friesMedia
2.0 solutions for mediaArchive for 2.0
Use Twitterfeed to Automagically Send Paper Content to Twitter
Twitter has been getting a lot of buzz recently as a networked way to send out micro-updates to your network of friends. [What's Twitter? web.aan.org/twitter]
Newspapers like the New York Times have been using Twitter to send updates to their followers on the network, following the 2.0 Mantra of Web Publishing: “Get Your Content Out to Your Audience – Wherever They Are.”
But, no denying it, it can be time-consuming to “tweet” every update to your site.
Enter Twitterfeed.com.
Twitterfeed allows you to submit any RSS feed, and select how often it will send updates to your Twitter account.
Admittedly, papers who publish 100+ articles on a weekly basis won’t find Twitterfeed that useful, as it can only send out 5 updates per refresh cycle. And the automagic-posting means you’ll lose a little flexibility on the formatting side:
I think this service could be a good match for papers who update their content periodically throughout the day, or those seeking a new distribution/publication mechanism for their papers’ blogs.
Of course, Twitter can only drive traffic to your site if you have a network of folks receiving updates.
To see how it works, sign up for an account, and add AAN as your friend at Twitter.com/altweeklies.
[NERD NOTE: Pownce is poised to become the new Twitter; it combines short messages with events and file-sharing. Pownce is currently in beta mode, but once it's open to the public I'll write it up. if you're on it, add me as a friend. ]
Blogger Eliminated Categories; Should You?
I set up a Blogger-powered blog the other day to organize the 50+ responses I received to a roommate-wanted ad. I chose Blogger because – despite my fondness for WordPress, Typepad and Vox – it remains the easiest and cheapest way to set up a limited-use blog.
NERD NOTE: Blogger is blog software, owned by Google. It produces blogs with the URL sampleblog.blogspot.com, so some people mistakenly refer to it as Blogspot. [Wikipedia on Blogger software].
I was surprised to see that Blogger had eliminated categories from the posting field, replacing categories with labels (or tags). A bit of research indicates this shift took place during the 2006 Google takeover.
This is important – a shift from a rigid taxonomy to a looser folksonomy – in arguably the world’s most used blogging software. It also serves as an introduction to the important concepts of tagging and folksonomy – bedrocks of the Web 2.0 movement.
Why is tagging important? Watch this short video Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us
So, what is a taxonomy?
A structured, “print-think” way of organizing content, based upon rigid classifications. [i.e. Movies > Capsule Reviews; News > Economic]. Not only can these categorizations be difficult for online editors to make, but they hinder the readers from finding content they might otherwise be interested in. (For example, a Cat Power DVD review could be filed under either music or movies, potentially obscuring it from readers.)
A folksonomy is an alternative …
Looser, “user-generated” categorizations of content, based on tags and keywords. These categorizations tend to be more free-flowing, and aid in the serendipity of finding content. Tags or keywords can be author-applied (as in the Blogger software), editor-applied, or anyone-applied (as in social bookmarking sites like del.ico.us).
[Wikipedia on folksonomy].
You may be familiar with tagging folksonomies from sites like Flickr, which allow users to browse and search images based on keywords.
Try browsing using tags on AAN’s Flickr account.
So, how do folksonomies and tagging apply to alt websites?
Imagine the alt website of the future. Instead of website categories that correspond to print sections (music, food, arts&entertainment); the website would be organized by keyword content; both editor- and user-applied. When reading a story on recent gay rights legislation; tags like [gayrights family legislation vermont divorce custody gay lesbian alternative children adoption] would offer a user many different options for continuing to read content that interested them. Clicking on ‘gayrights’ would display all stories on the site tagged with that keyword; most of which would be invisible to a reader under the current ‘taxonomy’ organization theme.
Suddenly, dusty website archives would be transformed – into accessible, relevant deep-well evergreen content. How – alternative!
What do you think?
This blog utilizes a modified folksonomy – you’ll see the ‘tag cloud’ labeled Topics to the right of this post. We’re hard at work on a redesign of AltWeeklies.com that will use a modified folksonomy – more on that later.
Do you think folksonomies work for your website? Will print taxonomies continue to be relevant as physical papers downsize and move content to the web? Or is tagging a fad?
News Organizations in the Age of Digital Distribution
It would be a horrific and callous mistake to analyze the actions of the Virginia Tech shooter as the actions of a sane man. My heart goes out to the victims and the families. Cho Seung-Hui was clearly a very disturbed young man; his actions cannot be rationalized.
But the multimedia manifesto – and it’s distribution methods – pose some interesting questions in the age of self publishing.
I can’t claim to have any answers, but I’ve given this matter some thought.
Why did the shooter choose to send his multimedia package via mail to NBC? Why, in the age of easy, digital self-publishing, did he not simply upload his material to YouTube – create a blog on blogger, add his images to Flickr or Photobucket? An individual with the technical ability to create QuickTime movies and burn them to disk would more than likely be able to use YouTube.
If his goal was to spread his message – to be at last and finally understood – why send his manifesto to a news organization that would have no choice but to ethically edit the material that they chose to brand, publish and distribute?
What are the distribution advantages to utilizing an ‘old-school’ method of publishing?
In a discussion with a colleague, I posed these questions. He posed an interesting alternative – perhaps in the age of self-publishing, granting content exclusivity to a traditional news organization creates credibility in the way that self-published content could not.
Building on this idea, I wondered if sending the material directly to a news organization wasn’t a slick manipulation of NBC – which might, under different circumstances, have chosen not to air the material out of sensitivity to the victims. (Granting an exclusive scoop to one organization, as cynical as it may seem, almost inevitably guarantees that they will publish the material.)
Putting all questions of the individual’s motivation aside – what lessons about the role of news organizations in the age of self-publishing can we garner from this horrifically public, tragic story? Does this mean that traditional news organizations will indeed continue to have relevance in a self-publishing environment?
Web 2.0 concept explained in cool music video
Can you define “Web 2.0″? It’s kinda like pornography or irony – you know it when you see it (or when you hear a really bad song that misses the point. How was that ironic? How??).
Fortunately for those of us who have short attention spans, Kansas State Professor Michael Wesch has put together this awesome short flick that explains what Web 2.0 really is about without being dull. In five minutes time, you’ll be able to cogently define Web 2.0. You know, for the next time that’s asked on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us
[via E-Media Tidbits .... via Steven Snedker via Danish Broadcast listserv ... oh, heck, isn't that kinda the point!]
