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New York Times cuts social media editor

Dec 12th, 2010
by ajnewman.
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So The New York Times got rid of its social media editor this week. The Poynter article explains that the NYT no longer felt like it needed a social media editor because social media should be the job of all reporters. Fair point, but then what exactly did the social media editor do?

Gawker took that up when NYT first created the position 1.5 years ago. “New York Times Hiring ‘Social Media Editor’ To …Do Something,” Gawker wrote. Jennifer Preston, who is the only person who held the job, was essentially meant to get the rest of the company using social media in the most brand-building way possible.

When The NYT created the position the company’s internal memo stated:

…the point is that an awful lot of people are finding our work not by coming to our homepage or looking at our newspaper but through alerts and recommendations from their friends and colleagues. So we ought to learn how to reach those people effectively and serve them well. At the same time, more of us are using social networks to find sources, contacts and information.

It was a good and smart move for the time, I think. It’s even more telling that the position is no longer needed. According to Twitaholic, The NYT is the 29th most popular Twitter account. (Can we really expect it to compete with Lady Gaga, Britney Spears or Justin Beiber?)

I don’t know if other newsrooms have or had a Social Media Editor position, but I understand what The NYT did. It does take some work to get reporters on board with realizing that their work can no longer just stop at filing copy. Modern media entities need to be where their readers are, and their readers are on Twitter and Facebook. As silly as her job sounded, Preston’s role in getting the rest of the newsroom on board with how to properly make the most of social media was a great call by The NYT.

The learning curve with social media is pretty fast. I doubt The NYT ever thought this was a permanent position they were creating, but there was a time when it was needed and they addressed it at the time.

OpenLeaks: WikiLeaks, but less terrorist-y

Dec 12th, 2010
by ajnewman.
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Former WikiLeaks members have left the controversial whistleblower website to form OpenLinks, according to Mashable. Instead of gathering information and releasing it willy-nilly to the public, this new site will obtain the documents, then work to connect the releaser of the information with the different organizations that would release it. I guess if a disenfranchised soldier wants to release some attack information, he definitely wants to make sure that only his hometown newspaper gets the scoop.

While I mock, this does seem to be a more agreeable way of doing the whole “Internet watchdog” thing. This way, just like the Pentagon Papers, the newspapers or media outlets, with their lawyers and ombudsmen, can decide responsibly whether the public needs to know it and what the potential ramifications are. OpenLeaks’ stated goal, according to Swedish site DN.se is to remove itself from the political quagmire that WikiLeaks finds itself in because, as DN.se’s source said, none of the newspapers who published the cables have gotten in a lick of trouble.

I know exactly why that is. It’s this funny thing called the First Amendment that doesn’t apply to Swedes.

I Hate the Maccabeats

Dec 8th, 2010
by ajnewman.
2 comments

Ok, the headline was really just catchy and gripping. I have no beef with the Maccabeats from Yeshiva University. The a capella group recently gained fame thanks to their Hanukkah parody of “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz. I wish them only the best in producing more a capella songs, which are the auditory equivalent of cotton candy, sickeningly sweet and all fluff.

What I do hate is the way they were hyped by the media. It’s a group of Jews singing about Hannukkah. Who cares?

I am Jewish. I have no problem with Jews. But I recognize that Jews represent about 1.5% of the population. Nevertheless the video (linked to above) has been written in about in, the last I saw, The New York Times and Washington Post Express, played on the radio and shown on “The Today Show.” The group even gave a live performance of the song on “The Early Show.”

YouTube sensations, unless they are really truly funny and pervade everyday society, should be left in the sphere of blogs. They should never make the jump to traditional news outlets. To quote my Tweet when I found The New York Times article, “Really @nytimes? The Maccabeats? That is news? What have you done? | http://goo.gl/rvBkZ #wtf#allthenewsthatsfittoprintmyass“

Remember the telegraph? Twitter does.

Dec 4th, 2010
by ajnewman.
2 comments

This graphic is absolutely awesome. Poynter’s David Shedden talks about it in his latest post and if you haven’t already, you should stop reading and go check it out. The rest of this post can wait until you’re done being dazzled by how many times people have thought of news ways to connect with one another.

The graphic reminds me of a conversation that I had with a professor in the journalism school. Facebook and social networking websites in general are not a new concept, he was saying. All the Internet has done is made it easier for people to do what they have been doing for years. For example, scrap booking. He made the argument that scrapbooks, like Facebook pages, are just ways that people log their lives. On Facebook, all of our friends can see it at once. With scrapbooks, people used to have to share them with one another. Sure, you had to physically get it from person A to B, but the idea is the same: connecting with other people.

Shedden writes:

I was especially glad to see the timeline include Compuserve, Usenet and BBS systems as early technological pioneers. Although they didn’t call it “social media” at the time, these types of services created the foundation for the online social networks we use today.

