Social media opportunities in local online business directories

Recently had a look at the Ellington CMS which is built on the open-source framework Django. A very slick CMS with many of the features that our news org is looking for. However it is a bit out of our price-range. Granted our price-range is pretty close to single digit. As in $0. Not really but you get the idea.

Also got a chance to see their business directory product called Marketplace. Again a very slick product. Looks to be very user friendly on the customer side and very easy on the business/vendor side. When a local business buys a listing they get a user-name and password that allows them to add as much or as little information about their business as they want. And they can update the information as often or as infrequent as they want. They can also upload photos/videos of their products or services. They can post coupons and information about ongoing sales. How about adding a customer service component?

It got me thinking about Twitter. Recently it doesn’t take much to get me to think about Twitter but this particular thought about how to integrate Twitter as social media/customer service platform into an online business directory. How about if Twitter or CoverIt Live was integrated into the business listing. Or how about a live video stream using Mogulus or Ustream. It would add a human face to the business. Maybe the business can set up a schedule when someone would be available to answer questions – “Customer service avalable Mon, Wed., Fri. 2-3 p.m. Sure individual business owners could set up their own Twitter/Mogulus accounts separate from their business directory listing. But many small businesses have a hard enough time updating an online directory listing or a website much less have the time or inclination to create yet another account on some web service they know very little about. This way it is already built in.

Would that be attractive to local businesses? Would it be added value to their basic listing? Perhaps someone is already doing this?

News org wikis or contextual archives?

This idea is not new. But it has been bubbling in my head for a few months: how to incorporate a wiki or wikis into our online content. We’ve tried a couple of wikis in the past couple years as part of our in-depth series but we struggled with how to allow contributions. We ended up only allowing comments/threads. Not what most people would consider a wiki.

About 2 years ago Amy Grahan wrote a column over at Poynter about the idea of news org wikis. She wrote:

Most notably, wikis can transcend the short attention span and fragmented view of issues and events inherent in traditional story-format reporting. With a wiki, no topic ever really “scrolls off the home page.” Wiki pages are forever active — even if they lie fallow for long stretches of time. And interested people can continue to watch and edit these pages indefinitely.”

In her post Amy asks for examples of wikis implemented by news orgs. As far as I can tell there were no examples given of implementation as I envision it.

Also in 2007, Paul Bradshaw of the Online Journalism Blog also wrote a piece on new org use of wikis. He mentioned a couple of attempts by mainstream media:

A number of experiments with wikis have already shown its potential to both reach out to a readership – and to fall flat on its face. An example of the latter was the LA Times ‘wikitorial’ – an editorial piece on the Iraq war which the newspaper allowed readers to edit. After only a day the newspaper had to pull the feature due to readers flooding the site with inappropriate material.

On the positive side, however, was Wired’s experiment with the form late last year, when they allowed readers to whip an unedited article about (yes) wiki technology into shape. Over 300 users made edits, with one interviewing a Harvard expert, and another suggesting a contact – and when one user complained about some quotes from an interviewee, the original journalist, Ryan Singel, posted his interview notes so that users could pick a better one.

Paul also posted a more in-depth examination of possible uses of wikis in news orgs. In that post he wrote:

Internally, wikis also allow news operations to coordinate and manage a complex story which involves a number of contributors. News organisations interested in transparency might also publish the wiki ‘live’ as it develops, so readers can view as it develops, and look at previous versions, while the discussion space which accompanies each entry also has the potential to create a productive dialogue with users.

This refers to the idea of using a wiki to develop a story online.

Typically a story is posted on a news org website which occasionally generates a list of related stories. Perhaps a photo or two are posted as well. If there is a video, that might be embedded into the story. And usually that is the end of context.

My wiki/archive idea would work like this:
A story posted on a new org website would also have a link to its wiki/archive page. The wiki/archive page would display all related content in a chronological thread (maybe utilizing some nifty AJAX coding so that you don’t have an endlessly scrolling experience.)

You’d get:

• related stories including any comments posted by the public
• video(s)
• multimedia including slideshows, etc.
• maps
• related tags
• a timeline
• annotations by editors and reporters

Some concerns:

• Online vandalism. Shane Richmond wrote a piece on this for the Telegraph UK. Shane wrote:

The trouble is Wikipedia, as ‘the public face of wikis’ is frequently derided for inaccuracies and vandalism. Will the mainstream media be able to surmount those problems?

…will the wiki dream be killed off through the fear of cyber vandals treating our news websites as virgin walls for virtual graffiti?

• The NY Times recently reported on Wikipedia incorporating a new system to keep those types of edits off. We could have a stringent registration process but I’m not sure that it would be a wiki at that point.

