Get your cat on: BuzzFeed creates new section where readers can publish
photo: BuzzFeed
Users will now get their own vertical on BuzzFeed, where they can submit according to their “Cat Power.” Read more »
What Nextdoor is doing right with hyperlocal and Patch is doing wrong
photo: Flickr user Jason Parks
Most of the startups and networks focused on hyperlocal or community news and information try to be as open as possible, but Nextdoor is taking the exact opposite approach and making the barrier to entry for users as high as it can. Read more at GigaOM »
Fixing online comments — how do you automate trust?
photo: Shutterstock / Sam72
Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Overflow, has launched a new platform that he hopes will improve the nature of online comments by adding trust metrics — but there are no shortcuts to healthy online communtiies. Read more »
Reddit, freedom of speech and the dark side of community
In addition to occasional acts of journalism, Reddit is also known for its less savory content, including a page featuring creepy photos of women taken without their permission — and the controversy over that kind of content says a lot about the nature of the community. Read more at GigaOM »
What newspapers and other media could learn from Reddit
Reddit has grown to become one of the most high-profile online communities, one that has even played a journalistic role in some recent cases. Among the things that newspapers and other media entities could learn from Reddit are the benefits of a strong and engaged community. Read more at GigaOM »
So the new Digg has relaunched — now comes the hard part
Digg, the social-news community that New York-based incubator Betaworks acquired part of last month, has been relaunched with a new look and new plumbing, but it doesn’t have anything like the kind of community Digg had — something that is hugely valuable and difficult to build. Read more at GigaOM »
Margaret Atwood on Wattpad and the value of taking risks
photo: Flickr user Jeremy Mates
Margaret Atwood may be a literary legend, but she isn’t resting on her laurels — instead, she is working with the online writing community at Wattpad to encourage new writers, and crowdfunding a new platform for artists called Fanado. Read more at GigaOM »
The future of media and forcing new content into old models
The controversy over new-media startup Journatic and its hyper-local news service says a lot about how difficult it is to find new ways of producing journalism, in part because the traditional media industry and its supporters want to force everything into old models and familiar formats. Read more at GigaOM »
Careful, Twitter — remember what happened to MySpace and Digg
Twitter has made it clear it plans to crack down on third-party services by tightening the rules on use of the network, but this desire for control — and the drive to monetize its user base — could ruin what made Twitter special to begin with. Read more at GigaOM »
HarperCollins launches Epic Reads digital community for teens
HarperCollins has launched Epic Reads, a digital community designed to connect readers with HarperTeen authors and books. But this is not a retail site. Read more »
Sold for £87 million, but can MoneySavingExpert.com keep savers sweet?
photo: DECC
One of the poster boys for online specialist entrepreneurial journalism is selling to a price comparison website. But can independent personal finance guru Martin Lewis keep his legion followers happy? Read more »
Journatic CEO: We are creating a better future for journalism
Journatic, a media startup that produces hyper-local content for newspapers, has been criticized as a “content farm.” But in an interview with GigaOM, founder Brian Timpone says not only his model more efficient than that of a newspaper, but it can actually help produce better journalism. Read more at GigaOM »
Snapguide is the first mobile app with Pinterest integration
Snapguide, the three-week-old iPhone and web app that lets users create “how-to” guides with pictures and videos, is now the first mobile app to integrate with Pinterest for “seamless sharing.” Read more »
Orange Fancies Itself As GetGlue, Miso Social TV Rival
photo: Corbis / Simon Marcus
Orange is having a run at the nascent second-screen social-TV space already occupied by the likes of GetGlue, Miso, Zeebox and Intonow. Read more »
What Happened When I Got Retweeted By @BarackObama
photo: Barack Obama Twitter
I thought it would be cool to be retweeted by the President, but it kind of sucked. Read more »
Social TV's Zeebox Aims At U.S. Under Time Warner's Forbes
Second-screen social TV startup Zeebox has poached Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) Media SVP Jason Forbes to head its upcoming competition wit… Read more »
Social Media Display Fuelling Ongoing Internet Ad Growth
photo: Galushko Sergey / Shutterstock
The internet will attract 21 percent more ad spend each year on its way to gobbling 22.1 percent of the total market by 2014, according to l… Read more »
Everyone's A Curator, Everyone's A Content Creator
photo: Dan Brunell
It used to be that we were all just consumers — or most of us were, anyway. We’d watch TV or read a book or listen to the music on the radi… Read more »
Time Magazine, Foursquare Partner For Political Conventions
Time Magazine is offering some special content to Foursquare users who check in at the Republican National Convention in Tampa in August or… Read more »
Facebook Pushes Advertisers To Get Creative And Social With Ads
photo: Shutterstock / Cienpies Design
Facebook showed off a new suite of premium ads Wednesday that it thinks will allow advertisers to interact more directly with their customer… Read more »
What Yelp’s IPO Means About The Future Of Crowdsourced Media
Yelp announced pricing of its planned IPO, with plans to sell 7.15 million shares at $12 to $14 a share. But the important thing is that Yel… Read more »
When Is The Social Curation Bubble Going To Burst?
