social networking

In March, around the time Facebook launched its Timeline format, Poynter published a piece declaring “Facebook Timeline not yet a friend to news organizations.” The post’s author, Jeff Sonderman, wrote “the flashy visual template adds too little style while removing too much substance.”

The social media team at The Wall Street Journal might beg to disagree. In an innovative piece of social journalism, WSJ reporters and editors are using Facebook’s Timeline tool to cover Facebook’s initial public offering.

The news org has created a new Facebook page, www.facebook.com/GoesPublic, using Timeline to not only chronicle its IPO roadshow but to also tell the history of Facebook.

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Author and journalist Susan Orlean (left) has written two nonfiction pieces that have been turned into films. She’ll discuss her new book, Rin Tin Tin, in Mediabistro’s first online Literary Festival & Workshops starting July 16. Other speakers include Rebecca Skloot, Jason Boog, and Jason Allen Ashlock. Register now.

Much is made about how social media has changed newsrooms, and I’m one of those people who talks a lot about it.

But for all of that talk, there comes a point where you need to decide what action to take, if any.

Newsrooms today are bombarded with lists of best practice, how-to’s and draconian Do This Or You Will Perish blogs and articles.

Do you go with the herd, or do you hold your own and keep moving forward the best way you know how?

I’d really like to hear from some of our readers who are “on the ground” as a part of, or observing, their newsroom’s transformation and/or adoption of social media and online communities.

Not everyone is going to have an easy time of it, but there is certainly opportunity to learn from each other’s experiences.

If you have something to share,  please chime in with a comment below about the horror stories, or the tales of greatness at the news organization you work at.

Every Friday I post links to a few of the blog posts that I read during the week that I found interesting and insightful.

Included in this week’s round-up is discussion about researching how to reach new audiences; why Per Active Member is an important metric;  and best practice for socially-created content.

 

 

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With all the tweets bombarding our Twitter streams, it’s not uncommon to wonder how many people are actually reading your tweets. The answer, according to one new study, may surprise you.

A team of researchers from MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Georgia Institute of Technology recently published an article in the Harvard Business Review that found only 36 percent of tweets are deemed “worth reading.”

Other key findings included that one quarter, or 25 percent, of tweets are not worth reading at all and 39 percent are “just OK.”

“These results suggest that users tolerate a large amount of less-desired content in their feeds,” the researchers wrote in the study.

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Every Friday I post links to a few of the blog posts that I read during the week that I found interesting and insightful.

Included in this week’s round-up is discussion about the shift to the concept of social business; 12 thoughts about the future of social media; the pros and cons of having a strategy for forums; and remaining optimistic about ROI.

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