Best Ways To Share Blog Posts

Social media, texting and Instant Messaging all make Mashable’s list of the Top 20 Ways to Share a Great Blog Post.

Writer Ben Parr points out that there’s a whole host of ways to share blog posts with friends and strangers on the Web, so he's put together a list of Mashable’s 20 favourites.


On the social media side, this includes microblogging site Twitter, social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, and social news sites like Digg and Reddit.

Suggestions also include spreading the word about a good blog post by blogging about it yourself, sharing the link with friends via Google’s RSS reader or sending the link to blogging platforms such as tumblr and posterous.


TwitThat, it installs a bookmarklet into a browser to enable one-click posting to Twitter feed, also merits a mention and so does ping.fm, which sends links to multiple social media accounts at once.

And not forgotten is sharing via texts – using the text share option under articles – or posting the link to friends via Instant Messaging.

Check out the full 20 on Mashable.

How To: Create Local News Mashups

Blogger Adrian Short has published a useful guide to building local news mashups.

Short blogs about hyperlocal news in Stonecot Hill (Sutton) and has created a Twitter feed for the area which pulls together news stories from a range of websites.

This mashup can be used by Short to gather leads for his own blog and also acts as a hyperlocal news distribution tool in its own right.



His step-by-step graphic guide illustrates the way that RSS feeds from news sources - his own blog, the Sutton Guardian and the website of his local MP - are filtered to supply relevant material to the feed.

Short also explains how his Yahoo Pipes mashup creation pulls in content from the local council website without the use of RSS feeds.

And he believes that all websites should pay attention to their mashable-friendly credentials.

“If you run a website, it’s time to start thinking of mashability with the same degree of seriousness as you treat human visitors.

“Your website needs to serve up feeds and APIs so that other programs can connect to your content and deliver it to people in ways and contexts that they find useful.”

[HT - Journalism.co.uk]

How To: Audio Slideshows

Creating successful slideshows is the latest topic in a guide to multimedia journalism from academic Mindy McAdams.

Her tenth blog post in the series – Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency – provides an introduction to the Soundslides program and offers tips and tricks for producing effective content.

According to McAdams, Soundslides “is a simple tool that builds simple audio slideshows.

“That’s all. But that’s actually quite a lot - especially because Soundslides is almost ridiculously simple to use.”

She adds: “There are many examples of elaborate, cinematic Soundslides online, but even a print reporter can combine an interview and some on-the-scene photos to produce a story with both audio and images.”

The Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency series has so far included posts on blogging and RSS feeds, effective photography, recording and editing audio.

Visit McAdams’s Teaching Online Journalism blog for the full post.

Sourcing News Via Social Media

A guide to news-gathering using social media tools has been published by blogger and academic Paul Bradshaw.

Forming part of Bradshaw’s undergraduate journalism lecture series, the presentation also acts as a useful introduction to RSS and other social media applications for professional reporters.

Using RSS and social media to find news

View more presentations from Paul Bradshaw. (tags: paulbradshaw bcumedia)

Visit the Online Journalism Blog for more of Bradshaw’s digital journalism lectures in the future.

Guide For Multimedia Journalists

The first part in a guide to becoming a multimedia journalist has been published by academic Mindy McAdams.

Writing on her Teaching Online Journalism blog, McAdams notes that the guide is likely to comprise about 15 parts and is aimed at “journalists who are ready to learn how to transform themselves into multimedia journalists”.

In part one, McAdams looks at blogs and RSS and suggests that would-be multimedia reporters read a selection of blogs rather than just those concentrating on journalism.

Her recommendations include Mashable and ReadWriteWeb, to help journalists become more aware of broader changes in the digital media industry.

McAdams also strongly recommends setting up an RSS feed as an alternative to internet browser bookmarks.

She writes: “It’s like your customised Page One, ready for you on any computer with Internet access, at home or at work, and even on your phone.

“It’s better than an aggregate of all the wire services - because YOU set it up to bring you what YOU want.”

Visit Teaching Online Journalism for the full post and a video introduction to Google Reader.

How To Track Blog Comments

Tracking comments on your blog and your own comments on other blogs is the subject of a post by journalist and academic Julie Starr.

