Another Twitter-clone, but this time, create your microblogging network as one piece of a larger network of microblogging networks. Think: Ning.
-
Archives
Catering to information obsession
Nov 23, ’08
10:03 PM
The moment that launched years of overzealous information consumption, filtering, sharing, and engagement, for me, was seeing Scoble’s feedreader on a screen in 2005. He was subscribed to 1200 feeds.
Since then, he’s shifted his information production and consumption around from stream to stream as necessary to stay at the absolute front of the curve as news breaks. In his case, it’s usually technology news that he’s engaged with, but take the following bits of this blog post to heart if you produce a news site of any size:
“Some of my friends say I’m really stupid to stop spending so much time obsessing over TechMeme and blogging and to be spending so much time on FriendFeed and Twitter.
That might be so. But already my inbound news is more diverse AND faster than TechMeme and my outbound “Likes” and “Comment” feed is pretty damn good cause it includes all sorts of different data types. Quick, how often have you seen a video on TechMeme? I can’t remember the time. But video is a HUGE part of news today and video and photos are huge parts of the experience on FriendFeed. Especially live video. That shows up on FriendFeed, it doesn’t show up on TechMeme. Well, except when YouTube throws a big concert. Then you see the news stories about the concert, but you need to click through articles to see the live video.” [The emphasis is mine.]
Read the whole thing. It will make more sense if you’re familiar with the trends in technology news for the last few years, but you can substitute “traditional newspaper Web site” for TechMeme in a lot of places, as crazy as that sounds, and think about how faster, more personal gatherings of links to news and information (like what you get from the people you follow on Twitter or FriendFeed) are disruptive to that traditional editorial structure.
Sunday morning links: Data, DocumentCloud, and the Obama Bounce for news
Nov 23, ’08
11:37 AM
A few things I haven’t had time yet to dig deeper on, but maybe you will:
- Eric Ulken offers of 10 pieces of advice at OJR, based on his experience building the data desk at the LA Times:
“4. Go off the reservation: No matter how good your IT department is, their priorities are unlikely to be in sync with yours. They’re thinking big-picture product roadmaps with lots of moving pieces. Good luck fitting your database of dog names (oh yes, we did one of those) into their pipeline. Early on, database producer Ben Welsh set up a Django box at projects.latimes.com, where many of the Times’ interactive projects live. There are other great solutions besides Django, including Ruby on Rails (the framework that powers the Times’ articles and topics pages and many of the great data projects produced by The New York Times) and PHP (an inline scripting language so simple even I managed to learn it). Some people (including the L.A. Times, occasionally) are using Caspio to create and host data apps, sans programming. I am not a fan, for reasons Derek Willis sums up much better than I could, but if you have no other options, it’s better than sitting on your hands.”
- Meanwhile, over at the increasingly useful Nieman Journalism Lab, Zach Seward rounds up some of the potential benefits — and minor controversies — built into the New York Times / ProPublica joint Knight News Challenge application:
“To get a sense of DocumentCloud’s potential, take a look at the database of Guantánamo Bay detainees that the Times made public on Nov. 3, when it was accompanied by a 1,500-word story. Each record is linked to relevant government documents that have been made public since ‘enemy combatants’ were first held there in 2002. Pilhofer said the database isn’t using a full-featured version of DocViewer, but it certainly demonstrates the benefit of browsing documents grouped by subject rather than, say, the order in which the Defense Department happened to release them. What’s remarkable about the Gitmo collection, aside from its massive scope, is that the Times has offered up this information at all. As Pilhofer said, ‘It’s not usually in a newsroom’s DNA to release something like that to the public — and not just the public, the competition, too.’”
- And since I stopped compulsively refreshing FiveThirtyEight.com at 11 p.m. EST on Nov. 4th, this link to Nate Silver’s analysis of how major news sites have fared since that moment when I ramped down my political news intake came via the Nieman J-Lab as well. Hard to pull a blockquote out of Nate’s post, but you should click through just to see the numbers. Drudge and HuffPo have definitely seen a post-election bounce, while Fox News, Daily Kos, and Politico are all down.
Rewriting Twitter for web best practices
Nov 22, ’08
3:07 PM
On IdeaLab: The Pitch mashes up journalists, bloggers, and social media types in Seattle
Nov 20, ’08
10:52 PM
Over at IdeaLab, an IM interview with Jason Preston of Eat Sleep Publish about a series of events he’s organizing called “The Pitch.”
The premise? Put together some of the smartest, most engaged, passionate thinkers about the changing media landscape in a room, buy them a few drinks, and let the conversation flow.
Jason:
“And I think that there’s a lot to be gained from putting old school journalists and publishers (good reporting skills, contacts, and they RUN the freaking business) in a room with bloggers and new media types (who might not know the first thing about journalism, but who seem to instinctively *get* the internet).”
Check it out. If in you’re in Seattle, you can RSVP for the Dec. 10 event here.
Everything you know about online news design is wrong?
Nov 20, ’08
8:31 AM
Over at Signal vs. Noise, Jason Fried explains “why the Drudge Report is one of the best designed sites on the Web.”
“The Drudge Report usually leads with a “font size=+7” ALL CAPS headline in Arial. Sometimes it’s italicized. Sometimes, for something big big, he’ll cap it off with the infamous siren.
[snip]
Stories aren’t grouped or organized except probably more interesting ones up top. And that’s it. Your eye darts all over the place looking around for something that looks interesting. The design encourages wandering and random discovery.
The site feels like a chaotic newsroom with the cutting room floor exposed. I think that’s part of the excitement — and good design.”
+++
Drudge, today:
+++
While I’ve never been an obsessive Drudge refresher, I do see the appeal. I’ve been spending a bit more time with the Huffington Post lately, and it’s hard not to notice the parallels on some days, especially as big election news flowed into the top third of the site, when giant headlines were followed up by a very Drudge-esque big block of text full of links to related stories.
+++
HuffPo, today:
+++
Of course, HuffPo has all that dang navigation at the top.
Does anyone use it? Starting to wonder…
Slides from django-nyc on 11/18/2008 @ Irrational Exuberance
Nov 19, ’08
2:53 PM
Really good resource for understanding some of the documentation I’ve been reading recently, including things like local_settings.py. via megan taylor
Slides from django-nyc on 11/18/2008 @ Irrational Exuberance
Knight News Release Workshop | Knight Foundation Communications Portal
Nov 18, ’08
10:19 AM