Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Doubling down on social media: Who’s doing it, and why

The newsmedia industry is at the forefront of putting in place social media strategies across their businesses, and usage of social media varies by news outlet.

Below are three social media creations being discussed this week, along with the reasoning behind the creation of each. Do you think they will work?

1. Google: The search giant's +1 application is the equivalent of Facebooke’s “Like” for search results. According to Google: “Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1's can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.” According to CNet, the +1 button will also “keep a log of your favourite discoveries on Google, and (almost more importantly) use that to customize what sorts of ads you see. It’s also a way for the company to get a better gauge on the quality of content” and more easily separate search results from so-called content farms.

2. Huffington Post: It announced yesterday it has made permanent its “follow features,” with which users can elect to follow news by topic, or follow specific reporters and bloggers. “These days, even the most diligent newsreader can have trouble keeping up. Between newspapers, blogs, apps, RSS, Twitter and Facebook, the options can seem endless. And yet, frustratingly, it's the story we most care about that so often slips through the cracks. That's why HuffPost is now allowing readers to follow topics, reporters and bloggers on the site and across social platforms. Want a tweet every time Arianna blogs? An email when Sam Stein lands a great scoop? Or an update to your Facebook Wall when the latest news from Japan breaks? It's all as simple as the click of a mouse,” explains Rob Fishman, the HuffPo’s social media editor.

3. Al Jazeera: Instead of creating a television show and trying to build a social media community around it, Al Jazeera decided try the opposite, building a 24-hour news show with a 30 minute broadcast component called The Stream, set to begin airing May 2. “The concept of The Stream is actually a web community that has its own daily television show on AJ,” the show’s co-host, Derrick Ashong, told Fast Company. With The Stream, Al Jazeera is pushing further into using social media as a tool to do a job and to find more ways of using citizen journalism – not just to get more viewers and readers for its current content. It’s also a means to engage a new generation of cable “cord cutters” and find a space in the American media market, Fast Company explained.

Image: Wired

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