Starr reviews two software services which allow the blogger and the poster to keep up to date with conversations they’re involved in around the Web.

On her blog she discusses Backtype, a service which enables users to track their own comments and to follow others on the Web through their comments.

Backtype users can receive RSS feeds of comments mentioning search terms selected by them.

Starr, who worked with the Telegraph Media Group on its multimedia newsroom, also reviews Disqus.

This service sends emails to bloggers when a comment is placed on their own blog and can help with quick moderation and spam filtering.

Visit The Evolving Newsroom for more details.

Football Banter Platform Launched

Football writer Rick Waghorn has launched his new social media initiative - Backchat.

The founder of myfootballwriter.com unveiled the “rolling conversation feed” earlier this month on his website dedicated to Norwich City FC.

Funded by Channel 4’s digital innovation fund (4IP), Backchat is using microblogging platforms to host conversations among football fans and journalists.

Users are encouraged to post text messages to specific channels on Twitter and Jaiku and the conversation can then be followed via these two sites or via the automatically updated feed on myfootballwriter.



Writing on his blog, Waghorn says of the project: “It is this idea of media being these ‘camp-fire communities’; places of warmth and welcome; and decent chatter… with the journalist merely there to throw more logs onto the fire; to pass round the mulled wine and the mince pies as the conversation ebbs and flows around him or her.”

And since the feed’s opening day – during the derby fixture between Norwich City and Ipswich Town – Waghorn has reflected on the possible benefits of this conversation.

“Backchat is not just a ‘social media’ tool. It is very much an old media tool in terms of its ability to deliver/publish news instantly.

“Team news was the classic; in my hand some 45 minutes before kick-off; there you go, two ‘newsy’ type tweets slapped onto the site as others are still phoning teams over to the copy-takers…”

He concluded: “That’s Twitter/jaiku/backchat as a tool for the journalist, not the community; a breaking news device par excellence.”

Backchat is the first project to launch from the 4 Innovation for the Public fund, which aims to “deliver publicly valuable content and services on digital media platforms with significant impact and in sustainable ways.”

[HT - The Digital Content Blog.]

Regional Press & RSS Feeds

The RSS offerings of the UK’s regional press are the focus of a study series from blogger Martin Belam.

Internet consultant Belam has compared the type and range of RSS feeds provided by the websites of 20 leading regional newspapers.

Part One examines syndication services from ten of these titles – including the Belfast Telegraph, Liverpool Echo and Manchester Evening News – with a summary of what’s available.

In Part Two Belam looks at a further ten websites – including the Yorkshire Evening Post and the Birmingham Mail – and provides a table showing the number of feeds, the content displayed, and whether they include images or adverts.

Belam also considers the popularity of the feeds on offer by charting the current number of subscribers via Google Reader.

Check out the series on Belam’s currybetdotnet blog.

Newspaper YouTube Activity Mapped

Blogger Andy Dickinson has produced a map showing the UK newspapers currently using YouTube.

Created using a combination of Google tools and Yahoo Pipes, the map displays the national and regional newspapers which have established channels on the video-sharing website.

It also contains links to the relevant YouTube pages and enables visitors to input their own newspaper and its corresponding channel.



The map was inspired by a similar creation from blogger Mark Luckie which displays the US newspapers using YouTube.

Event Coverage Secret – ‘Train & Train Again’

A digital editor claims the secret to successful events coverage online is training, with lots of preparation and practice thrown in for good measure.

Mike Noe from the Rocky Mountain News says web reports from this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Denver were effective because staff were well trained and well prepared.



Writing on Online Journalism Review, Noe notes that planning started last year when the newspaper bought mobile phones for several journalists so they could shoot video and take pictures for the website.

Then in spring 2008 the News began holding training sessions for its journalists filing short news updates to the website.

“By the time the convention rolled around, everyone in the newsroom - including editors and the copy desk - had been trained,” says Noe.

He adds: “For more substantive news accounts, we trained our staff to file directly into the Ellington system using laptops with air cards.”

Staff were also given time to become accustomed to using the microblogging tool Twitter after the News decided that would be the tool of choice for posting updates.

“Our first attempts at Twitter were rough,” admits Noe, adding that the key is to “train, practice and train again”.