Those things were before my time – and probably before the time of anyone reading this blog – but that’s just the point that I like so much about this timeline. We’ve been social networking since before we called it social networking. This graphic by Skloog puts all that history in perspective in a way that is streamlined and easy to digest.

Magazines fall to the iPad

Nov 29th, 2010
by ajnewman.
1 comment

For a while, we have known that the Internet was going to change newspapers. Now, it seems Apple, or, namely, the iPad, will change magazines.

As if he doesn’t already have a finger in every pie, Richard Branson is launching his own iPad magazine.

Poynter reports that Project, developed by Branson’s media company, is expected to launch tomorrow. This coming on the heels of news from News Corp. that the media company will have an iPad only newspaper called Daily slaps into perspective that Apple is changing media as we know.

Perhaps naively, I really did think magazines had a fighting chance. In some way, I still do. Though the gloss and feel of the iPad makes it magazine capable and may replace that “I just like to hold it in my hands” novelty that has helped magazines survive, we’re still talking about $500.

Magazines have always been niche publications, but iPad magazines are the next step: niche for the rich. I’m curious to see how the foreseeable slew of exclusive “tablet media” (there is another iPad magazine,  Nomad Editions, coming later this week) will fare.

Just how many subscribers do they think they’re going to get? And what multimedia features will make these tablet magazines that great? I mean, my favorite thing about magazines is ripping them up and taping them onto my wall.

WikiLeaks Does It Again

Nov 28th, 2010
by ajnewman.
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Earlier today, a bombshell dropped on international diplomacy in the form of another WikiLeaks, um, leak. The leak came from U.S. embassy cables, and contain more than 250,000 dispatches, some of which had been marked “secret.”

The greatest hits from the leak that has Hillary Clinton conducting “frantic damage limitation” this week:

  • Alleged links between the Russian government and organized crime (shocker, I know).
  • Assertions that a member of the British royal family behaved inappropriately.
  • A comparison between Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Adolf Hitler.
  • Allegations of corruption among foreign leaders.
  • Countries named in financing terror groups.
  • Libyan president Moammar Gaddafi is “accompanied everywhere by a ‘voluptuous blonde’ Ukrainian nurse.”

Probably the most important and interesting tidbit from the leaks is the revelation that U.S. diplomats have been instructed by Clinton, and Condoleeza Rice before her, to engage in low-level espionage and collect information on foreign diplomats. They’ve collected information such as military installations, weapons markings, vehicle details of political leaders as well as iris scans, fingerprints and DNA. The most controversial targets of these operations were U.N. leaders.

The question that’s on my mind is “Why?” The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, isn’t American, so he doesn’t have the patriotism and nationalism that all of us inherently feel whether we like it or not. He has no responsibility to the U.S., can’t be convicted of treason, or any of that stuff.

What does he feel, though, that he has to gain from leaking so many documents, essentially throwing world diplomacy into chaos for a little while? WikiLeaks considers itself a “watchdog” website, but somehow I doubt that other countries aren’t guilty of identical tactics. We all know from watching Burn Notice what spying is and how complicated the chain of command can get.

I suppose more information is a good thing, as is the right to free speech, so I don’t feel Assange should be in any legal danger. However, considering the giant leaks coming from the website are all directed at the U.S., if I were him I’d be pretty damn concerned that his name will come up in some embassy cables soon.

Fake Tweets from Indonesia

Nov 26th, 2010
by ajnewman.
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This isn’t the Mike Wise kind of fake Tweet. This is a hacked account results in fake Tweet kind of fake Tweet.

Someone hacked the Twitter of Andi Arief, the disaster management advisor to the President of Indonesia.

What did they send out? A fake tsunami warning. Coming on the heels of a tsunami that killed more than 100 people, the Tweet was no laughing matter.

Arief was quickly able to calm his followers, Tweeting that it was a hacker.

The coverage of the event on Mashable gives the impression that the fake Tweets, while having a quick impact, didn’t change anything. It brings back the semester-long and age-old discussion of the validity of Twitter as a news source and if bloopers like this matter.

I would argue that hacked Twitter accounts don’t actually damage the credibility of the particular user, or the medium as a whole. The modern user understands that the Internet is not fool-proof. While the chance of something false being published on Twitter is larger than the chance of the same thing happening on the New York Times website, users can forgive mistakes. Equally important is that providers can  correct their mistakes quickly.

We’re all glad there isn’t going to be a tsunami in Indonesia, but do we trust Andi Arief any less? I’d say no.

Facebook’s role in the modern-day love story

Nov 19th, 2010
by ajnewman.
1 comment

Seventeen magazine recently released a study revealing the consequences of Facebook on modern dating. The magazine examines the huge role Facebook plays in teenage love life.

