I find this easy to believe! The news content that social media produces is very different that information a reporter would find by doing old school offline research. Blogs as sources are attractive to journalists because:

* Information is easily and quickly located– All you have to do is a Google search

* Blogs give journalists ideas for interesting story angles–there are many bright and articulate people in the blogosphere who are writing about topics they’re passionate and knowledgeable about.

* Blogs can reflect the opinions of locals within the community–Information found on a blog not only tells the journalist what the blogger thinks or has observed, but it also lets him/her know how the community that reads that blog is responding. When you’re doing research on a topic, sometimes the best and most thought provoking information is in the discussion within the comments. Blogs provide information about opinions from the community through the post and through the reaction of the blog’s community.

* Blog content can provide more human, emotional insight into the facts of surrounding a story–There was a time when journalism was just about presenting the “hard, cold facts”, but those times have passed. Not only do we want the facts, but we want to know how the news is impacting the people who are in the midst of it. It’s the human story part of the news that tends to catch our attention.

It’s really interesting to see how mainstream journalism and new media are intersecting. I have been amazed at how often I am contacted by journalists wanting a quote about virtual entreneurism who have found me through my blog on virtual business. I’ve probably been contacted half a dozen times in the last year, and I know I never would have appeared on any journalist’s radar screen if it were not for my blog.

What about you guys–Have any of you had any personal experience with being a “source” for mainstream journalism?

Source: Conversation Agent

That’s what happened today when I was reading the new posts on David Krug’s Twitter account. I followed a link he shared, and was taken to his Pownce account, which basically does the same thing as Twitter as far as I can tell.

Here’s how the Pownce folks describe their product:

Pownce is a way to send stuff to your friends. What kind of stuff? You can send just about anything: music, photos, messages, links, events, and more. You can do it all on our web site, or install our lightweight desktop software that lets you get out of the browser.”

Okay, so it may be slightly different from Twitter, but why would a person need both?

I mean, I know why David needs both (being the lead newser here on SPJ obligates him to live and breathe social apps :-)), but is there any reason why your average person would need both? If you know, please clue me in, because I’m all for a streamlined approached to using social platforms and not using ones that have a lot of overlap.

Your thoughts–do you use both Twitter and Pownce or have you found that one is better than the other?

Especially if you’ve got a huge friends list, you might be plagued by that problem, as is my pal Andy Wibbels, who says:

I have over ninety invites from friends to add little widgets and thingies to my profile. I really don’t want to junk it all up. But I have to click each one separately. That sucks.

He’s got a solution though: Facebook should make it so you can batch delete the app invites. I think that’s pretty smart and definitely would be a value adding feature. What do you think–could anyone else use this as a new feature?

Yeah, that’s right–I bet when you signed up for Digg or any of the other social media joints that you just threw together your profile using minimal brainpower (I did too :-))

Well, Brent Csutoras over at Search Engine Land is preaching about how to create a smart social media profle, and he is totally spot on.

Here are some great digger profile tips, comin’ at ya:

1) Mask or No Mask? When you sign up for Digg, you’ll be asked to create a Username that will be associated with all of your submissions and diggs and comments. Choose it carefully. You can either use your real name (ex. JoeSmith), or create a unique handle that will allow you to be anonymous in all of your activity in Digg (ex. frogmaster).

Brent recommends that if you’re using Digg for marketing, that a wise thing to do would be to create a username that would allow you to be anonymous.

2) Make your user name easy to say and remember. Don’t try to get all fancy and come up with a name that no one can pronounce or recognize. Choose something catchy, like “MrBabyMan” (now that one is hard to forget! )

3) Choose an avatar that works in all sizes. I’ve made this mistake before–a photo that looks good blown up big is not necessarily recognizable in tiny size. On Digg, depending on the page you’re viewing the avatar will be one of 3 sizes. Be sure that the avatar photo you choose looks good in all of the sizes. You get extra bonus points if your avatar is reminiscent of your user name.

4) Be mindful of what you’re linking to–variety is important. Many people use Digg and other social bookmarking sites for marketing purposes, but you’re not really supposed to only promote your own and your friends own stuff. You’ve gotta mix it up and share a variety of links from a variety of sites or else your profile will lose some of it’s power, since it may look like you’re using it for personal gain.