He also advises newspapers to ensure journalists and photographers are familiar with the technology before the event.

“We picked events leading up to the convention to get them used to the phones, cameras or laptops they would be using.

“You want technology to be second-nature when the big event begins.”

SPOTLIGHT – Social Bookmarking II

Following on from last week’s introduction to the world of social bookmarking, this SPOTLIGHT post will be examining how it relates to journalism.

What advantages does it present to journalists? And what possible dangers could be lurking?

These are the issues we’ll be looking at in this post, and we’ll discuss the ways that some mainstream sites are dipping their toes in the waters of social bookmarking.

We’ll also have a list of the ten most popular social bookmarking sites linked to by the UK’s mainstream media.

And at the end will be a list of useful places to visit if you want to find out more about this dynamic and fast-changing online activity.



Bookmarking The News

The early years of social bookmarking have already been marked by innovation and invention as new service providers pop up to the surface like bubbles in a glass of champagne.

And among these are the sites dedicated to the collecting and sharing of online news content links – such as Digg, Reddit and NewsVine.

So do these websites – and their counterparts such as Delicious and StumbleUpon – present journalists with an opportunity or a problem?

Freelance journalist, blogger and social bookmarking superfan David Cohn is firmly in support of the former.

“I think ignoring it is like shooting ourselves in the foot,” is his take on whether journalists should be getting involved in social news sites.

While academic and blogger Paul Bradshaw stated that social bookmarking holds “enormous potential” for reporters.

So here’s an introduction to just a few of the ways that social bookmarking could aid journalists and media groups with the gathering, production and distribution of news.

The Benefits Of Bookmarking

NEWS-GATHERING

Generate Story Leads

According to Cohn, social news websites are a good source of stories if journalists are prepared to dig (excuse pun) for them.

“Often there are great ideas that stay at the bottom because they were presented poorly. Journalists have the time to take those ideas and polish them up.”

While Bradshaw notes that the use of tagging on social bookmarking site Delicious can help reporters to “spot leads or information you would otherwise have missed”.

For example, any member of Delicious can look up a particular theme or topic and see all the page links saved by other users.

Grow Contact Book

Most social bookmarking sites enable you to find people who are prolific collectors of the same content as you.

For example, the Conversation Tracker on NewsVine allows members to follow comment threads of their peers while users can “make friends” on Reddit, create a network of like-minded people on Delicious and receive notice of Diggers Like You on Digg.

As Beat Blogging editor Patrick Thornton puts it: “Social bookmarking is a way to find experts in specific fields.”

Thornton also notes that these contacts don’t always have to come from outside the news world – they could be fellow journalists.

He points to new networking/bookmarking hybrid site Publish2 as a platform that could help local reporters covering a particular beat share sources and information with a journalist from a different location.

Create Extra Content

It’s becoming an increasingly common practice for bloggers to automatically publish their Delicious links on their own pages.



Blogger Martin Belam writes: “Publishing daily lists of links in this way gives a blogger an opportunity to ‘micro-blog’ about items they’ve read but haven’t wanted to or had the time to write a full-length post about, and to add another regular stream of content to their blog.”



NEWS PRODUCTION

Crowdsourcing Research

Social bookmarking websites can also be used during the writing process as they can help point the way towards relevant articles for information.

For example, in writing this blog post about social bookmarking I searched through the most popular articles on Delicious tagged under “social” and “bookmarking” to find useful examples and background material.

NEWS DISTRIBUTION

Draw More Traffic

Just taking Digg as an example, the site passed the milestone for one million registered users back in 2007 and could have almost tripled that figure this year according to one estimate.

So any website which gets its articles on the hallowed pixels of the Digg front page can usually expect a pretty significant increase in traffic.

One newspaper putting this to the test has been the Chicago Tribune, which has created the character of Colonel Tribune to be its representative on social media sites including Digg, Twitter and Facebook.

According to one of its media coordinators, it was the social bookmarking sites that proved to be the most successful of the social media platforms for drawing traffic to the Tribune online.

These kinds of strategies could soon be emulated by news groups in the UK after it was reported that Digg, which tends to lean towards North American news, has plans to launch localised versions early next year.

