TechMedia » social media

Rise of the social media snitch

Liz — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 06:08:29 +0000

And that’s OK when used for good, not evil.
As was the case for the massive social outcry about the Vancouver rioting following the Canucks loss to the Bruins Wednesday night. A Facebook group quickly formed to gather photo and video evidence against the rioters, and by Thursday night it had 80,887 likes.

Girl brags of riot activities on Facebook

Facebook comment from photo on Vancouver Riot Post Your Photos

These snitches gathered photos of rioters and encouraged people to tag anyone they recognized. As well, they gathered screenshots of Facebook users bragging in their statuses about their illegal exploits.

On Twitter, the Vancouver Police Department encouraged the public to submit tips, photos and video through the Crime Stoppers account.

And on Tumblr my favourite tactic – a public shaming project.

And it’s not just snitching on a local level that’s going on.

The Globe and Mail reported this week that social media users are helping NATO fight Gadhafi in Libya. “On Twitter, Facebook and other services, they discuss satellite images, vessel tracking data and the latest gossip from their sources inside the country.”

NATO officials have acknowledged that social media reports contribute to their targeting process – but only after checking them against other, more reliable, sources of information.

Regular folk are combing satellite images to find clues, such as military vehicles, to report coordinates to NATO.

As ever more content producers post their works, and with a growing, world-wide audience as witness, it will become more and more difficult to hide any bad behaviour. In this way, social media can be a society’s conscience.

Storify makes stories from social media

Liz — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 18:37:12 +0000

I just completed my first test of Storify, which is a fun and easy way to tell stories from social media:

Collect the best photos, video, tweets and more to publish them
as simple, beautiful stories that can be embedded anywhere.

The resulting story, shown below, can then be easily placed into a webpage, or linked to from Storify. Here’s what the one below looks like on its page.

The service is in Beta testing for the time being, and you must request an invite to use. Storify is being used by some large media companies to cover events such as the uprising in Egypt – both CBC and The Globe and Mail created Storify pages. And with the recent announcement that Storify raised $2 million in its first round of funding, it looks like we’ll be seeing even more Storify embeds on the pages of news sites.

It’s a great tool for breaking news, but could also be used “to remember an event through what people share, whether it’s a conference, wedding, election or natural disaster,” says its profile on Crunchbase.

How would you use Storify?

Emergency notification lacking in #yzf (Yellowknife) online

Liz — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:07:09 +0000

A recent large fire at the Yellowknife landfill had the city all a twitter with advice (“keep the windows closed”) and Twitpics of the huge cloud of black smoke that could be seen across the city, such as this series posted by Val Pond.

There was plenty of information on Twitter, but the city was silent.
There has been talk in council of using Twitter (for a full list of councillor social media links, check out Kyle’s listing.) I think that’s a good start, and keeping its website up-to-date would be another avenue.

Nanaimo's website features emergency warning registration form

For instance, the city of Nanaimo website features a prominent Emergency Notification link on its homepage. You register with a form and can receive emergency notifications via telephone or email. The phone/email you receive will detail the nature of the situation and give instructions on what to do.

This is a great idea, I think Yellowknife should adopt it. How about you?

Having a Hoot

Liz — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 23:36:52 +0000

With HootSuite, you can manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success.

I recently began to use Twitter at work and decided it was time I got around to signing up for an account with HootSuite to make it easier to tweet from both work and home. I already knew this tool allows for scheduled tweets but I didn’t know that you can:

manage user profiles to let multiple people tweet from same account
“Enable auto track” to add initials to tweet
embed Google AdSense to generate money from your tweets
tweet your RSS feed (advised to select frequency of tweets so as not to appear spammy)
collect stats on click-throughs of your links

For more information on this great Twitter power tool, I recommend this blog post by Chris Spagnuolo.

CNN taps crowd for Obama inauguration content

Liz — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 06:52:51 +0000

CNN, Facebook partner

Interesting story on journalism.co.uk about CNN’s plans to incorporate social media into its coverage of President Elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 20.

So of course I had to log on and become a Facebook fan of CNN to see what it was all about. The event promo says:

What will your Facebook status say when Obama becomes President? CNN.com and Facebook are partnering to enable you to update your status, and follow you friends’ updates, while you watch the inauguration live online, all on http://cnn.com/live …
Whether you’re at the office, at home, at the library, or anywhere else, you can share this moment in history with your Facebook friends live, as it happens.

The story links to NPR (National Public Radio), which is requesting help with its social media coverage, including

Mobcasting: audio recordings of voicemails left by listeners about their thoughts and feelings on inauguration day
An inauguration tag of #inaug09 for Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blogs, etc
Maps of user-generated content

iReport blog gathers news from masses

The maps feature is also prominent iReport, a site run by CNN with the disclaimer: “Only the stories marked ‘On CNN’ have been vetted by CNN for use in CNN’s global news coverage.”

Its world map feature lead me to a report on this fun gadget, a HD Video Recorder Snorkle Mask with Lights, shot at the CES in Las Vegas.

This massive crowd-sourced blog generated 225,003 reports worldwide last month, 1,085 of which ran on the CNN site also. That’s quite a content generator for the amount of resources needed.

Loss of old media jobs offset by new media jobs

Liz — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 23:48:30 +0000

So much upheaval in the newspaper business this days, 600 recently laid off at Sun Media chain, there is even a website, Paper Cuts, that keeps a running tally of layoffs and buyouts at U.S. newspapers. Christmas parties cancelled all over.

Big media sites have redesigned their websites to accept user content and now use of social media tools. A TechCrunch post cites a Pew Survey that most Americans are getting their news from the Internet rather than newspapers. Although it states that TV still beats both the Internet and newspapers as a news source, it goes on to say, “give it a couple more years and the Internet should overtake that as well.”

But online advertising won’t always pay the kind of cash that a full page ad can. No wonder the newspapers have been turning their photographers into videographers … a 15 second commercial at the beginning of a clip can be a money spinner.

There is some good news on the horizon for media geeks though … MediaShift states that, “As newspapers and broadcasters slice their senior-level workforce, they are also quietly building their digital and online teams.” And a Fast Company story points to the impending retirement of aging baby boomers and a new tech boom.

Plus for us West Coast Canadians … the 2010 Olympics is rumoured to be creating a job or two …