Kevin: "Picture if you will, a collaborative site that runs on two servers, is managed by four people, and has attracted a third of its target demographic within six months of launch. A site that has had 800,000 posts submitted by its users in its short lifetime and has 16 million pageviews/month – and growing.

This is the story of Stack Overflow, a free question and answer site built by developers for developers that has fostered a strong and committed online community in under one year. How? Easy, according to founder Joel Spolsky; all it takes is an understanding of anthropology and a lot of determination."

Kevin: Wolfram|Alpha: What is it good for?

Kevin: Jim Hopkins I'm a former USA Today newspaper editor and reporter explained why he was shutting down the blog to track his former employer Gannett. He's concerned about his health. He also says that he's suffered from the vitriol of some of the commenters.

Kevin: From the Media Futures Conference in London: "Panellists were agreed on the future for local newspapers. Patrick Barwise, professor of management and marketing at London Business School said: 'Local newspapers won’t come back, the classified advertising model that held them together has changed.'"

Kevin: If you want to know why newspapers in the US are suffering, look no further than the decline in advertising from large department stores. Macy's has halved its advertising spending since 2005. Look in a newspaper from the most of the 20th Century, and you'll see almost full page ads from department stores. No more, and it has left a gaping hole in their budgets.

Kevin: Charlie Beckett writes: "60 000 people sent in material to the BBC during this year’s heavy snowfall in the south of England – yet during the recent heatwave the BBC’s user generated hub only got 60 – why?

Some of the answer is obvious. Snow is more fun to film."

Kevin: A brief overview of a panel discussion at the recent Personal Democracy Forum in the US. "Roz Lemieux (of Fission Strategy) stated that for many organizations, social networks are still an uphill battle. And for those invested, they would be wise to see the social web as a gift economy. Give more than you take and you will see great results."

Kevin: Cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch made the excellent video the "Web is Us/Using Us". He delivered this at the recent Personal Democracy Forum in the US.

Kevin: "ChicagoNow, and a similar initiative also unveiled last month by The Miami Herald, reflects newspapers'continuing quest to redefine themselves as essential information providers, regardless of the medium.
But the sites are also engineered to go beyond traditional commenting and blogging that many newspapers already offer. To that end, they're being constructed as virtual community centers, with tools that permit easy access to popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter."

Kevin: ProPublica's new editor of distributed reporting, Amanda Michel lays out their strategy: "First, we'll coordinate collaborative reporting projects. Second, we're going to make available data and documents hidden from public view and hold them up to public review. Third, we'll create resources that people can use to critically assess what's happening in their towns and cities."

Kevin: Institute’s Ideas Festival in Colorado featured Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth, ABC News’s David Westin, Bloomberg L.P.’s Norman Pearlstine, Time's Josh Tyrangiel and Journalism Online’s Steven Brill. They call agreed that specialisation was going to play a crucial role in the future of journalism. ABC News David Westin said the key to success falls in answering the question, “What can we provide that others can’t?”