Attract New Eyeballs

If there’s one demographic grouping that you could say has embraced social bookmarking it’d be the young (see this Hitwise study from 2006 on Delicious).

So social bookmarking websites offer regional news providers an effective way to put their content in front of people who may not visit their neighbourhood news website or read their local newspaper.

POST-PRODUCTION

Show Your Sources

Social bookmarking is also a way to open up the news production process to the audience by sharing links to source material.

For example, Bradshaw’s model for the modern newsroom includes social bookmarking in its list of “Five Ws and a H that should come after every news story”.

Feedback

Most social bookmarking sites allow their users to submit comments on stories and therefore provide journalists with another platform for interacting with the audience and ascertaining their opinions.

Putting This Into Practice

If you want to know how to start putting some of these ideas into practice, this excellent slideshow produced for Journalism.co.uk has some practical tips for journalists using Delicious and Furl.

Journalists and the Social Web 2

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: journalists delicious)

The Downsides Of Bookmarking

Finding What You Want

Social bookmarking websites are folksonomies so there are no hard and fast rules for tagging content and giving names and terms to things.

This means that journalists using sites for research may miss out on articles with unexpected tags or ones with spelling mistakes and so on.

Spammers can also make it hard for users to find what they’re looking for as they could deliberately mislabel content to appear in popular searches.

Cliques Rule

This is an allegation levelled particularly at Digg, where bloggers in the past suggested that a relatively small group of contributors were responsible for submitting a significant share of the front page stories (this Mashable story has details).

It means that in some instances it can be difficult for newcomers and those without an extensive social bookmarking network to get their stories where they can be noticed.

How Wise Are Crowds?

The voting systems on social bookmarking rely at least partially on the actions of its users to help good content float to the top and let poor content sink to the bottom.

However, some say the crowds cannot always be trusted to make the wisest choices and this Read Write Web story has an example of misinformation and herd behaviour in action.

Overloaded and Out-ranked

This occurs when a website’s article appears on the main page of one of the big bookmarking sites and the subsequent traffic influx results in some kind of technical failure.

Whether it’s the Slashdot Effect, the Digg Effect or you’ve been Farked or Drudged – the end result is the same.

Here’s one blogger’s account of their day of mixed fortunes after one of their pieces made the Digg front page.

Meanwhile another blogger tells of his Digg front page experience and points out another potential downside is the fact that the Digg link page then out-ranked his own blog post in a Google search for a certain period.

More...

If you want to know more about what some see as the potential pitfalls of social bookmarking check out this 2007 blog post entitled “Top Ten Reasons Bloggers Should Avoid Social Bookmarking”.


Mainstream Media & Social Bookmarking: Who's Linking Who?

The majority of mainstream news websites in the UK now feature some sort of bookmarking options, encouraging users to share content in the wider world of the Web.



But which bookmarking sites enjoy seeing their little logos adorning the most Share This boxes?

To get some insight into the most popular bookmarking tools I did a quick data collection exercise looking at the share buttons available on 20 UK news websites.

Of course, this is by no means a definite picture of the current situation in the UK but it provides an interesting peek into some possible trends.

With the regional news websites, publishers seem to have installed a generic selection for all their sites so I looked at examples from nine of the 20 biggest groups and also gathered information on 11 national online newspapers.

Ranked according to the percentage of the 20 sites including it among their share icons, here’s the Top Ten Most Popular Social Bookmarking websites:

Digg - 100%
Delicious - 95%
Reddit - 85%
Facebook - 75%
StumbleUpon - 65%
NewsVine - 50%
Fark - 35%
Yahoo! My Web - 30%
Google Bookmarks - 25%
MySpace - 20%

(The Nationals: Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Record, Daily Star, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Mirror, The Sun, The Telegraph, and The Times.)

(The Regional Groups: Archant, CN Group, Guardian Media Group, Iliffe News & Media, Johnston Press, Midland News Association, Newsquest, Northcliffe, and Trinity Mirror.)

Interestingly, from the ones I looked at only two websites – Express.co.uk and Mirror.co.uk - have the Add This widget function which posts content to over 30 bookmarking sites simultaneously.

(I'm working on a fuller version of this research with results on 15 national news websites and the 20 biggest regional publishers' sites and will make it available soon.)

