The rise of social media tools such as blogs and Twitter have changed the political landscape, in part by speeding up the news cycle and broadening the range of sources that are available. But are these developments good or bad for the practice of political journalism? Read more »
Sling Digital is taking what it calls the Moneyball approach to Twitter ads, letting customer buy cheap keywords that still connect to the audiences they are targeting. The service analyzes users’ conversations to find out what they’re talking about and who they’re following and sharing from. Read more »
Schools like the University of Kentucky are forcing athletes to install software that monitors their social media accounts for words like “panties” or “fight.” Some states are proposing laws to put a stop this. Read more »
After a summer that has seen increased activity in social media marketing, media giant Gannett Co. today announced that it has purchased BLiNQ Media, which helps companies execute and manage ad campaigns on Facebook and other social networks. Read more »
A memo written by the managing editor of the Washington Post in 1992 says a lot about how much of the future of media was obvious even then, but it also misses the most disruptive force the industry has seen — namely, the rise of social media. Read more »
Twitter is in the midst of a strategic transformation, from being an open information network or real-time data utility to being an ad-driven media entity, and that evolution raises a host of questions about the future of the service and its impact on users. Read more »
As we consume more and more content via real-time streams that come to us through Twitter and Facebook and newer platforms, how does that affect advertising? Everyone wants their ads to look like just another form of content, but that’s a lot harder than it sounds. Read more »
Federal investigators viewed the Facebook profile of an alleged gangster in the Bronx by asking his informant “friend” to show it to them. A judge ruled this was not unconstitutional because Facebook users can’t control what other people do with the information they post. Read more »
Users upset about Quora showing which posts had been read by which readers can rest easy — the site has backtracked on its decision to show that information after receiving complaints from users, who were generally unhappy with the feature. Read more »
Gannett Co., the media giant behind USA Today and other properties, is reportedly buying social-media marketing company BLiNQ Media, which helps brands execute and manage advertising campaigns on Facebook and other social platforms. Read more »
Home cooks are using digital tools to help them cook: smartphones, video streaming, cooking apps and social media sites, according to an Allrecipes.com poll. But our increased dependence on the internet for cooking advice is also destroying our faith in the recipe itself. Read more »
As Twitter pushes for more control over the platform in order to monetize the content flowing through it, some prominent critics of this move argue the company is making a big mistake by focusing on the needs of advertisers rather than the needs of users. Read more »
Facebook is stepping in to support a deputy sheriff who was fired for “Liking” his boss’s rival. The case, which will determine whether a “Like” is like a bumper sticker, is helping to define free speech in the age of social media. Read more »
NBC asked Twitter to suspend the account of a journalist who has been a prominent critic of its Olympics coverage. Twitter — an NBC partner — complied. Is this censorship or is there some other explanation? Read more »
Facebook is working on new, more-personal methods for letting users alert members of their social networks to content they find offensive or potentially embarrassing. It’s a good start in the quest to make social media — and perhaps the people who use them — more civil. Read more »
While many still associate BuzzFeed with photo galleries of kittens and other web ephemera, the network has grown into a substantial digital-media entity, and an internal memo from founder Jonah Peretti has some lessons that other media outlets would be wise to pay attention to. Read more »
Twitter is launching a partnership with NBC Universal to create a real-time news hub around the Olympic Games — the latest step in the company’s transformation into a media entity, a move that is a double-edged sword for other media outlets. Read more »
The debate continues over which model is better for social networks: free and ad-supported or paid for by users? Dalton Caldwell says the latter and is building a paid alternative to Twitter, but VC Fred Wilson argues that free is the only model that works. Read more »
As newspapers continue to lay off staff, one question is what will help to fill the gap that is left — where will that journalism come from? We’ve seen signs this week of one partial answer: amateur journalists making use of social media. Read more »
An insensitive tweet has trigged a rightful cascade of contempt that could stain a dress shop for years. At the same time, the fallout from the tweet shows how social media is changing the nature of crisis communications. Read more »
The way that communities like Reddit can come together to produce real-time reporting on incidents like the mass shooting in a Colorado movie theater shows how a new form of journalism — one that blends traditional reporting and crowdsourced reports — is starting to take shape. Read more »
The same kind of criticism levelled at the photo-sharing service Instagram — that it ruins photography, or makes it cheap and shallow — has been made about other forms of media, including blogging, citizen journalism and Twitter. And in each case the critics have been wrong. Read more »
Twitter announced today that it is filing an appeal in a case that is helping to define privacy rights in the social media era. Read more »
A simple news service like Evening Edition — which a group of web designers came up with as a side project — contains a number of lessons that mainstream media outlets might want to consider, such as serving readers’ information needs instead of their own. Read more »
New York startup Percolate, which helps brands sort and curate content to share on Facebook, Twitter and other social channels, has released its newest version. Read more »
Not that long ago, Digg was seen as one of the kingpins of the social web — BusinessWeek put founder Kevin Rose on the cover and said he was worth $60 million. Now, what’s left of Digg has been acquired by Betaworks for a reported $500,000. Read more »
When Gawker Media launched its new commenting system earlier this year, founder Nick Denton said that he wanted to reinvent the way readers and writers interact around a story and turn the discussion into the most important feature of a post. Has he succeeded? Read more »
Many online media outlets continue to rewrite news without providing a link to the original source, but doing this is both rude and short-sighted: Linking is one of the fundamental underpinnings of the internet and a crucial part of the culture of the web. Read more »
According to a couple of European researchers, governments that try to limit access to the Internet or social media during civil unrest can expect to see higher overall levels of violence with fewer calm periods than can governments that keep the web open. Read more »
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 »
Facebook’s meteoric rise and multibillion-dollar valuation may have created an incentive for thousands of entrepreneurs and investors, but veteran venture capitalist Bill Davidow says its philosophy of customer exploitation has also helped distort the values that Silicon Valley technology companies used to hold dear. Read more »
As more banks flirt with social media, StockTwits rolls out a redesigned website that makes it easier for investors to follow the information and people connected to the companies they care about. Read more »
Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman, co-founders of the social media startup Kosmix, have announced that they’re leaving WalmartLabs, where they led the San Bruno innovation and data arm of the massive public company. Read more »
Greplin is getting a facelift and a new name, Cue, a moniker reflecting its new shift away from personal data search toward personal data organization. Rather than merely searching your linked accounts, Cue is now proactively organizing that data into an intelligent snapshot of your day. Read more »
Twitter’s new feature, which shows enhanced content for certain media partners such as the New York Times, is another example of how the service can be both a partner and a competitor for media companies in the ongoing battle for users’ attention. Read more »
Marketers and the media already get instant feedback from the people they communicate with on Twitter and Facebook, but Poptip, a startup opening to the public this week, wants to help them do it at scale. Read more »
If straight-up blogging requires too much of a commitment and Twitter requires too little, CheckThis wants to join Tumblr as a “just right” option in the middle. Read more »
In the latest example of the justice system’s ongoing discomfort with social media, a federal judge has refused a request by Chase Bank to use Facebook to serve legal papers on an identity thief. Read more at paidContent »
Gigya, a startup that provides businesses with a suite of tools to make their sites more social, announced today that it had raised $15.3 million in new funding from Condé Nast’s parent company Advance Publications, Mayfield Fund, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and Adobe. Read more »
The deal that Twitter announced on Thursday with NASCAR will see an editor employed by the network curating and highlighting tweets and other content, a deal that takes Twitter even further into the realm of being a media entity. Should traditional media players be concerned? Read more »
