anyway, welcome to the 21st century, Express.

MySpace News? Everyone else is doing it…

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Terry Heaton’s PoMo Blog is saying that MySpace has a news offering planned in the next few months “according to inside sources and the company’s own sales materials”:

  • “MySpace News takes News to a whole new level by dynamically aggregating real-time news and blogs from top sites around the Web
  • “Creates focused, topical news pages that users can interact and engage with throughout their day
  • “MySpace is making the news social, allowing users to:
    Rate and comment on every news item that comes through the system
    Submit stories they think are cool and even author pieces from their MySpace blog
  • “MySpace users previously had to leave the site to find comprehensive news, gossip, sporting news, etc. With MySpace News, we bring the news to them!

It will be interesting to see what MySpace can bring to the idea – it’s already been tried by The Sun (MySun) and, more recently, USAToday (as Heaton explains in his post), but it’s one thing for a news organisation to try social networking; quite another for a social networking company to try news. I’m hoping for intelligent agents that suggest RSS feeds, or automatically subscribe you to your friends’ blog feeds (I’ve never used the MySpace blog but that might persuade me otherwise), or their RSS feeds, in an Amazon ‘people who liked this also like this’ kind of way.

Given the critical mass of MySpace, could this be the tipping point (I hate that phrase) to bring RSS to the mainstream?

UPDATE: Matthew Ingram has posted his take on the announcement, with some interesting questions:

  • It “could give News Corp. lots of ideas about pushing its news content into such an aggregator, giving it priority of some kind, etc.”
  • “Will News Corp. use its MySpace News as a kind of jungle drum, to pick up stories that might be under the radar?” (my view: sadly, I don’t think so, as this assumes that News Corp. sees journalism as a priority, rather than making money)
  • “News Corp. is also trying to get other video content owners to bring their stuff to MySpace.”

USATODAY.com relaunches

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USA TOday April 19 07USATODAY.com has relaunched with, reportedly, more prominent user generated content:

MediaPost reports: “The revamped site, which went live Saturday, enables reader comments on each story and solicits users’ input in the form of photos and movie reviews. USA Today also is aping Digg, the new Netscape and other social news sites that allow readers to determine which stories are most important.”

Editor & Publisher explains: The site has incorporated technology developed by Pluck Corporation to “create a community around the news,” according to a release. Using the new features, users can see other news sources directly on the USA Today site; see others readers’ reactions to stories; recommend content and comments to each other; interact using comments and in public forums, upload digital photographs to the site; write arts and culture reviews of their own; and interact more with the newspaper’s staff.”

There certainly is a lot of UGC there – but the front page would benefit from being slimmed down from the whacking great five pages you have to scroll down (usability expert Jakob Nielsen says three Page Downs should be the maximum) – the best stuff takes two Page Downs to get to – photo galleries, video, blogs, and interactive graphics.

You can also read USA Today’s own blog post on the relaunch.

UPDATE (Apr 16 2007): The relaunch has been quite a success, as IIN reports “a dramatic 380% increase in registrations. Readers are also spending more time per visit on the site.”

Magazines: Web Sites will be about UGC & video

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It’s all about user-driven content and video says MediaWeek of the Magazine Publishers of America conference:

“Marthastewart.com, the umbrella Web site of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, this summer will introduce new ways for audience members to share information with each other, said Susan Lyne, president and CEO, MSLO. And as MSLO looks for growth avenues, it’s looking at community sites, among other acquisitions.

“Dennis Publishing also is embracing user-driven content, though in a different way. Stephen Colvin, president and CEO, who joined Lyne on the panel, said Dennis’ Maxim magazine has in the works MyMaxim.com. Launching in three to four weeks, the new site will let visitors customize the text, images and video they see when they go there

“Executives noted that the Web has become a strong source of new subscriptions and in so doing, helped magazines lower their direct mail costs.

“Case in point is Blueprint, the lifestyle/shopping magazine MSLO launched with a test issue in May 2006, and which will publish bimonthly this year. The magazine derived two-thirds of its subscriptions for its first two issues from the Internet, Lyne said.

DMNews also reports that “155 magazine digital initiatives have been activated” at the conference:

“MPA members who announced digital initiatives included BusinessWeek, which will offer exclusive online content, a mobile edition for PDAs and cell phones, online business school rankings and multiplatform distribution of rich media and video content.

“Conde Nast, who this year will produce an online film festival, user-generated content on Web sites, interactive dating blogs, an online video series, an online radio station, bridal sites with virtual fitting rooms and PDA-enabled editions with mobile sites and text shopping/buying from cell phones. ”

“A section of Magazine Digital Initiatives has been created on the MPA’s Web site at www.magazine.org. It offers complete, detailed lists of new products and platforms for consumer magazines.

“The lists will be updated weekly and feature information with links to press releases and articles where available.”