If you want to compare these results with trends in the US, this Poynter Online article from Ellyn Angelotti has some interesting data on the social bookmarking situation stateside.

While the effectiveness of these social media options has been put to the test recently by Belam.

Belam monitored social bookmarking sites to see how many articles from online newspapers and broadcasters were being featured on them.

And his results for the Metro, local London news sites and ThisisPlymouth.co.uk (looking at Fark only) can be viewed on his blog.

Plus, Belam looked into the help and advice which mainstream media sites offer to users with regards to the often bewildering array of colourful logos.

Internal Social Bookmarking

To finish up, we’re going to take a quick look at a fairly rare phenomenon but one which may become more widespread in the future – that of in-house social bookmarking systems.


For example, The Guardian has a clippings file option which lets registered users not only collect and store articles, but also share them with other members.

According to The Guardian: “Your clippings are publically available at a web page personalised with your username so that you can access them without signing in.

“Anyone can see your clippings so you can send the link to your friends and let them know what you’re reading.”

Each clippings file also has a webfeed so users can receive their own saved stories via RSS or sign up to get a feed of someone else’s, including a Guardian journalist.

While earlier this year the New York Times launched its TimesPeople service, which acts as a social bookmarking meets social networking service for its registered users.



According to the NYT: “TimesPeople is a great way to discover things on NYTimes.com that you might not otherwise have found and to share your discoveries with people you know and trust.”


Resources

If this hasn’t satiated your appetite for knowledge about social bookmarking, there are plenty of resources on the Web.

Dosh Dosh has a good introduction to over 40 social bookmarking sites with a screen grab of each.

Meanwhile, eBizMBA has an up-to-date chart of the 30 most popular ones measured by criteria such as inbound links, Google page rankings and traffic data.

And Wikipedia has a list of various social software sites with links to their home pages.

In terms of practical tips for utilising social bookmarking services, Poynter has a good guide to Delicious for beginners.

And this slideshow from web developer Stuart Marsh is an introductory guide to building traffic by using social bookmarking tools.

Pro Blogger has a post from 2006 with ten tips which have stood the test of time for encouraging a “Digg culture” for your site.

While Cohn’s Columbia Journalism Review article has some good advice for becoming an effective Digger.

Finally, if you want to share your thoughts about social bookmarking and its value for journalists, Cohn has created a social network group for just those kinds of discussions.


So that’s it for this week’s SPOTLIGHT post. As usual, do get in touch if you have any examples of innovation you’d like to share or any topics you would like to see covered in future posts.


[Pictures from top: eConsultant; Martin Belam.]

SPOTLIGHT – SOCIAL BOOKMARKING I

Welcome to the latest SPOTLIGHT post where we’ll be looking at the world of social bookmarking.

First up will be some definitions of this positively infant topic and then we’ll provide an overview of the current crop of social bookmarking sites and cast a glance at their history and development.

In Part II, we’ll see what all this means for journalists and how they can incorporate social bookmarking applications into their ever-expanding digital toolkits.

We’ll also examine how some mainstream media sites have started to utilise social bookmarking and check out some examples of innovation.

And we’ll finish up with a list of resources for anyone who wants to investigate this area further.


What Is Social Bookmarking?

According to Poynter’s interactivity editor Ellyn Angelotti, social bookmarking websites can be seen as the “virtual refrigerators” of the Web.

“Clipping articles from the newspaper and posting them on the refrigerator just doesn’t cut it anymore. Now social bookmarking sites serve as virtual refrigerators, giving users an unlimited number of magnets and much more surface area.”

This popular analogy captures the essence of social bookmarking – these are links that users can share with friends, groups or even the rest of the world.

So they work like browser bookmarks (such as Internet Explorer’s Favourites) in terms of enabling people to store and collect webpages and content of interest to them, but go a stage further by allowing these collections to be made public.

As usual, Common Craft has come up with an excellent video to show the basics:




Social Bookmarking – A Brief History

The term social bookmarking was coined by probably the best known bookmarking site, Delicious.

Launched in 2003, Delicious allows users to install browser buttons (known as bookmarklets) which make storing and sharing pages easy.