You just can’t move for social curation services right now. The biggest noise might be coming from Pinterest, which is growing like a weed — but whether it’s the new-look Delicious, Switzerland’s Paperli, shopping curation site Svpply, image service Mlkshk or another site, the fact is that almost everybody seems to want to help you save and sort and share the things you find on the web right now. Read more »
Why Dating Sites Are Broken
I met my current boyfriend four years ago in the elevator of our Georgetown dorm. Our friendship slowly grew until we went on our first dat… Read more »
How To Use Facebook’s Open Graph To Build Your Business
Last year, it became clear that Facebook is well on its way to becoming a social operating system underlying our digital lives. And the enh… Read more »
Facebook’s Birth Certificate
photo: AP Images
Facebook is widely expected to go public in the very near future with a valuation north of $75 billion. It’s a moment that tech watchers hav… Read more »
The Latest Complaint About Google Plus: It's 'Breaking Search'
photo: Flickr / mattbraga
Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is a great search company. They defined how we enter the great brickyard of knowledge for most of this decade because th… Read more »
No Startup Is Better Than Foursquare With New Products
About two years ago, Fred Wilson and I were talking about which startups we found interesting and I mentioned offhandedly that Foursquare wa… Read more »
Publishers' Social Site aNobii Relaunches To Put The 'Book' In 'Facebook'
photo: Robert Andrews
Book-readers’ social commerce site aNobii has got the relaunch for which three book publishers invested in it back in March. Read more »
Is There A Business Model To Support Some Of The Great New Curation Tools?
photo: Shutterstock / Gts
I love talking about the things I enjoy using. The emerging ecosystem in which a bunch of smart people curate long form journalism is defini… Read more »
Digg's Problems Are Much Deeper Than Traffic Numbers
You know things aren’t going well for a website when it has to come out and deny rumors that it’s traffic has fallen 50 percent over the las… Read more »
How Come 'Modern Warfare 3' Is The Most Hated Game On The Web?
photo: Call of Duty
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has attracted near-universal critical acclaim. It is a slick, well-constructed and generously proportioned in… Read more »
@ pcE11: Where Do You Build Your Brand?
photo: Tom Krazit
When it comes to marketing, some things are obvious: Twitter is important. Facebook is more important (at least so far). Holding onto those… Read more »
Some Marketers Are Blowing It With Facebook And Twitter
photo: Corbis / Oliver Burston
Companies blitzing consumers with messages on Facebook and Twitter in a frantic attempt at engagement are about to learn a tough lesson: It’… Read more »
Anthony Rose’s Social TV Startup Zeebox Is Now Live
photo: Zeebox
The TV engagement product co-founded by ex BBC iPlayer chief Anthony Rose launched on Thursday evening to ride the booming trend in two-scre… Read more »
How Much Are Social Networks Really Impacting Shopping Habits?
photo: Corbis / Rick Gomez
If you read about the impact of social networks and deal sites on how people shop and what they buy when they are shopping, you would think… Read more »
Hyperlocal Businesses Try New Revenue Models
photo: Flickr / Snapshotsofthepast.com
Hyperlocal startups in a crowded marketplace are testing new ways to stand out, and they discussed their strategies at the Street Fight Summ… Read more »
Research Digest: Social Media Boost Video Views, TV Engagement
Social referrals are driving up online video consumption, while TV viewers are increasingly multi-tasking, according to two separate researc… Read more »
Zynga Aims For ‘Hypergrowth’ As IPO Nears
photo: Zynga / FarmVille
Pushing regulatory rules has become de rigeur when American internet firms prepare to go public. The infamous Playboy interview with Larry P… Read more »
Gannett Shuttering MomsLikeMe Network, Deleting Everything
photo: Real Girls Media
Gannett’s MomsLikeMe hyperlocal parenting network will cease operating on Friday and its 100-plus town-specific sites will go dark and the c… Read more »
Two New Experiments In Book Publishing For Teens
photo: Corbis / Blend Images / LWA / Dann Tardif
New initiatives from Open Road Integrated Media and Wattpad hope to draw teen readers in with webisodes, music videos, “triggered events” an… Read more »
