Posts Tagged ‘social media’

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

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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.

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