Initially it was used by people to save the URLs of static webpages they frequently visited or of articles of particular interest.

Fast forward a year or so and along came Digg, heralding two major changes for social bookmarking – a voting/rating system and an emphasis on articles with a temporal dimension.

Digg wasn’t alone for long and this trickle of social news sites soon resembled a flood, with each new site proclaiming its own killer features.

Hundreds of social news bookmarking sites now exist, each offering users a place to store, share and rate content and giving news providers a new place to find readers.

Described as “an outgrowth of social bookmarking” by freelance digital journalist David Cohn, the social news media has become a crucial sub-genre of bookmarking.

Most mainstream media sites have recognised this fact and are now getting in on the act, providing buttons at the end of articles encouraging readers to recommend it to one or all of the various bookmarking service providers.



So who are these providers? And what exactly do they provide?

Some You May Know

There are so many social bookmarking websites that it’s impossible to provide an overview of them all here so we’ve picked out some of the most common to mainstream users in the UK.

We’ve also thrown in a few lesser known ones at the end for good measure.


Delicious

Self proclaimed as the “biggest collection of bookmarks in the universe”, Delicious is probably the best known social bookmarking site and also included as a share option on the vast majority of UK online newspapers.

Delicious allows Web users to share and save content and use their own tags to organise links, which can be shared via networks or kept private.

Visitors can also search all links by tags to find relevant material – for example you can search Delicious for all items to which users assigned social bookmarking tags.

Incidentally, it features as the only social bookmarking application in this year’s list of essential online tools for online journalists from lecturer and blogger Alfred Hermida.


Digg

Along with Delicious, this is the most popular bookmarking site among the UK digital media’s article share icons.

Members submit stories for digging and can help rank content by the digg or bury options.

Submissions which hit the front page reward the user with community ranking points, and reward the source with an influx of Digg traffic.

Cohn wrote this article for the Columbia Journalism Review explaining the appeal of Digg from the point of view of a community user and a news organisation.

And this JP Digital Digest post from earlier this year shows how Digg has now entered the news creation process too.


StumbleUpon

Another permanent fixture on many newspaper’s share buttons, StumbleUpon is a recommendation engine enabling users to endorse content they like and find communities of interest.

This Venture Beat article has some useful information on how it works for anyone interested in the algorithms and human filtering processes used by bookmarking sites.


Reddit

Another mainstay on share options, the social news site Reddit awards so-called karma points to trusted posters and also recommends articles of interest.


Facebook

Yes, it may be a social networking site but as long ago as 2006 Facebook entered the social bookmarking arena.

Its “share on Facebook” icon appears on hundreds of mainstream news websites and allows Facebook members to post text, photos and video to their profile pages.


NewsVine

More common in the US, NewsVine is owned by MSNBC and is a citizen journalism website as well as a bookmarking service.

Users can vote for articles and can also create same interest groups which can be public or private.

[Appears as a share option on regional sites owned by Trinity Mirror, Guardian Media Group and on national websites including DailyMail.co.uk, Guardian.co.uk, Telegraph.co.uk and Mirror.co.uk.]

And Some You May Not Know…


Furl

Standing for File Uniform Resource Locators, Furl is more of a general social bookmarking site with the usual rating and sharing options.

It also provides users with their own file space to save pages and clippings which they may have annotated themselves.

[Appears as a share icon on regional sites owned by Newsquest and on Mirror.co.uk.]

Fark

Described as the snarky side of social bookmarking, Fark takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the news with tags such as Dumbass, Strange, Stupid, and Asinine.

It’s often the destination for the weird and the photoshopped and features as a share button on TimesOnline, DailyMail.co.uk, Mirror.co.uk and Telegraph.co.uk.

Tip’d

One of the new faces on the bookmarking scene, Tip’d.com concentrates on financial news and investment tips.

Like Digg, members rate articles by tipping it and the most popular make it to the homepage.

NewsTrust

The founding principle of NewsTrust is to promote articles which display “quality journalism”, so members are asked to rate articles against criteria such as sourcing and accuracy.

Add This

Websites can include the Add This widget on their site to enable users to click just one button and send content to a multitude of social bookmarking sites.



It’s not yet featured on many UK sites but one of the few that does have the widget is Mirror.co.uk.

