The Archives

06.19.08

NY Times goes social, slighly endorses Firefox over IE Web2.0, new media | (0)
The New York Times has added a social feature to its site called TimesPeople (beta). While not a full-fledged social network, the new feature allows people to create a profile, add friends and share articles. Its most clever ability is its interaction with social-networking behemoth Facebook. Users can connect it with an NYT Facebook application and when articles are tagged, they show up in their FB newsfeed. As the engineer in the video puts it, "this let's people who normally wouldn't be reading the New York Times see and read articles that they might find interesting." Again the NYT does it right. ...

Tagged: new media, social networking, Web2.0
05.06.08

NY Times puts out the call for help on Myanmar cyclone disaster new media, social networking | (0)
With the death toll in Myanmar rising following the cyclone that devastated the area, the NY Times used its blog, 'The Lede', to put out the call for help covering the disaster. They asked for first-hand accounts, photos and even have a submission form for video. Twelve hours later they had vivid descriptions of the devastation and pictures to accentuate those descriptions. Below is an account from Henry Webb, a lawyer from the U.S. that teaches in Vietnam: About 3 a.m., when we were about 40 or 50 miles outside of Yangon, we started seeing the first trees and signs that had ...

Tagged: nytimes, online journalism, social networking
04.30.08

Facebook, in real life journalism, social networking, video | (0)
Disturbingly accurate and very funny. Via British sketch comedy collective Idiots of Ants.

Tagged: social networking, video
04.24.08

Facebook chat makes FB even more useful for journalists social networking, technology | (0)
You may or may not have noticed that social networking site Facebook recently launched its online, real-time chat service. The beauty of it is, much like Gmail chat, it is integrated into your Facebook front end with nothing to install and no changes to make. You can disable it, but it's an opt-out feature rather than an opt-in. Your "buddy list" is populated by your friends as they sign in and out of Facebook. You send them messages just like a third-party chatting client and they respond. Easy as cake (though it is a lie). What can this do for (online) journalists? While ...

Tagged: online journalism, social networking, technology
04.22.08

Let’s Tweet it out fellas (and ladies of course)! journalism, twitter | (0)
Tara Hunt over at HorsePigCow has a great post called Tweeting for Companies 101. Her thoughts: Twitter can be an amazingly powerful platform for connecting to your community as well as driving traffic to the various properties you want people to go. Having an event? Tweet it out! Launched a new bag? Tweet it out! The key to Twitter is the level of listening you do as well as talking. It is definitely supposed to be an interactive program. And, in fact, this is where you build the majority of your Whuffie (aka social capital). The more you interact on Twitter, the ...

Tagged: journalism, social networking, technology, twitter
04.22.08

MSNBC launches Election 2008 MySpace site journalism, technology | (0)
In an effort to tap into that ever volatile youth demographic, MSNBC has launched a MySpace page called Decision 08. Showing their age and how behind the times they are, doesn't MSNBC know that MySpace is sooo yesterday's news. Everyone knows that Facebook is the where it's at with kids today. Though I do have to hand it to them for being able to mask as much as possible that it is, in fact, a MySpace page. It almost looks like a standalone Web site, save for the always brilliant, exclamation point-laden comments at the bottom that are typical of MySpace ...

Tagged: journalism, new media, social networking
04.21.08

What is ‘Passive-Aggressive Newsgathering’? Uncategorized, journalism, media | (0)
Paul Bradshaw over at the Online Journalism Blog has written an excruciatingly long, yet incredibly informative, post about RSS, social media and what he calls 'Passive-Agressive Newsgathering.' In it, he breaks down RSS (syndicated content) and compares and contrasts it to its social networking equivalent. He even broke it down into a diagram: He breaks down each element and what they mean for a journalist. The post is full of links, both outside OJB and within, and is a good primer for those not yet familiar with how all of these new tools can help a journalist. It is also a ...

Tagged: journalism, media, social networking