News Curation
Organizers or apps that curate news to users gain a sizable place in news consumption; http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2012
Tagged: News Curation Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Google Plus + Google News
Google News: Spotlight section will include articles that have been publicly +1’d by contacts; http://eicker.at/GoogleNewsPlus
Gerrit Eicker
Active Twitter Users
Twitter: 100 million active users around the globe turn to Twitter to share their thoughts; http://eicker.at/ActiveTwitterUsers
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Gerrit Eicker
Twitter: “Five years ago, Twitter came to life when @jack sent the first Tweet to his seven followers. Now, 100 million active users around the globe turn to Twitter to share their thoughts and find out what’s happening in the world right now. – More than half of them log in to Twitter each day to follow their interests. For many, getting the most out of Twitter isn’t only about tweeting: 40 percent of our active users simply sign in to listen to what’s happening in their world. – Twitter’s global reach gives a voice to people around the world and as far away as the International Space Station. After launching Hindi, Filipino, Malay and Simplified and Traditional Chinese in the coming weeks, Twitter will support 17 different languages.”
RWW: “If this news sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because the five-year-old microblogging service reached 100 million user accounts awhile ago. These new numbers refer to active users, which CEO Dick Costolo defines as people that sign into Twitter and use the site at least once a month. … In April, Twitter publicly confirmed that it had surpassed 200 million user accounts, a number that has presumably grown since then. This means that at least 50% of Twitter accounts are sitting dormant, according to the company’s own numbers. … The service is being used to publish an average of 230 million tweets per day, which works out to more than a billion tweets every week.”
TNW: “55% of Twitter’s active users are active on mobile, which is an increase of 40% quarter over quarter. Twitter is also getting 400 million unique visitors a month total, this points to a huge number of users that visit Twitter just for information without participating. … Twitter has experienced massive growth this year, bolstered by popular public events like the Womens World cup as well as unrest like the London Riots and disasters like the earthquakes and Tsunami in Japan.”
VB: “Microblogging social network Twitter is in the process of closing a new $400 million funding round, reports CNN Money. – The new funding is the second of two $400 million rounds that puts the startup’s valuation at an estimated $8 billion.”
Gerrit Eicker
RSS is Not Mail
1. RSS is not mail. 2. RSS is not mail… Use Fever to effectively filter your filters; http://eicker.at/RSSIsNotMail
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Gerrit Eicker
ARS, Cheng: “On the surface, RSS seems great for those of us who want to keep up on everything happening on the Internet—and I mean everything. … Twice in as many weeks during the month of August, I was forced to go without my precious RSS feeds. … Dare I say it, but the quality of my life and work improved when I went without RSS. And I think it might for you, too. … Making a conscious (or unconscious, as the case may be) decision to scan through 20-something RSS items a few times per hour means that you’re constantly interrupting what you were doing in order to perform another task. Even if it’s a brief task, the very act of breaking your concentration means it will impact the focus and flow of whatever got shoved to the background, and it takes longer to resume that task later when you’re done with the RSS scan. … Forrester Research told Ars that, according to its most recent RSS usage numbers, only six percent of North American, Internet-using consumers used an RSS feed once per week or more. … I highly recommend taking a break for a few days to find interesting content the “old fashioned” way. You might find that RSS is slowly nickel and diming your time away, one feed at a time.”
Arment: “RSS is a great tool that’s very easy to misuse. And if you’re subscribing to any feeds that post more than about 10 items per day, you’re probably misusing it. … RSS is best for following a large number of infrequently updated sites: sites that you’d never remember to check every day because they only post occasionally, and that your social-network friends won’t reliably find or link to. – I currently subscribe to 100 feeds. This morning, I woke up to 6 unread items: one each from 6 of my feeds. Granted, it’s a Sunday on a holiday weekend, so this is a pretty low-activity day. On high-activity days, I usually wake up to about 25 items.”
Winer: “I read yet-another article about how RSS readers do it wrong, and reward people for using Twitter as their feed reader. This pains me, because it’s not RSS’s fault, it’s the fault of people who designed RSS readers to work like mail programs. RSS is not mail, and when you try to make it mail, you make something that doesn’t work. … If you miss five days of reading the news because you were on vacation (good for you!) the newspaper you read the first day back isn’t five times as thick as the normal day’s paper. And it doesn’t have your name on the cover saying ‘Joe you haven’t read 1,942,279 articles since this paper started.’ It doesn’t put you on the hook for not reading everything anyone has ever written. The paper doesn’t care, so why does your RSS reader?”
