Comments on: Why USA Today is not a Social Networking Failure

By: Journalism vs. Blogging III: No Ethical Codes » The Buzz Bin

Journalism vs. Blogging III: No Ethical Codes » The Buzz Bin — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 11:02:58 +0000

[...] 3) Older outlets move towards hybrid new media formats, whether that’s with USA Today-esque social media tagging and commenting, or with op-eds that read more like rants than journals. [...]

By: USAToday Social Experiment | MindTouch Blog

USAToday Social Experiment | MindTouch Blog — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 08:13:20 +0000

[...] His crunchiness points out what seems to be less than desirable results from the recent relaunch of USAToday.com with Social tools. This isn’t much of a surprise by my estimation. The fact is this broad social experiment only lends to disinterest and mediocrity. The trick is to narrowly focus many communities around common interests. Then create publish/subscribe relationships where contextually relevant between these communities and editorial content. Context is king (nods Chris–comments #28 and #29, and more on Chris’ blog). Context rules not just in creating the pub/sub relationships, but in getting me interested in contributing. I’m not the most out-spoken and rambunctious when I’m in a room full of button down suits as I am when surrounded by people more like me. The larger the crowd, the more diverse and dissimilar the backgrounds from my own, the less inclined I am to putting myself out there by sharing my opinions. Ok, if you know me you know this doesn’t really apply to me, but it does apply to the majority of folks and you do get my point. [...]

By: Geoff Livingston

Geoff Livingston — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:41:23 +0000

Proof’s in the pudding. When I see 200+ comments on a story two hours after the bell closes:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/markets/2007-08-16-world-markets-thur_N.htm

then I am inclined to believe that the USA today is successful. They don’t need to comment or reply to comments. It’s not right for us to enforce blogging dynamics on a different form of social media.

As far as the nature of their coverage, bland, vanilla, etc. I see no difference between this and some of the junk A-List bloggers serve up.

By: Chris Heuer

Chris Heuer — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 19:39:23 +0000

Really great points Tish. It is a totally different mindset required and too many people fail to allow themselves to see these things from another person’s point of view. I remember pitching one ‘insider’ on an idea I had a year ago and they said it would never work - why? because they would never use it themself… but it wasn’t for them, it was for a mainstream audience. Of course, someone else did it and it did work…

Your other point is most important - “social media” is something you need to experience directly to really understand. Pete Blackshaw drives this point home in one of his standard presentations - that he did not really ‘get it’ until he had an offline interaction with family as a follow on to something he wrote online…

Bottomline - its a complex and messy business - its the human condition and is not easily codified - getting collaborative/participatory media right is a real art with few Monet’s and a lot of caricature artists in the business…

By: Jeremiah Owyang

Jeremiah Owyang — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:55:17 +0000

Great points Chris, it’s great to see you blogging today!

By: Tish Grier

Tish Grier — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:13:30 +0000

Hi Chris…many of the questions you asked (So what are they doing to encourage participation from those who are there? How are the identifying and supporting the contributors? How are they themselves joining the conversation?)are the exact questions that must be answered in any news or marketing project that will attempt to be part of the social networking landscape (see my post here.)

Now, I know these things from actually working on a “crowdsourced” journalism project and from over 10 years of online social activity. Problem is, from those I’ve encountered, is that there are scant few in the news industry who have ever been *actively* and on their own time, involved in the online social landscape. Some have done it as part of their jobs–and that being the case, have had to maintain that journalistic level of “objectivity.” That’s a far different way of interacting than when one’s doing it on one’s one time, and with the acutal goal of making friends (or dating.) The few folks that actually *get* this are, right now, stretched a bit thin (I know some of them) and the news industry is often not all that willing to bring in those who can teach interaction (esp if they’re not also IT people who can fix the back end of things or are journalists.)

Let’s face it: online interactivity requires a new social skill set. But getting the insiders to acknowledge this is a difficult thing.