I learned this the hard way–when I first started using Digg, the number of blogs I was reading was not that many. Basically I was just reading my friends blogs. I was showing a friend of mine that I had added his post to Digg, and when he looked at my list of links he said, “Uh, you might want to fluff your links out a little bit.” So, to avoid a false impression don’t link to the same sites over and over and don’t submit your own stuff. Just share the post with some friends and if they like it they’ll Digg it.

5) Participate on a regular basis. Kind of scary, but Digg is watching ya and keeping track of everything you do and when. Brent says:

Digg sorts friends by recent activity and tracks the last time you logged into your account. All your recent submissions, diggs, and comments are also logged in the recent activity section of your profile. Make sure that you log in to your account as much as possible and perform various actions to keep your account looking fresh and active.

6) Your stats will show if you’d be a good friend. Yup, your user stats are on display for everyone to see. People who look at your profile can see how many articles you’ve submitted, how many stories you dugg within the last 30 days, what categories those stories were in, and the number of total diggs your account has. From looking at your stats, people can judge how good a friend you’d be or if you’re only in it for yourself. If your stats show that you’ve submitted 50 articles and have only dugg the articles you’ve submitted yourself, you’re looking at bit self-centered there . So, when you’re participating in Digg, be mindful of what your stats are revealing.

7) Add friends authentically. Don’t go on a massive friend adding campaign–it doesn’t look authentic. If you add a whole bunch of friends at one time, then those friends will be able to see how many people you’ve added and they’ll be on to ya. So, choose your friends mindfully, and add them in reasonably small batches or one at a time.

Grow your profile naturally over time. Digg will get suspicious if your profile balloons up with 500 friends overnight, so don’t do that! Just take your time, work on your profile a little each day, and add friends who you would really like to have as allies on Digg. Patience is a virtue, and your hard work over time will be rewarded. Pretty soon you’ll start to be viewed by all as a solid Digg citizen.

Can I get an “Amen”? Very wise tips. I have made a lot of these mistakes myself, and I’m truly thinking about re-working the way I do my profiles. Live and Learn.

Photo digg glitter tattoo

From Creative Capitol:

But the pain is not just a MySpace problem. It seems to be an industry-wide issue. The total audience of U.S. social networks seems to be stuck at a low-to-mid-single digit growth rate, while the engagment metrics are falling for just about everyone. Time spent on Bebo.com has been sliced in half over the last four months, while Friendster’s time spent has plummeted nearly 75% in the same time period. Overall, minutes spent per site fell 5% in December 2007 compared to the year-ago period.

One thing that I have noticed is that there is a lot of overlap with social networks. You may sign up for all of them, but do you really used all of them on a daily basis? For myself, the main social networks I use are Twitter and Facebook. There are only so many hours in the day, and lots of times you just end up having similar friends lists at each platform anyway.

So, to me, these numbers are not surprising, but I don’t think they predict the imminent demise of the social network industry. I think we just have the same groups of folks hopping from one network to the next, and it’s inevitable that sometimes the numbers will drop or not be rising as quickly as before.

What do you think?

Source: The Register

It’s interesting enough to know that when we type updates into Twitter that people all over this world can see what we’re thinking in real time, but you might not have realized that your tweets were also reaching the citizens of the virtual world of Second Life.

New World Notes reports:

created by UK developer Daden Limited, the Twitter Fountain of Second Life takes the public feed from the Web 2.0 site, converting each Tweet into a literal thought balloon that burbles up from a koi pond located on Daden’s SL island. (Visit the Twitter Fountain by clicking the SLURL teleport at this link)

So, when you’re hanging out in Second Life you can stay connected to the real-time ramblings of internet users across the real world. Is this useful?

Well, at this point I don’t think we’re able to control whose tweets we see–Twitter Fountain users can’t choose to see just the tweets of their friends. At this point, maybe we could think of the Twitter Fountain as a form of conceptual art, with real world thoughts ballooning up out of the fountain and floating off into the air.

Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations have used Drupal to power scores of different web sites, including”:

* Community web portals
* Discussion sites
* Corporate web sites
* Intranet applications
* Personal web sites or blogs
* Aficionado sites
* E-commerce applications
* Resource directories
* Social Networking sites

Drupal includes features to enable content management systems, blogs, collaborative authoring environments, forums, newsletters, picture galleries, file uploads and download, and much more. Drupal is open source software licensed under the GPL and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers. Drupal is free to download and use.”

So if you’ve never test driven Drupal give it a shot, its easy to use and definitely a powerful force in web publishing and community building.

Well, it could be, depending on how many MySpace users Simon Owens has managed spur to action. Today is the day that Owens has declared “International Delete Your MySpace Account Day”.

Owens says of his initiative:

The idea quickly caught fire, being linked to on hundreds of websites spanning from Digg to Fark to MSNBC. Several journalists interviewed me about the day, including live radio and television interviews. I was also interviewed by a journalist at the Washington Post. A Myspace spokeswoman even responded to the event.

Regarding the event, MySpace spokesperson Rebekah Horne, vice president of Fox Interactive Media and MySpace in Australia and New Zealand, had this to say:

One blogger has declared January 30th “International Delete Your MySpace Account Day”. But MySpace doubts that this will have a great impact on their network. “This Delete-Your-MySpace day is just about being controversial,” Ms Horne said. “MySpace is still the biggest social networking site in the world.” In the words of BBC comedian Catherine Tate, MySpace does not look bothered.

In am curious to see how many accounts are deleted today, as I know this initiative has gotten widespread attention both online and in mainstream media. Depending on how frustrated other users are there could be a mass MySpace exodus in progress.

If you would like to jump ship today, Owens has posted detailed instructions on how to delete your MySpace account.

According to TechCrunch:

Mig33 is a downloadable mobile social networking application with a bunch of utilities mixed in. Users can not only do the usual profiles and friending, but also includes VoIP calls, instant messaging, e-mail, text messaging, picture sharing. Long distance calls can be made by using pre-paid Mig33 minutes. They have an affiliate program for selling minutes and have even launched a calling card business in South Africa. Users have been signing on for more than a total of 2 million sessions per day, sending more than 45 million messages each day, and share more than a million pictures a month.

Mig33 has users in 200 countries and has an increasing customer base of 9 million + users.

Hmmm, I did not know that so many people accessed social networks via cell phones, so this is enlightening. I guess it makes sense though–not everyone has an iPhone or a laptop, but most folks have cell phones.

No longer can anyone use the excuse “I didn’t vote because I didn’t have enough information about the candidates.” The truth is the information we have is bubbling over.

Which candidates are the most tech savvy?

Well, Barack Obama and John Edwards both hopped on the Twitter bandwagon immediately (although Edwards hasn’t updated in 2 months–you gotta keep it up, John!). Both are using their tweets to share brief ideas, to give updates of where they are appearing, and to point their followers to videos of their appearances.

Do they have an edge over their fellow candidates who are not taking advantage of Twitter’s power?

Think about it–Obama presently has 6,663 followers and Edwards has 4,306. These are citizens who are basically saying “Let me get to know you over a span of time. Let me see what you have to say on a daily basis for several months and get an idea of what you stand for.”

Both Obama and Edwards have virtual followings who are willing to listen to them every day, as many times a day as they would like to communicate with them. That is a HUGE advantage over other candidates who feel so far away, like they’re so polished and unreachable that we don’t feel any great connection to them at all.

John McCain and Barack Obama both have created sites that allow for social networking, allowing users to create a blog, add friends, create groups and neighborhoods, sort of like a mixture of Facebook and MySpace.

So, who is running the most tech savvy campaign? Well, Obama seems to be the one who’s taking advantage of several social networking outlets and making and effort at frequent contact with his followers.

Does this make a difference in terms of votes won?

I think it will for me. I am very much the type of person who needs to feel a personal connection with the candidate in order to stand behind them. Issues do matter, but I also have to feel like I can relate to the candidate on some level. Candidates who are using Web 2.0 to their advantage have a much greater chance of winning my vote, since I can feel like we’re hanging around the virtual water cooler everyday via Twitter and Facebook and such.

What do you think–will the social networking efforts of this year’s candidates make an impact on who you vote for?

Source: Profy

Photo Philo Northrup on the soapbox