How News Consumption is Shifting to the Personalized Social News Stream

[Bill Densmore]

By  Vadim Lavrusik -- The social network of a reader is quickly becoming their personalized news wire . . .  We have gone from consuming news through traditional media and news websites to having the news broadcast to us by our social network of friends. In fact, 75% of news consumed online is through shared news from social networking sites or e-mail. Social news is finding us.

 

http://mashable.com/2010/08/10/personalized-news-stream/

[Barry Parr]

There's a lot of good stuff in this article.  We're a long way from understanding how all these changes are going to affect the distribution, promotion, and consumption of news.

I've been giving some thought to how to change the design of Coastsider to adapt to some of these changes. I'd be interested in what folks think are the most forward-looking designs for news they're seeing these days.  

bp

--
Barry Parr

http://coastsider.com
http://mediasavvy.com
http://twitter.com/barryparr

650.523.4929
-----------------------------------------

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 3:12 PM, Bill Densmore <dens...@journ.umass.edu> wrote:

By  Vadim Lavrusik -- The social network of a reader is quickly becoming their personalized news wire . . .  We have gone from consuming news through traditional media and news websites to having the news broadcast to us by our social network of friends. In fact, 75% of news consumed online is through shared news from social networking sites or e-mail. Social news is finding us.

 

http://mashable.com/2010/08/10/personalized-news-stream/

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[Jane Stevens]

We think baking social media into news sites is the way to go. We launched our local health site, WellCommons, in April in Lawrence, KS, using a brand-new CMS we created that integrates social media with journalism. We gave our community the same tools the reporters use, and open access to the site (public-facing admin). Our local community calls WellCommons the Facebook for local health. We addressed the credibility issue by asking people to use their real names, and by the structure we developed for group pages. Anyone can start a group page, but only the "owners" of the group can post into the news and resources sections. People who join the group as members can post into the commons section. Over the last four months, we've learned that we must make those more distinct visually, but we're on the right track. (We're adding a bunch of other bells and whistles in Sept & Oct.) Traffic's been growing at 20 percent a month, with 11,000 uniques by the end of June. We began with 23 groups, and at last count have 103, most created by the community. Most of the content on the site now comes from the community.  

So, we think it's less about traditional news site design and more about function. WellCommons doesn't look a traditional news site; it looks more like a social media site, and definitely functions as one. We'll be making this CMS available for commercial use, as a hosted service.  

Cheers, J.

 

Jane E. Stevens

Director of Media Strategies

The World Company

jste...@ljworld.com

WellCommons.com, LJWorld.com, KUSports.com, lawrence.com

ReJurno.com

707-495-1112 (cell)

[Jane Stevens]

Thanks, Ikaika!

I've started a couple of Ning groups, but find the system difficult to navigate. It obviously works for many groups, so I don't mean to denigrate Ning. It just doesn't work for what we're trying to do, which is create a safe place and a trusted source for news and information. Also, the jurno (the person formerly known as our health reporter) is the touchstone for the community, which is what the community wanted. While we were developing WellCommons, we met regularly with a group of about 40 people representing most parts of the local health community -- nonprofits, health insurance advocates, physicians, hospital, local food co-op, community organizations, etc. They were adamant about three things: that people use their real names, that our health reporter's information was front and central, and that we carry out our promise to them to manage a civil discourse on the site. It's been an enlightening and interesting process, and we'll be doing it with other topic-based niche sites. 

How the journalist as touchstone/community manager works: It's my belief that we journalists still retain our local watchdog role, and are responsible to make sure our community receives the best possible information. This played out when a local business announced a for-profit weight-loss contest. People who advocated a healthy lifestyle were worried that people might think it's okay to lose as much weight as you can in a short space of time, and challenged some of the business' statements on the site. Our jurno put together an article about weight-loss research (we're lucky to have a world-class weight research center at KU) that provided the latest, best information about weight loss that showed that losing a lot of weight in a short space of time is not healthy and people who do so aren't likely to keep off the weight, but that a financial incentive to lose weight can work. She also listed all the weight-loss programs in the community. 

Cheers, J.

Jane E. Stevens

Director of Media Strategies

The World Company

jste...@ljworld.com

WellCommons.com, LJWorld.com, KUSports.com, lawrence.com

ReJurno.com

707-495-1112 (cell)

On Aug 14, 2010, at 10:08 PM, Ikaika M Hussey wrote:

Jane, 

That's very interesting. You folks at The World Company have created some great CMSes!

I'm wondering how the functionality of WellCommons differs from a whitelabel social networking service such as Ning.com. I've contemplated integrating Ning into The Hawaii Independent, our local news startup. 

Best,

Ikaika Hussey

-------------------------------------------

Ikaika Hussey, Publisher

The Hawaii Independent

News • Culture • Community

www.thehawaiiindependent.com

Mobile: 808.221.2843

[Tish Grier]

Ning's "freemium" model is now over.   You have to pay to use their system.  So, one might as well look at different forum/CMS software before going the Ning route.

Tish

 

---

From: Jane Stevens <jste...@mmjourno.com>
To: Ikaika M Hussey <ikaika...@gmail.com>
Cc: rji-f...@googlegroups.com; jtmlist Matters <jtm...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sun, August 15, 2010 4:49:16 PM
Subject: Re: {JTM} How News Consumption is Shifting to the Personalized Social News Stream

[MFerrier]

Hi Jane and Ikaika,
I too had been searching for a platform that provided social
networking functions and a robust content management system...one that
could easily feature news and information from trusted sources, but
still allowed for user-generated content and social media functions.

I still think the CMS I found for LocallyGrownNews.com is one of the
best in the market. It isn't sold as an ISP like Ning or Wordpress,
but as a business technology. Here's a review I wrote of CommunityQ
and some back posts I did on comparing CMSs in the marketplace:

CommunityQ: http://michelleferrier.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/communityq-a-content-management-system-with-a-social-networking-feel/
Pro/Con List of Hyperlocal CMSs: http://michelleferrier.wordpress.com/tag/neighborlogs/

Contact me if you're interested in the CMS.
info(at)locallygrownnews.com

Michelle Ferrier

> jstev...@ljworld.com

> > jstev...@ljworld.com

> > WellCommons.com, LJWorld.com, KUSports.com, lawrence.com
> > ReJurno.com
> > 707-495-1112 (cell)
>
> > On Aug 14, 2010, at 4:17 PM, Barry Parr wrote:
>
> >> There's a lot of good stuff in this article.  We're a long way from  
> >> understanding how all these changes are going to affect the  
> >> distribution, promotion, and consumption of news.
>
> >> I've been giving some thought to how to change the design of  
> >> Coastsider to adapt to some of these changes. I'd be interested in  
> >> what folks think are the most forward-looking designs for news  
> >> they're seeing these days.
>
> >> bp
>
> >> --
> >> Barry Parr
>
> >>http://coastsider.com
> >>http://mediasavvy.com
> >>http://twitter.com/barryparr
>
> >> 650.523.4929
> >> -----------------------------------------
>

> >> On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 3:12 PM, Bill Densmore <densm...@journ.umass.edu

[Ikaika M Hussey]

Jane, 

That's very interesting. You folks at The World Company have created some great CMSes!

I'm wondering how the functionality of WellCommons differs from a whitelabel social networking service such as Ning.com. I've contemplated integrating Ning into The Hawaii Independent, our local news startup. 

Best,

Ikaika Hussey

-------------------------------------------

Ikaika Hussey, Publisher

The Hawaii Independent

News • Culture • Community

www.thehawaiiindependent.com

Mobile: 808.221.2843

On Aug 14, 2010, at 4:30 po, Jane Stevens wrote: