Archive for March, 2009

Media, meet Social Media

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Wow, it looks as if they’re really getting it. SDNN lets us know that you can now easily share a story via multiple social media outlets. They have added a widget to their stories that is powered by ShareThis that allows you to easily push a link to a story out through your favorite social media outlet.

The ShareThis Widget as it appears over a story

The ShareThis Widget as it appears over a story

Unfortunately it doesn’t play well with embedded media on the page.
The ShareThis Widget falls behind a media object on the page.

The ShareThis Widget falls behind a media object on the page.

It also did not appear to work for me when I selected Twitter. It opened Twitter in another Firefox tab but did not submit a Tweet. It is also curious that they failed to add this feature to their “A Conversation with San Diego” section.

The NC Times has also added a social media sharing widget to their site. I had complained about the poor social media integration back on March 11th. They have selected a widget from AddThis at the bottom of their stories.

The AddThis Widget appears over a story at the North County Times

The AddThis Widget appears over a story at the North County Times

Alas, this Twitter link did not work for me either, nor did the one on the AddThis homepage.

I will research how both widgets are expected to work and post a follow-up to this item, it is however good to see both outlets focusing on having their content shared and promoted in the social media outlets.

[Update April 02]

I was just able to tweet a story from the NC Times using their AddThis widget. Unfortunately the URL supplied and the (via @addthis) left only 28 characters for me. And they didn’t even attempt to include the story title (which was the funny bit).

http://nctimes.com/articles/2009/04/02/news/coastal/vista/za544b0194247642e8825758c0065b28d.txt (via @addthis)

SDNN works for me as well, shortens the URL and includes the title. Unfortunately their tweet ran over by 10 characters.

San Diego News Network: Environment: Renew, Recycle, Conserve Study projects warming, rising San Diego waters http://tinyurl.com/darurm via @ShareThis

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Internet, Opinion | Comments

SDNN separates blogs from stories

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

In a blog post on the SDNN blog site, Kevin Hall, SDNN chief operating officer informs us that SDNN is composed of a stories blog that is distinct from the ‘blog’ blog, ‘A Conversation with San Diego‘.

I am curious what is driving this decision. For example, why are the columns carried on the stories side of the organization? It would seem that opinion pieces would be better classified as part of the conversation but are instead listed as stories. I think that it would be helpful for an explanation on what exactly this conversation is.

Tags: ,
Posted in Internet, Opinion | Comments Off

Community: SDNN vs NCTimes

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

A novel news service for San Diego launched a site into beta testing this week. Like the North County Times, the SDNN has opted to use blogging as a forum for communicating with the community. Unlike the NC Times, SDNN appears to have based their community forums on open tools allowing community members to participate using their established online persona instead of having to create new accounts inside a walled garden.

While the North County Times should enjoy a comfortable advantage as an incumbent, their inability to adapt to the realities of social media may cripple their ability to form a successful online community.

This post will serve as a test of how SDNN is configured to accept either trackbacks or pingbacks as comments.

[Update Mar 25, 2009]

The pingback appeared internally in their comment system and the count of comments reflects the pinpingback, yet the actual pingback did not appear on the site. I did not receive a reply to my tweet as to whether this was intended behavior.

[Update to the Update]

The pingback does appear on the SDNN blog site as a comment, it still does not appear as a comment on the news site.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Internet, Opinion | Comments

NCTimes and Twitter = #fail

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

After beginning this series of blog posts I opened myself up to everything NC Times, including following @NCTimes on Twitter. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to find NCTimes on Twitter, they also have a Facebook and a MySpace page, but again, it is not something that they promote obviously on their online edition. You can find their social networking links by clicking Contact Us and then Social Media.

The North County Times fails on Twitter for two reasons. First, they misused their Twitter account by mixing personal and organizational messages. Second, they have not Twitter enabled their site.

Twitter was originally intended as a personal medium.  However there has been a rise in the number of Twitter accounts used for non-personal communication. @TrackThis for example provides a package tracking Twitter service. Twitter itself provides a service for reporting Twitter spam via @Spam. The @NCTimes account should, in theory, be used to report information about the North County Times and it does:

Want an early peek at our new local social networking site? Check out my.nctimes.com … #nctimes

It is reasonable, even expected, to see it being used to announce news stories:

CHARGERS: Tomlinson will stay in San Diego after agreeing to deal. http://tinyurl.com/daaol4

Breaking News: OCEANSIDE: Search suspended for survivor of plane crash” #nctimes ( http://tinyurl.com/bpbt7v )

However, it becomes confusing to see tweets from this account in first person voice:

Reading: “REGION: Bill would let agencies trump homeowners association rules” #nctimes ( http://tinyurl.com/bl5dxw )

It begs the question, who is reading? Is this an announcement of a new news story or is it something from a few years ago being re-read by an individual. As a corporate branded account the tweets should consistently describe what the newspaper is doing, and I certainly hope the newspaper isn’t reading itself.

The NC Times offers a great deal of options on how each story can be further used. At the top of each story we find options to print and email stories.

storyinfo

Below the story we find a great number of options for submitting this story to third parties and saving a link to this story. At least one of the services listed is now defunct.

storysocial

Conspicuously missing is a Tweet This button that would promote this story via an individuals Twitter account.

In summary, the NC Times misses an easy win with a simple Tweet This button and simultaneously presents a confusing persona on Twitter.  All this while spending their energy building a walled community.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Internet, Opinion | Comments

NC Times Static Edition

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

As a technology professional, I carry a smart phone. I use this phone to text, tweet, call, email, read RSS feeds and much, much more. One thing I like to have on my phone is local news, and for this there is no stronger solution than an RSS feed with a web browser.

The North County Times provides a minimal set of RSS feeds.  I would be surprised if you realized this because they do such an excellent job of hiding them. Go ahead, try to find them. I will give you a hint at the bottom of this entry. The Times however really doesn’t want you to read any stories from the feeds. The don’t persist any old stories and typically only have two or three stories in the regional sections at any time.

However, their feed service is a great deal better than their mobile version. Here’s the link http://m.nctimes.com. To be honest, it is possible that the times could do without a mobile version, except that they have made their site so navigation heavy, and so poorly laid out, that any attempt to view their normal site on a small screen device with limited bandwidth is an excercise in frustration.

Now, maybe the NC Times fears that it will lose advertising revenue if it offers good feeds and a mobile site, but since I can get my other news from sites that do offer these features I can guarantee that they are losing revenue by not providing a mobile portal.

Oh, and the link to the RSS feeds?

http://nctimes.com/?rss=/news

You can specify categories from the site (e.g. /news/costal/carlsbad)

[UPDATE 3/10/2009]

A quick Google seach turns up the NC Times RSS page. There are a lot more options available using the syntax demonstrated by the links on this page. As an example http://www.nctimes.com/?searchrss=1&d1=yesterday&d2=tomorrow&%20tags=(carlsbad)&l=10 provides Carlsbad news.

I had forgotten about this because of some issues I had with my mobile device, however these links work fine in other readers, Firefox or Google Reader so I blame my mobile device.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Internet, Opinion | Comments Off

Welcom to my.NCTimes.com, Welcome to 2002

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

Today I got an email from the North County Times inviting me to try out their new “my” portal. I was so underwhelmed that I felt driven to action. This will be the first in a series of blog posts focusing on how the NC Times just doesn’t understand where technology is and where it is going. With the number of high tech companies that exist in the Times circulation area it is a real shame that they just don’t get it.

What is it?
my.NCTimes.com is a local social network for people, groups and businesses located in the North County San Diego and Southwest Riverside County areas of Southern California.

What can I do?
Most importantly, you can finally change your account picture!

Wow, I can update my picture, stop the presses! Once again the NC Times is chasing yesterday’s technology. People are not served by closed portals. They want to aggregate content from other sources as they see fit. They don’t want to have accounts crossing multiple sites, having to maintain lists of usernames and passwords, having to visit dozens of sites daily to keep up. They want to access information from whatever device is handy.

I certainly hope that they were kidding when they said updating your picture was the most important thing you can do on the site.

As newspapers across the country lose circulation, if this is the best that the NC Times can come up with I fear it will not survive. For the next few posts I am going to dedicate this space to discussions on what people want from local newspapers and how those newspapers can monetize those opportunites.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Internet, Opinion | Comments Off