Want To Know More?

Squidoo has this list featuring over 100 social bookmarking and networking websites for you to explore at your leisure.

While journalists may find Cohn’s guide to bookmarking sites a useful resource as he explains their nature through suggesting what print publication it would be (e.g. NewsTrust would be the New York Times etc).

And this Dosh Dosh article provides a useful introduction to social news sites and has some handy tips on how to find the relevant one for your needs and how to become an effective participant.


End Of Part One

So that’s it for Part I of this SPOTLIGHT post. Next week’s sequel will look at how journalists in mainstream media are engaging (or not) with social bookmarking tools, the pros and cons of doing so and some examples of innovation in this field.

In the meantime, please get in touch if you know of any innovative ways that media sites are using social bookmarking sites or if you have any other comments.

Until next time…

Yahoo Pipes: Tips For Journalists

Using Yahoo Pipes can help journalists enhance their output and forge links with their communities.

That’s the view outlined by Amy Gahran in her recent blog post on Poynter Online where she provides some tips on creating pipes and suggests how they are relevant to reporters.

First up – what exactly is Yahoo Pipes? According to Yahoo it’s “a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web”.

In other words, it enables users to remix their RSS feeds, combining them and filtering them to create a unique feed that can then be shared with the world.

And here are some of Gahran’s tips for journalists looking to build their own pipes:

1 – Get To Know Your Feeds

“If you don’t know what feeds are, you’ll need to learn the bare basics - especially which kinds of sites or services offer feeds.”

2 – Be Prepared To Revise

“Don’t expect your Yahoo Pipe to work perfectly the first time you create it.

“Its initial results will probably miss some stuff you want, include some stuff you don’t want, and include some duplicate content.”

Gahran also advises checking a pipe every now and then to ensure all the correct feeds are still coming through.

3 – Be Imaginative

“You can use a pipe’s output to feed interactive maps, special Web pages, widgets, information graphics, and more that can appear anywhere.”

She adds: “As you start experimenting with Yahoo Pipes, sit down with designers and Web developers to discuss possibilities for turning your pipe into something compelling or fun.”

4 – Public or Private?

Creators can elect to publish their pipe so anyone can clone it and amend for their own uses, but Gahran points out that you can also decide not to publish and share your pipe with a select few by giving out its URL.

She concludes: “Learning how to use Yahoo Pipes is one relatively easy-to-learn skill that can enhance your journalism, strengthen ties with communities of geography or interest, and help you find or keep a job.”

If you want to know more about Yahoo Pipes and see some celebrated examples, have a look at this article on Read Write Web entitled The Ultimate Yahoo Pipes Creations List.

‘6 Ways For Newspaper Sites To Attract Traffic’

How to make a smooth transition from print to online is the focus of a recent blog post from Mark Potts.

The new media consultant says part of the problem is quite simply the poor standard of many newspaper websites

“What should newspaper websites be doing to break out of the box they’re in and get traffic and revenue moving in the right direction again?”

In answer to this question, Potts has put together some quick and easy suggestions on how newspapers can improve their digital services.

Here are some of the highlights from his post:

1 – Keep It Simple

“Knock half the links off your home page. Then go back and knock off half of what’s left.”

He adds: “And don’t forget to put some of that simplified home page navigation on every page - unlike printed newspapers, few readers enter websites through the front door.”

2 – Nail The Niche Market

“Build strong niche products - possibly as separate sites with their own brands - to go after targeted audiences and advertisers.”

3 – Don’t Stop Moving

“Web-savvy companies like Google or Apple or Facebook or Yelp think nothing of jumping into smart new technologies and ways of producing and displaying information.”

4 – Build Links

“Use your site to create the best possible guide to what’s going on in your market, regardless of sources.”

Potts adds: “Make it essential that your readers come to your site first to find out what’s going on around them.”

5 – Spread The Word

“Do content-sharing deals anywhere you can - with competitors, social networks, blogs, aggregators, whatever.

“Put your content in front of as many eyeballs as possible and use it to drive business back to your site and your advertisers.”

6 – Find The Audience

“Deliver your Web content any way you can: e-newsletters, RSS, Facebook apps, Twitter, whatever. Get it out there (and be sure to include ads!).”