According to the study of 10,000 guys and girls between the ages of 16 to 21, Facebook helps teens to make a love connection.

The study concludes that:

“Within one week of meeting a new person, 79 percent of people click ‘friend,’ and after adding a new friend; 60 percent of people stalk their crush’s profile once a day (40 percent check-in on their would-be soul mate several times a day). Moreover, contrary to beliefs that social networking is eroding interpersonal communication, 72 percent of those surveyed said that talking to someone online brings you closer to them IRL.”

Other studies have examined the role of Facebook in break-ups. Samuel Axon from Mashable wrote a feature concluding that Facebook has changed dating for the worse. Twenty-one percent of respondents in a study admitted they would break up with someone by changing their statuses on Facebook.

Seventeen’s study also examined this element. The study reported that 10 percent of people have been dumped over Facebook. After a break up, 27 percent of people change their Facebook connection to their ex (hiding them on the News Feed, unfriending or blocking them). However, 73 percent keep their exes on their friends list.

The study also revealed that girls are more likely to use Facebook as a dating tool than guys. Forty-three percent of girls said they would decide not to date someone based on a Facebook profile compared to 33 percent of guys. Guys are also more willing to keep their relationship statuses private, 17 percent don’t share their status compared with 12 percent of girls. For girls, a status change represents something more. Fifty percent of girls “get a kick out of the status change,” while 24 percent of guys find it unnecessary.

Without a doubt, Facebook has changed the dating scene for teenagers. Facebook allows its users to pick from the following list regarding their relationship status: “single,” “in a relationship,” “engaged,” “married,” “it’s complicated,” “in an open relationship,” “widowed,” “separated” or “divorced.” You can also publicly announce if you are looking for a relationship, dating, networking or friendship on your page. Facebook puts everyone’s business out in cyberspace. Maybe it’s good because it makes it harder to cheat. Maybe it’s bad because it encourages over analyzing and jealously. And, when you’re dumped, it’s now public news.

Regardless, Facebook has changed the ways in which relationships begin and end. It has become a central part of the modern-day love story.

Has Facebook changed your love life? For the better or worse?

Four Paranoids Want to Take Down Facebook

Nov 15th, 2010
by ajnewman.
1 comment

Until last year Facebook knew my name, email, birth date, religion, political views and gender. Facebook also knew that I was single, loved A Clockwork Orange, listened to Tom Waits and read a lot of Tom Wolfe books.

Facebook could use that information in whatever way they wanted or sell it to whomever they wanted without my permission. Ad agencies, statisticians, government agencies, they all could have access to my personal preferences and they interests of any Facebook user if they had the right money. And while I am sure that these groups would not use said information for clandestine activities, no one could really do much to stop it. I mean, hey, we all agreed to the terms and conditions.

This fact freaked out Dan Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomiskiy. So the four created Diaspora, an open-source alternative to Facebook. This site offers the same social networking capabilities of Facebook but the user has to provide the server space. They have to pay for the space but in return the user owns and controls their information.

The site has not really picked up steam and reached critical mass yet, but as there are more and more security breaches and people realize they do not own their information, this user-controlled social-networking site might just catch on.

Facebook is Ugly

Nov 15th, 2010
by ajnewman.
2 comments

Google’s standard home page is a white background, a search box, different places to search in and a button. Craigslist is a list of topics and, when you click on any of these, another list of entries. Neither of these sites has any real thrills.

Therein lies their success. They are sites that serve a direct function: searching. They do not need anything fancy on their site to attract people.

Facebook also lacks pizzazz and—obviously—attracts people to their site. But a new article questions the decision to have so bland a site.

Some web designers claim that Facebook’s page layout is a confusing mix of laidback and cluttered, recognizable and adjustable.

According to the article, the problems with Facebook’s design are numerous.

If tries to ride four horses at the same time. The site tries to be simple, attractive, customizable and consistent.

In doing so it does none of these things well.

Its simplicity is marred by the various windings, awkward boxes and unnecessary lines floating around the page.

It’s dichromatic color scheme and linearity ruins its chances of being fun, exciting and inviting.

The whole point of Facebook is to mimic the friendship experience. Your Facebook page is supposed to reflect your personality. However, because Facebook does not allow users to change the colors or layout of their page, it is like saying, “You can hang up whatever you want… in your cubicle.”

Finally, there is an argument that Facebook does not allow the customization because they want to turn the Facebook page into a brand. By making every page look the same it allows the image of the second most visited website an iconic image. The problem with this is that Facebook was only created 6 years ago but has changed its appearance at least four times. Considering how often it changes, Facebook’s page can hardly be considered consistent enough to be branded.

What these four issues lead to is a site that is awkward and ungainly in its appearance. But, considering 500 million users spend more than 10 billion hours every month looking at the awkward site, who really cares?

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