Get your cat on: BuzzFeed creates new section where readers can publish
photo: BuzzFeed
Users will now get their own vertical on BuzzFeed, where they can submit according to their “Cat Power.” Read more at paidContent »
What Nextdoor is doing right with hyperlocal and Patch is doing wrong
photo: Flickr user Jason Parks
Most of the startups and networks focused on hyperlocal or community news and information try to be as open as possible, but Nextdoor is taking the exact opposite approach and making the barrier to entry for users as high as it can. Read more »
Fixing online comments — how do you automate trust?
photo: Shutterstock / Sam72
Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Overflow, has launched a new platform that he hopes will improve the nature of online comments by adding trust metrics — but there are no shortcuts to healthy online communtiies. Read more at paidContent »
Reddit, freedom of speech and the dark side of community
photo: Flickr user Hoggarazzi
In addition to occasional acts of journalism, Reddit is also known for its less savory content, including a page featuring creepy photos of women taken without their permission — and the controversy over that kind of content says a lot about the nature of the community. Read more »
What newspapers and other media could learn from Reddit
photo: Flickr user Christian Scholz
Reddit has grown to become one of the most high-profile online communities, one that has even played a journalistic role in some recent cases. Among the things that newspapers and other media entities could learn from Reddit are the benefits of a strong and engaged community. Read more »
Facebook and Twitter: Welcome to the new platform wars
photo: Flickr user Tony Margiocchi
The way Facebook and Twitter have been controlling and/or closing down their platforms to outsiders may have parallels to the way other technology leaders have behaved in the past, but both companies need to be careful that they don’t ruin their platforms in the process. Read more »
So the new Digg has relaunched — now comes the hard part
Digg, the social-news community that New York-based incubator Betaworks acquired part of last month, has been relaunched with a new look and new plumbing, but it doesn’t have anything like the kind of community Digg had — something that is hugely valuable and difficult to build. Read more »
Blekko’s new social content curation site ROCKZi turns search inside out
Blekko, the human-curated search engine, on Thursday unveiled a new content curation site, ROCKzi, which lets people consume and socialize around the news they care about in a PInterest-like environment. Read more »
Margaret Atwood on Wattpad and the value of taking risks
photo: Flickr user Jeremy Mates
Margaret Atwood may be a literary legend, but she isn’t resting on her laurels — instead, she is working with the online writing community at Wattpad to encourage new writers, and crowdfunding a new platform for artists called Fanado. Read more »
The future of media and forcing new content into old models
The controversy over new-media startup Journatic and its hyper-local news service says a lot about how difficult it is to find new ways of producing journalism, in part because the traditional media industry and its supporters want to force everything into old models and familiar formats. Read more »
Careful, Twitter — remember what happened to MySpace and Digg
photo: Flickr user Rosaura Ochoa
Twitter has made it clear it plans to crack down on third-party services by tightening the rules on use of the network, but this desire for control — and the drive to monetize its user base — could ruin what made Twitter special to begin with. Read more »
HarperCollins launches Epic Reads digital community for teens
HarperCollins has launched Epic Reads, a digital community designed to connect readers with HarperTeen authors and books. But this is not a retail site. Read more at paidContent »
Sold for £87 million, but can MoneySavingExpert.com keep savers sweet?
photo: DECC
One of the poster boys for online specialist entrepreneurial journalism is selling to a price comparison website. But can independent personal finance guru Martin Lewis keep his legion followers happy? Read more at paidContent »
Is the 1% rule dead? The BBC thinks so, but it’s wrong
New research from the BBC suggests that one of the web’s most common rules of thumb no longer applies — and that online engagement has risen dramatically in recent years. But is its surprising conclusion based on a dramatic misinterpretation of the rule itself? Read more »
Journatic CEO: We are creating a better future for journalism
photo: Flickr user George Kelly
Journatic, a media startup that produces hyper-local content for newspapers, has been criticized as a “content farm.” But in an interview with GigaOM, founder Brian Timpone says not only his model more efficient than that of a newspaper, but it can actually help produce better journalism. Read more »
Snapguide is the first mobile app with Pinterest integration
Snapguide, the three-week-old iPhone and web app that lets users create “how-to” guides with pictures and videos, is now the first mobile app to integrate with Pinterest for “seamless sharing.” Read more at paidContent »
Orange Fancies Itself As GetGlue, Miso Social TV Rival
Orange is having a run at the nascent second-screen social-TV space already occupied by the likes of GetGlue, Miso, Zeebox and Intonow. Read more at paidContent »
What Happened When I Got Retweeted By @BarackObama
I thought it would be cool to be retweeted by the President, but it kind of sucked. Read more at paidContent »
Social TV's Zeebox Aims At U.S. Under Time Warner's Forbes
Second-screen social TV startup Zeebox has poached Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) Media SVP Jason Forbes to head its upcoming competition wit… Read more at paidContent »
Social Media Display Fuelling Ongoing Internet Ad Growth
The internet will attract 21 percent more ad spend each year on its way to gobbling 22.1 percent of the total market by 2014, according to l… Read more at paidContent »
Everyone's A Curator, Everyone's A Content Creator
photo: Dan Brunell
It used to be that we were all just consumers — or most of us were, anyway. We’d watch TV or read a book or listen to the music on the radi… Read more at paidContent »
Time Magazine, Foursquare Partner For Political Conventions
Time Magazine is offering some special content to Foursquare users who check in at the Republican National Convention in Tampa in August or… Read more at paidContent »
Why Dating Sites Are Broken
I met my current boyfriend four years ago in the elevator of our Georgetown dorm. Our friendship slowly grew until we went on our first dat… Read more at paidContent »
How To Use Facebook’s Open Graph To Build Your Business
Last year, it became clear that Facebook is well on its way to becoming a social operating system underlying our digital lives. And the enh… Read more at paidContent »
Facebook’s Birth Certificate
Facebook is widely expected to go public in the very near future with a valuation north of $75 billion. It’s a moment that tech watchers hav… Read more at paidContent »
Pseudonyms, trolls and the battle over online identity
Data from Disqus, which offers a comment-hosting service for websites, seems to show that the use of pseudonyms not only produces more comments, but also comments of higher quality. As interesting as the data is, however, it’s unlikely to settle the ongoing debate over online identity. Read more »
The Latest Complaint About Google Plus: It's 'Breaking Search'
Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is a great search company. They defined how we enter the great brickyard of knowledge for most of this decade because th… Read more at paidContent »
No Startup Is Better Than Foursquare With New Products
About two years ago, Fred Wilson and I were talking about which startups we found interesting and I mentioned offhandedly that Foursquare wa… Read more at paidContent »
Publishers' Social Site aNobii Relaunches To Put The 'Book' In 'Facebook'
Book-readers’ social commerce site aNobii has got the relaunch for which three book publishers invested in it back in March. Read more at paidContent »
Is There A Business Model To Support Some Of The Great New Curation Tools?
photo: Shutterstock / Gts
I love talking about the things I enjoy using. The emerging ecosystem in which a bunch of smart people curate long form journalism is defini… Read more at paidContent »