To read Patching The Leaking Lifeboat in full, visit Potts’s Recovering Journalist blog.

Telegraph Begins Interactive Online Novel

Readers could have a say in the outcome of a new novel being serialised online by The Telegraph.

Each new chapter of Corduroy Mansions by Alexander McCall Smith will be available exclusively every weekday on Telegraph.co.uk for the next 20 weeks.



The text version of the new serial novel can be accessed on the website, via email updates or through an RSS feed.

Plus an audio version of each chapter will be uploaded every day and available as a daily podcast via the website or through iTunes.

And readers are being encouraged to get involved by submitting their comments and questions online, where they could be read by the author himself.

McCall Smith, author of the successful No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series of books, explains the interactive nature of the project.

“Readers will also be able to contact me with suggestions as to how the plot should unfold, as at any time in the publication of the novel I shall only be about 20 episodes ahead of the one that is published that day.

“This should make the novel interactive - to some extent at least. I obviously have my own ideas of what will happen, but I shall be open to persuasion.”

If this wasn’t enough to whet the appetites of McCall Smith fans, Telegraph.co.uk also has a writing competition where the winner gets to meet the writer himself, plus the site has online profiles of each character as they appear and a link to a Google Map showing the real-life setting for the imagined mansion.

Further details can be found on Guardian.co.uk and The Editors Weblog.

Must-Have Digital Tools For Journalists

Personalised news applications prove a popular addition to Alfred Hermida’s list of “31 Essential Online Tools for Journalists” for 2008.

The blogger and academic includes no less than six RSS software and online feed readers, including FeedDemon for Windows, NewsFire for Mac operating systems, and Google Reader on the web.

Hermida’s guide also comprises four personalised news page services (such as Netvibes and MyYahoo) and news alerts offerings from Google and Yahoo.

And under the heading of Web 2.0, the former BBC journalist reckons a digital journalism toolkit would not be complete without a social bookmarking website like delicious and online storage services like Wuala and Box.

Hermida, who is programme leader at the University of British Columbia, said of his list of essential tools for 2008: “What is striking is how much these tools have developed in the past year.

“Some fall by the wayside and new ones spring up, such as sites that mine social network sites for personal information.”

The full list is available on Hermida’s reportr.net blog and he welcomes any additions to his 31 essential tools.

Picture: Results Through Training

3 Nationals Launch Revamped Sites

July has been the month of the redesign with three nationals launching new versions of their websites.

First up is the Sun which has brought in a number of navigational changes and introduced its readers to Desktop Keeley, an RSS widget Sun-style.



(See opinions on the new site on Roy Greenslade’s Guardian blog.)

Meanwhile, fellow tabloid the Mirror recently unveiled its new-look website, which has been completed by a Spanish design firm.



Press Gazette reports that among the new features are lists of “Most Popular” stories and similar interactive tools.

Publisher Trinity Mirror states that the website has been created in order to enhance communications between journalists and readers as well as between the users themselves.

Finally, the Telegraph has launched a redesign of its website this month which includes changes to its homepage navigation.



According to the behind-the-scenes report on Journalism.co.uk, the site has also introduced an array of new RSS feeds by topic and section.

Share What You Read At NYT

The New York Times has launched what it terms a “social network for Times readers”.

Users who sign up to the new TimesPeople service can recommend articles, blogs and reviews to other members as well as create their own networks of fellow NYT surfers.

Readers will be given their own profile page where they can view their recent activities and browse their readers’ network.

In addition, the plug-in enables users to share their activities on the NYT site with others and to see what different people are looking at.

Activity pages can also be displayed and accessed as mini-feeds on Facebook profiles and as RSS feeds.

According to the NYT, the new feature “is not a social network like Facebook or MySpace - you won’t have Times friends, and it won’t get you Times dates.

“Instead, you’ll assemble a network of Times readers.”

The NYT continues: “TimesPeople is a great way to discover things on NYTimes.com that you might not otherwise have found and to share your discoveries with people you know and trust.

“It’s also a way to connect with other Times readers whose recommendations interest you.”

Further details on TimesPeople can be found at Journalism.co.uk and on its FAQs page.