Social networks are the overworked writer’s best friend. It’s easy to observe the latest outrage on Twitter, grab a few good jokes from Reddit,…
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Ello, the startup formerly known as the anti-Facebook, grows up
Remember Ello, the social network that was first portrayed as the anti-Facebook well over a year ago? Well, it’s still around, but the anti-Facebook…
Read MoreLinkedIn puts Slack in its crosshairs with updated messaging platform
LinkedIn is either suffering a mid-life crisis or experiencing a renaissance. The company has traditionally focused on helping workers further their careers by…
Read MoreSo long, Google+. Hello, Streams, Photos and Hangouts
For the third time in a year, Google has a new leader for its social network, Google+. And in keeping with the…
Read MoreGoogle may separate Hangouts, Google+ and Photos
Google is looking to further untangle parts of Google+: The company may separate Photos and Hangouts from Google+, according to statements made…
Read MoreIn the age of niche media, everyone still really wants to be mass
As doctoral student Frederik De Boer pointed out in a recent blog post on some of the new-media sites like BuzzFeed and Fusion, if you don't focus on a specific market or target a specific kind of reader, you run the risk of blending in with everyone else…
Read MoreThe platform-publisher race is heating up and LinkedIn is gaining
Social platforms like Facebook and Snapchat are trying hard to become publishers or to host content from media companies, but one of the platforms that has been quietly doing this for years now -- and continues to grow that side of its business -- is LinkedIn…
Read MoreThe viral content problem: Many people don’t care whether it’s true
Author and journalist Craig Silverman looks at the explosion of online hoaxes, rumors and misinformation all around us -- but one of the most powerful factors behind this trend is that many people don't care whether what they share is true or not…
Read MoreBlogging is very much alive — we just call it something else now
Andrew Sullivan's decision to quit blogging made me think a lot about how blogging has changed over the past few years -- both in good ways and bad ways -- and what it means to say that one is a "blogger"…
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RebelMouse wants to help media companies own their social graph
After leaving the Huffington Post, former CTO Paul Berry built a social-content management platform called RebelMouse to help media make their content more viral -- and now RebelMouse wants to help them build their own niche communities as well…
Read MoreStack Exchange gets $40M to build a storehouse of human knowledge
Stack Exchange started with one discussion forum/community aimed at programmers and developers and has become a network of more than 130 sites that gets 300 million unique visitors a year, and just raised $40 million…
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How much work the NYT has to do on social sharing, in one chart
About half of all BuzzFeed articles that were shared on social networks were shared 1,000 times or more, compared with just 11 shares for half of the articles that the New York Times saw posted to services like Twitter and Facebook…
Read MoreNews flash for the NYT: You and BuzzFeed aren’t that different
In the process of talking about what her job entails, the audience development editor for the New York Times underestimates BuzzFeed and how much competition it is -- and how it got there…
Read MoreFormer editor-in-chief at Whisper has left the company for good
Neetzan Zimmerman — the former Gawker writer who joined Whisper as editor-in-chief, and later became embroiled in a controversy over the anonymous…
Read MoreMark Zuckerberg champions free speech while Facebook censors it
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has posted public statements on his personal page about his commitment to free speech in the wake of the killings in Paris last week, but the behavior of his company often says something very different…
Read MoreWhen it comes to social media, teens are not all created equal
A teenager's perspective on how he uses different social networks is useful, but sociologist danah boyd warns that generalizing about what this means for all teenagers inevitably marginalizes some users who may be worth listening to…
Read MoreCluetrain: We have met the internet’s enemy, and he is us
Two of the authors of the original Cluetrain Manifesto from 1999 have come out with an update that says many of the risks and potential dangers facing the internet come from us, the users, and the choices we are making…
Read MoreHere’s how a real teenager uses, and doesn’t use, social media
A description from 19-year-old Andrew Watts provides a fascinating glimpse into how some teenaged users approach different social-media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat…
Read More5 social trends you can expect to see in 2015
As we lay 2014 to rest, we’re topping our hats to some of the social media crazes that came along with it. Messaging.…
Read MoreCheck out Nextdoor’s crowdsourced map for holiday lights
If you wanted to know where all the best holiday spots are in town, this might be your year. Social networking application Nextdoor…
Read MoreBeing connected is more of a good thing than it is a bad thing
There are plenty of things that are bad about being connected to the internet and the social web all the time, but there are far more good things about it, including the relationships that it allows us to create with people we've never met…
Read MoreUber: For better or worse, this is the way the media works now
The way the story around Uber's behavior has emerged is another example of how much the media landscape has changed over the past couple of years, with CEOs and VCs tweeting and blogging and new-media entities like BuzzFeed driving the agenda…
Read MoreEnding reader comments is a mistake, even if you are Reuters
Reuters says the conversation about news content has moved to social platforms like Twitter and Facebook, so it is removing the ability for readers to comment on its stories -- but I think that is a mistake, for a number of reasons…
Read MoreBuzzFeed’s deal with Facebook to measure political sentiment has one major flaw
BuzzFeed has formed a partnership with Facebook that gives it access to the social network's "sentiment analysis" data on millions of users -- but Facebook's algorithm is going to influence the thing that BuzzFeed is trying to measure in ways it can't possibly know…
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