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Kevin: Dave Weinberger interviews Richard Sambrook of the BBC, a very forward thinking news executive, friend and former colleague. “In this interview, Sambrook focuses not just on the new content coming from the Web but on our new ability to organize con
Author Archives: Kevin Anderson
Newsvine and news as a social object
Thinking back to NMK, Dan Gillmor showed off Newsvine as an example of the transition from the Daily We to the Daily Me. Newsvine user Aine asked me what I thought about the site.
I’ve had an account on Newsvine for more than a year now and visit the site from time to time. I can’t say that I’m a frequent or heavy user. When I first opened the account last year, I found it difficult to understand its purpose. It didn’t have the clarity of sites such as Techmeme, Tailrank, Digg or Reddit, but I’ll be the first to cede that Newsvine was trying to do a lot more than simply recommend and vote on stories.
Thinking back to Jyri of Jaiku’s presentation at NMK, initially I thought the site wasn’t clear enough in giving users visual cues as to what to do. As Jyri said:
Define your verbs that your users perform on the objects.
However, the site has come a long way in the last year. The visual cues are stronger. The navigation and purpose seem clearer, and I’ve been impressed with the community building that the Newsvine team has done. There are few news organisations who really demonstrate the understanding of the outreach necessary to boot-strap a community site. News organisations usually focus on the content and not the community. Community doesn’t come free.
Newsvine isn’t like most news community sites, but it has features that more news sites should adopt. To encourage participation and community, news sites need to highlight the participation to encourage participation.
Another thing that has impressed me about Newsvine is how quickly the site iterates. They are constantly pushing forward new features, and for the most part, the features they have launched are focused on driving participation: The groups, the use of attention data showing what topics are hot and the live updates that make the site seem alive.
I still think that the site might be trying to do too much. I think they could do more with less. I still think that the visual cues might be stronger to guide users through the site. Maybe the site itself needs to clarify its focus a little more, but the site is a unique experiment in news as a social object.
As I said, I’m not a heavy Newsvine user. These are observations more as an observer of the Newsvine community than a member of it. I’d be interested in hearing the experience of others have had with the site.
Technorati Tags: community, journalism, media 2.0
links for 2007-06-24
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Suw: The wonderful Moo are going to be launching stickers soon – neat! But sure this should be the Hot & Stick(er)y Summer Party? I’ll be there…
links for 2007-06-23
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Suw: I actually see a lot of this “new seriousness” as Horst amusingly puts it. The Cult of Personality is a bad, bad thing.
links for 2007-06-22
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Kevin: When PR companies attack. Wow, this is one of the weirdest viral ad campaigns that I’ve ever seen. Sex in the City for condiments.
links for 2007-06-21
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Suw: This looks interesting – going to have to find time to play with this soon.
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Kevin: Ben Hammersley starts new project with the BBC to cover a story using social media. It’s an interesting experiment on what social media can mean for international coverage. I like the openness of it.
links for 2007-06-20
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Suw: Larry moves on from intellectual property to looking at how to fix the endemic ‘corruption’ of politics. Big shift, big challenge, but incredibly important. Good luck, Larry!
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Suw: Joseph Thornley write up notes of the panel session I was in at Enterprise 2.0, and makes me sound very smart. Thank you, Joseph!
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Suw: Out of the frying pan and into the fire?
links for 2007-06-19
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Suw: I am so sad that I missed Hackday – sounds like Tom and the guys put on a really amazing event. Especially impressive to see they arranged a light(ning) show too.
links for 2007-06-18
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Kevin: Clay Shirky responds to Michael Gorman’s critique of Web 2.0. Mr Gorman describes it as “increase in credulity and an associated flight from expertise”. Clay’s position: If the revolution of print was good, why is the web bad?
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Kevin: This is an opportunity for smart newspapers. CNN Exec: “We’re all pretty convinced that news doesn’t break on TV anymore.”
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Kevin: Steve from the Bivings Report flagged up this great piece by Mark on Mediashift about collaboration and radio. Chris Lydon talks about the slow work of developing Radio Open Source. Great post.
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Kevin: Twittown links to a Guardian article about MP Alan Johnson using Twitter and also looks at the broader trend of ‘microblogging’.
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Kevin: Interesting review of recent journalism/citJ books. But the gems are the review of Rob Curley’s methods including how to turn new media features into a workable business plan.
links for 2007-06-14
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Suw: Fabulous post on personal productivity which recommends never scheduling anything, amongst other stuff. Scary but interesting approach.
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Suw: An old essay, but a nice idea. I engage in structured procrastination all the time. In fact, I’m doing it now.