• Too much transparency. In my opinion this isn’t a reasonable concern. Strike-throughs and footnotes should be included in stories on news org websistes to alert the reader to errors or edits. Many news orgs are already doing this.

• Information overload. This feature may not be useful for many stories or even for many news org customers. But with a well designed interface it would be a great resource for community members to follow stories that have developed over months or years.

• Not many users know what wikis are. Paul Bradshaw sites some statistics:

Finally, one of the biggest disadvantages may be readers’ lack of awareness of what a wiki even is: only 2% of Internet users even know what a wiki is, although similar statistics were once applicable to blogs.

So maybe calling it a wiki is the wrong thing to do. Maybe it would be more precise to call it a contextual archive of news stories. Although I think incorporation wiki conventions such as public input via comments and edits (after a reasonable registration to preclude trolls) should be a big part of this feature.

What do you think are the pros and cons of something like this; for journalists and consumers of information? Are there news orgs already doing this?

What new media skills should I learn?

I’ll answer that. I think I should gain some web programming skills. But what?

Flash/Action-script? That would come in handy to produce some slick multilmedia packages like this one.

Drupal/Django/Joomla/Ruby on Rails? This would help in developing a custom CMS or a slick community calendar app. But it looks like that is time and programming intensive. Maybe a bit over my head. Definitely intimidating.

PHP? That would help us customize and tweak WordPress plus if I add some XML in there we could do some database driven stuff.

I hate being in the position where I see a great web app and not being able to duplicate it or tweak it or customize it. For instance all the great APIs out there made available by Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. As a news organization we do not have the personnel to do much of any of this. And we mostly likely will never have the staff to do it. So I feel like it’s up to me and in addition I develop a bigger skill set that will make me a more valuable employee/freelancer/entrepreneur.

Or should I just stick to content creation via video. Maybe I need to just expand my FCP skills. I admit my FCP skills are pretty limited – color correction is a big weakness. What to do? What to learn. My time is so very limited between work and family. I need to be prudent with what I pursue. What would you suggest?

I mean, what skills do I need to build something like this video player that lets you navigate to a part of a video by picking a spot on a transcript?

2009 – New year brings new goals

New years’ resolutions. We all make them. I’ve made my fair share of them and I’m pretty sure my success rate is in the single digits percentage-wise. But that is not going to stop me this year. This year I’ve got 3 sets of resolutions – family, personal, work. My family resolutions mean the most to me and are the most personal (yeah even more personal than my “personal” resolutions) so I’ll keep those private. But I’ll share the others.

Personal resolutions for 2009

• Work out and lose 10 lbs. In actuality, I should lose about 15-20 lbs but 2009 isn’t about torturing myself.
• Blog/Podcast at least 3 times per week. That includes this blog and a couple others I’ve floating around.
• Complete one creative project per month. That would include: screenprinting, music, video and writing.
• Read 2 books per month. At the very least, read one per month. We’ve got a bookcase full of Maria’s books that I should dive into.
• Join at least one adult sports league. I’m looking at you basketball. 

Work resolutions for 2009

• Grow our Walla Walla social network to 1,000 members by the end of the year. We are currently at 35. So ….
• From the social network spin off a Walla Walla Wiki page.
• Drive more traffic (a lot more) to our online sports content. It drives me mad how little traffic it currently generates. That means expanding our coverage to include “live” score updates from games.
• Help move the newsroom to more mobile reporting. That means laptops, text messaging, Twittering, live video. Which means using services such as Twitter, Seesmic, CoveritLive, Flickr, Ustream, Twitpic and others.
• Increase traffic to ubvideo.tv by 25-30% by year end. More quality, engaging, informative, and yes, entertaining videos with better promotion.

So there they are. There they are indeed. The difference this year with my resolutions is that I am broadcasting it to the world. In the past I could eventually “lose” my list and therefore not feel obliged to complete any of them.

The future of journalism is…

The Walla Walla High School Journal

I met with Gay Buissink, Journal advisor, to talk about how the high school students are using new media. Turns out they are not using the available web tools much for their journalistic endeavors. They only recently started to post online updates(Latest Wa-Hi News) and stories to the high school website. Gay said she was hoping to set up a website for the school paper in the next year or so. She also mentioned that when they got the opportunity to start posting content online it was a bit of a hard sell for some of the students. It was her opinion that most of the students were deeply invested in the printed version and felt the online component might be a distraction. These are high school students mind you. Students that could very well be future journalists. I quickly volunteered to give a quick new media presentation to the students.

