In another example of the power of instantaneous publishing, a woman in Florida who was raped posted messages about the incident to Twitter — raising questions about how the media should handle such events, and reinforcing how the way we get our news and information is changing.
As the BBC and other mainstream media outlets try to figure out how to curate and make sense of the “citizen journalism” coming in via social media, they also need to come to grips with the idea that news is now a process, not a product.
The explosion of real-time information through social networks like Twitter and Facebook has created an opportunity for “curation” tools such as Storify, which just launched as a public beta. These kinds of tools allow anyone to perform the same kind of function traditionally reserved for journalists.
Yes, he’s a PR guy, but Edelman’s Steve Rubel has one of the better social media and marketing “predictions” pieces I’ve seen this season. His five ideas worth watching are exactly that. Steve argues that attention is often worth more than reach, but that most media buyers either can’t or won’t buy inventory that way yet. He makes a good case that brands can play a role in curation and thought leadership. I’m less convinced marketers should be platforms, but they should definitely enable their “content” to be shared and syndicated. For instance, I’ve heard compelling stories on how Bazaarvoice harvests user reviews on brand sites – that’s where the mavens are – and re-circulates them to retailers’ sites that otherwise might be overwhelmed by lowest-common-denominator opinions.
Digg hasn’t had an easy time of it over the past few months, with a major redesign that many users disliked, and a new CEO. Now the site is using human editors to recommend links, but will that help it recover its lost glory?
Magnify.net has experienced tremendous growth over the past year, increasing its customer base by 270 percent in 2009. Now it’s looking to cash in on that growth, as it is taking steps to move the users of its free offering to a low-cost pro version of the service.
Magnify, which offers a platform for video distribution and curation, believes that now is the time for it to ramp up its business as a paid offering. To do so, it will upgrade all non-paying users to a “Pro” version of its service for 30 days for free. If they plan to continue with the Pro version, they can sign up for just $24.95 per month. But here’s the catch: if they choose not to upgrade at the end of those 30 days, Magnify will wind down the account.
In addition to nudging its free users to adopt a paid service, the Magnify will also be raising its paid rates by about 12 percent. Existing customers that are under contract for Pro or Enterprise services need not worry; the prices that they are paying will stay the same until the end of their contract term.
Read More about Magnify.net Moves to Wean Users Off Its Free Service
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