Gerrit Eicker
NYT Beta620
Beta620, a new home for experimental online publishing projects from NYT developers and readers; http://eicker.at/NYTbeta620
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Gerrit Eicker
NYT: “At The New York Times, our software engineers, journalists, product managers and designers are constantly striving to create new and innovative ways to present news and information and interact with our readers. Yet it’s often difficult to try out new inventions on the world’s largest newspaper Web site. That’s why we created beta620, a new home for experimental projects from Times developers — and a place for anyone to suggest and collaborate on new ideas and new products.”
AdAge: “The New York Times has introduced its long-delayed Beta620, a public beta testing site where web surfers can experiment with new products that could eventually take root on NYTimes.com. … ‘It’s a place that gives a permanent home to the tradition of innovation,’ said Denise Warren, senior VP and chief advertising officer at the New York Times Media Group as well as general manager at NYTimes.com. ‘And it invites our community in to help us formulate an opinion about the innovation and the new products.‘ … The Times’ public beta site has come along just a few weeks after Google said it would wind down its own Google Labs page, which showcases a very wide range of ideas, in an effort to prioritize core products and put ‘more wood behind fewer arrows.’ … The Times believes its public beta site is perhaps different because the projects being tried there bear on its core digital product, The New York Times Online.”
Nieman: “‘It’s all about spurring innovation – coming up with ideas that no one has thought of before, and having a place for them,’ says Marc Frons, the Times’ CTO for digital operations. And not just innovation, but ‘continuous innovation.’ The hope is that, in highlighting experiments as they evolve – and in providing a shared space for shaping their evolution – beta620 will be a place where developers, designers, readers, journalists, and pretty much anyone with an interest in the Times can engage in an ongoing conversation about its future. And about, specifically, the tools that will shape that future. … With beta620, the Times is taking the lessons of end-user innovation and applying them to the process of development, rather than simply the products of it. It’s trying to make experimentation something that’s open and interactive – rather than, Frons says, ‘something that’s cordoned off in the ivory tower.'”
RWW: “The Times has recognized the importance of open data for several years now, and the launch of their API in 2008 was an important step for the struggling news industry, which must now rely on the rest of the Web to make the most of its wealth of data. The Times has put considerable effort into properly categorizing its content for the open Web, and now it has begun to open its software development to the public, too. Some Web citizens have even taken to redesigning NY Times Web products without being asked. – As of now, only NYT developers can display projects on beta620, but the site has set the tone for a public forum on the future of the Times’ technology, so that could certainly change.”
GigaOM: “Can a newspaper think like a startup? New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen said on Twitter that the launch of beta620 is a turning point for the newspaper company because it means the media giant now has an ‘openly experimental newsroom.’ In an inaugural post on the new site, meanwhile, NYT staffer Joe Fiore said the company hopes it will become a place where Times developers ‘interact with readers to discuss projects, and incorporate community suggestions into their work.’ … But can a company whose financial status is still less than stellar really devote much time or resources to something like beta620? The New York Times may be a digital leader, but the reality is that the vast majority of its revenue comes from the printed product it has been manufacturing for a century and a half, because that contains the advertising that is its bread and butter – and even though many see the paywall as a success, its contribution to the bottom line remains relatively minuscule. Will the Skimmer or the NYT’s take on instant search make a difference? That seems unlikely.”
pC: “Right now, the projects on Beta620 are submitted by employees only, though anyone can comment on them or provide suggestions for improvement. Eventually, the NYT will open the site up to allow outside individuals and developers to submit their own proposals. At the moment, the best outsiders can do is send along recommendations for what the NYT R&D technology staff should be working on.”
Gerrit Eicker
Google News Editors’ Picks
Google leaves its algorithm–centricism: adds serendipity to Google News via Editors’ Picks; http://eicker.at/GoogleNewsEditors
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Gerrit Eicker
Google News Help: “Editors’ Picks is a feature that showcases original, innovative news content that a news publisher has on their site at any given time. This content may include long-form narrative articles, slideshows, interactive graphics, or video stories, just to name a few possibilities. – The links you see in Editors’ Picks are hand-picked by the news organization whose logo is displayed above the links. Google News does not select the articles. – If you are a News publisher and wish to submit an Editors’ Picks feed to Google News, please review our guidelines and documentation first.”
Google: “Google News is introducing a new section in the right-hand column of the U.S. edition. The section is called ‘Editors’ Picks,’ and it displays original content that publishers have selected as highlights from their publications. This is the latest addition to recent improvements we’ve made to the variety and presence of stories and multimedia on Google News. – An array of news organizations, including local, national and niche publishers, are now using Editors’ Picks to display their best, most engaging content. Because Google News relies on algorithms, Editors’ Picks will always be just that- picks provided by publishers themselves, and not by Google. … You may have first noticed Editors’ Picks as an experiment last year. Based on the data from that experiment, we have been working with nearly two dozen publishers in recent months and have seen a positive response from readers and publishers alike: readers get the news they’re interested in from the sources they trust, and publishers receive higher traffic to their websites.”
Nieman: “When Google News launched in 2002, it did so with some declarations: ‘This page was generated entirely by computer algorithms without human editors.’ And: ‘No humans were harmed or even used in the creation of this page.’ – That core approach – computerized curation, algorithmic authority, NoMo sapiens – has served Google News well in the nearly-a-decade it’s been around… Editors’ Picks, a display of original content that journalists (human ones!) have selected as editorial highlights from their publications. … That’s a big deal, and only partially because of Google News’ traditional algo-centricism. … In addition to providing users with more good content, Editors’ Picks might also pave the way for more effective partnerships with news publishers. … For publishers, Editors’ Picks is also a way to highlight brand identity within a platform that has tended to emphasize news stories over news institutions. … It takes the notion of serendipity, in other words, and applies it to news organizations themselves.”
SEL: “More than a year after the experiment began, Google News has brought Editor’s Picks to the home page of its US site – marking the first real human-curated content on what Google has proudly said was always a completely algorithmic way of presenting news. – It could also be seen as something of an olive branch toward publishers, especially given the shaky relationship that’s existed between the two.”
SEW: “This appears to be a win-win for everyone involved. News publishers now have a mechanism to let Google know what their featured stories are. – Readers will be able to see additional content in the form of these features. As a result, Google will likely see a boost in on-site time and stickiness. Clearly the number of articles you read will help you collect Google News badges. – However, bringing search back into the conversation for a moment: since these articles are hand-picked by the editors – which may include editorials and paid features – will this adversely affect relevancy?“
Google: Over the past few months, myriad sites across the web [including Google News] have adopted the +1 button to help start conversations. But there hasn’t been an easy way for signed-in users to see what news articles your friends are enjoying – until now. – Starting today, the Spotlight section will sometimes include articles that your Gmail contacts and people in your Google+ circles have publicly +1’d. You can see their profile pictures and click through to their Google+ profiles, just like on Social Search. And of course you can +1 the stories too, expressing your opinion and optionally sharing with your circles.”
SEL: “If you are logged in while using Google News and your friends or contacts have used the Google +1 button to like the stories in your Spotlight section, that information will show up in the Spotlight section near the article. It will even let you click on the name of your friend/contact to see their social profile on Google.”
RWW: “Yesterday, Google converted Google Chat to be based on G+ circles rather than email addresses. Earlier this month, the +1 button came to image search. YouTube and Google Reader have both gotten complete G+ makeovers, though YouTube’s hasn’t rolled out yet. – Google Web search has treated public G+ posts as search results since soon after the social network launched. Google is insisting upon making its new social layer a pervasive, personalized filter for the whole Google experience.”
VB: “Since it’s eventually going to be part of everything Google does on the web, some have determined Google+ usage to be practically unavoidable, or at least inevitable. – ‘We think of Google+ as a mode of usage of Google,’ said Google executive Bradley Horowitz in a recent interview with VentureBeat. – He went on to say that the Google+ features around other Google products will serve as ‘a way of lighting up your Google experience as opposed to a new product. It’s something that takes time to appreciate, even internally. It’s easy to think of Google+ as something other than just Google, and I think it’ll take more launches before the world catches up with this understanding.‘”