I put together a short slide presentation about new media and how it should be an integral part of journalism. I gave them a quick overview of the state of the industry without unloading some of the more depressing information about buyouts, etc. I then moved into some of the online tools that we use at Union-Bulletin.com – the basics: Flickr, Twitter, WordPress, PBWiki, Google, etc. I talked a little about how these tools are not threatening journalism itself only its printed component. And how these online tools give journalist a wonderful opportunity to deliver their content to a wide range of people using a wide range of formats.

Then I spent a little time extolling Twitter. I gave a few recent examples of how Twitter was used to spread news and info during times of crisis.

“How many of you use Twitter or know what it is?”

There were about 20 or so students in the room. What number of them raised their hands would you guess?

ONE.

One student knew what Twitter is.

Actually this isn’t all that surprising to me. My 14 year old has scoffed at my every mention of Twitter. I’ve recently read a blog post or two about that disconnect between young people and some of the online tools that many of us new media geeks get hyped up about ( I couldn’t find the appropriate links – bad use of Delicious on my part. So if anyone out there can point me in the right direction that would be great.)

I did see some knowing nods when I mentioned blogging, RSS and wikis. So why aren’t they incorporating it into their journalistic pursuits? One good sign was that their teacher/advisor Gay Buissink was writing down much of the information I mentioned.

Jeremy Gonzalez, the UB web producer, talked to the students about video. He had more success as far as the number of students who had actually shot video and posted it on sites like YouTube. All the students had either posted a video to YouTube or knew a friend who had. We are trying to find a way to tap that potential for our website. Can we motivate a few of those video camera-wielding students to shoot some footage at the next basketball game with a quick post-game interview? We’re not sure. We may end up offering some incentive – a gift certificate?

So how do we motivate these budding journalists to use the digital tools at their disposal? How can we feel comfortable passing on the reigns of an already uncertain profession and industry if are not confident that they truly grasp the present and future of journalism?

 

more about “Wa Hi Journalism Presentation – Slide…“, posted with vodpod

Video – is it in the presentation?

What is the best solution for a newspaper site to present their video content? A stand-alone, branded video player or a blog-style video page? At Union-Bulletin.com we have recently switched to a blog style video page. It allows more of the community participation that we are generally after. Viewers can rate, comment and help disseminate by grabbing the embed code. Using this platform we can also add additional content such as photos, Google maps, poll questions that really expands the content. We will continue to embed our videos into story pages but our readers will really get the full picture by visiting our video site.

What other platforms/solutions should we look into to deliver our video content?

Lessons learned in managing online communities

Paul Bradshaw asked if I’d like to share some thoughts on what I’ve learned managing online communities as part of his ongoing series Lessons in community from community editors. 

Here’s an expcerpt:

3. Do not think of the social network as an extension of the company.

It’s not. If it is, then it isn’t a social network. Be willing and ready to give up the reigns.

If you are lucky this will happen quickly and you will have a core group of users that will steer it responsibly. This is a sign of success.

Any thoughts on this? What are some things you’ve learned either managing a network or being part of one?

Blogging insight from reporter Sheila Hagar

We recently relaunched our blogs over at Union-Bulletin.com. Our initial go at it was rather unsuccessful – poorly promoted, not easily found, not updated enough. We relaunched using WordPress and promoted better and mad sure all bloggers understood the need to post frequently. The traffic to the blogs has increased significantly, especially Sheila’s – From The Storage Room.

Sat down with her to discuss her experience and to find out what she has taken away from blogging.

Added:

Sheila and I briefly touch up on the fact that to be truly successful you need to engage the public. Seek out other bloggers. Link to them and they will reciprocate. Or as Pat Thornton says:

All fine, but if you really want your blog to get noticed (especially if it’s an independent blog), you need to join the community. If you’re blogging about journalism, start mixing it up on other journalism blogs.

New responsibilities at Union-Bulletin.com

I haven’t posted here in quite some time now. A lot of stuff going on in my personal life as well as my professional life. Came across a link at the Notes from a Teacher blog to a blog post I published over at Wired Journalists.

Carlos Virgen is the latest journo to have community outreach added to his job description. And he’s excited about it.

And I am. It will allow us produce more relevant content and ultimately better serve the community. Along with the change in my job title (I am now online services manager) we also created a new online department and hired a part-time web producer. We’ve already done some exciting work, specifically with our election day coverage. We just launched a new video page and we even have a redesign of our main website in the works. All of which should add up to more traffic, more comments, more community involvement.

Added responsibilty also comes with some added stress, more meetings and the unavoidable brainstorming late at night, in the morning, during the weekend, etc.

Oh yeah and a renewed commitment to this blog. Stay tuned

Check my Wordle

I know this blog is still  young but here is my Wordle: