The trend among social networks to produce original content often ends badly, as Tumblr’s shuttering of Storyboard showed. Here’s where other big services, from Facebook to YouTube, are going wrong – or, in the case of LinkedIn, going right. Read more »
While much of the attention during and after the Boston bombings focused on how one Reddit thread got things wrong, there were other important parts of the community that were doing good — and even doing something approaching journalism. Read more »
Springpad takes in a lot of loose information from the web and organizes it, but that information stays on Springpad. With its new Embedded Notebooks tool, however, Springpad plans to expose that organized content back to the web. Read more at GigaOM »
Everyone uses YouTube, but how exactly do people discover new videos? We asked both web video professionals like Amy Pham and Zadi Diaz as well as your average 12 year old girl to find out. Read more »
New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan says in some cases transparency by journalists can trump the principle of objectivity, although she still argues that reporters should refrain from expressing opinions. Unfortunately for the Times, that horse has already left the barn. Read more »
Just when many people seemed to think it was dead, new ventures like Svbtle and Medium are trying to reinvent blogging by adding curation and other elements. How they plan to monetize their content, however, remains a mystery. Read more »
The sister of Facebook’s CEO got caught in a privacy snafu on Christmas Day after a private photo of her family was shared publicly. But this is about more than Facebook and its notoriously complicated settings — figuring out the boundaries of online privacy is not easy. Read more at GigaOM »
Included in the changes that Facebook recently announced to its privacy and governance policies was an admission that it aggregates and shares data on user activity with advertisers — and Facebook says it plans do so not just inside the network but on external websites as well. Read more at GigaOM »
Some prominent users of Facebook such as billionaire sports-team owner Mark Cuban are complaining that the social network wants to charge them to reach their users with marketing messages — but shouldn’t it be fairly obvious that this was part of Facebook’s plan all along? Read more at GigaOM »
An article at Jezebel identifies high-school students who posted racist tweets in the wake of the election, raising a number of questions about what we consider to be an appropriate response to that kind of behavior, and when the cure is worse than the disease. Read more at GigaOM »
Critics of social media like to focus on how much fake news gets circulated during events like Hurricane Sandy, but Twitter and other services are also quick to correct those kinds of reports, and have become part of an expanding ecosystem of real-time news. Read more at GigaOM »
The folks at News.me closed their doors to future iOS downloads on Wednesday, saying they would no longer attempt to compete with Twitter in the curation space as the social network closes down on third-party requirements. In other words, another Twitter app bites the dust. Read more at GigaOM »
In the investor call following Yahoo’s third quarter earnings report, new CEO Marissa Mayer laid out her vision for the company going forward. “The best days lie ahead,” she said. “We intend to do great things and we intend to win.” Read more »
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo says the most powerful feature of Twitter is the way it can show us what others watching the same event are thinking, and that the best use of this feature is as a companion to a televised event like the Olympics. Read more at GigaOM »
New York-based startup Ganxy, which is officially launching today at the Frankfurt Book Fair, gives authors and publishers a straightforward set of tools to let them sell ebooks and control marketing and promotions online. Read more »
Prismatic founder Bradford Cross doesn’t come from a traditional media background — he is a data scientist who specializes in machine learning — but what he is doing with content recommendations says a lot about how the media business is evolving and what the future might look like. Read more at GigaOM »
New research from the Pew Center into news consumption habits shows that the impact of mobile and social continues to grow. Almost twice as many users got news from a mobile device compared with 2010, and almost three times as many got news from a social network. Read more at GigaOM »
News-filtering service Prismatic has just launched a new “friend following” feature. Although this may look like a social-networking copycat move, founder Brad Cross says it is all about increasing the amount of data the service has about its users so that it can make relevant recommendations. Read more at GigaOM »
If you think fake online reviews are bad now, just wait a few years. Gartner predicts that in two to three years, 10 to 15 percent of all online reviews will be bought and paid for by businesses. Read more at GigaOM »
Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams has launched a news-filtering service called Nuzzel that is powered by social-networking activity. But while his previous ventures have been early to the market, his new offering suffers from the opposite problem — the market is already saturated with similar services. Read more at GigaOM »
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 »
After a summer that has seen increased activity in social media marketing, media giant Gannett Co. today announced that it has purchased BLiNQ Media, which helps companies execute and manage ad campaigns on Facebook and other social networks. Read more at GigaOM »
The reaction to Twitter’s restrictions on its API has focused mostly on whether the moves are unfair to third-party developers and apps. But what about the impact they will have on users? Twitter seems to care more about monetizing its network than what users want. Read more at GigaOM »
As we consume more and more content via real-time streams that come to us through Twitter and Facebook and newer platforms, how does that affect advertising? Everyone wants their ads to look like just another form of content, but that’s a lot harder than it sounds. Read more at GigaOM »
This week marks the 21st anniversary of the world’s first website, and as new social-web platforms like Twitter and Facebook spend more and more of their energy trying to control and monetize their networks, it’s worth remembering some of the choices that the web’s creator made. Read more at GigaOM »
The purchase of the sports-blogging site Bleacher Report by Turner Broadcasting unit fills a content hole for the Time Warner unit, but it is also a validation of the user-generated-content model behind the sports-blogging network, and a sign of the disruptive effects that model can have. Read more at GigaOM »
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 »
As Twitter tries to evolve from being a real-time information network into a multibillion-dollar commercial media entity, it is having to face the inherent conflict between those two goals, and many critics see the suspension of journalist Gary Adams’ account as a symptom of that conflict. Read more at GigaOM »
The debate continues over which model is better for social networks: free and ad-supported or paid for by users? Dalton Caldwell says the latter and is building a paid alternative to Twitter, but VC Fred Wilson argues that free is the only model that works. Read more at GigaOM »
Not that long ago, Digg was seen as one of the kingpins of the social web — BusinessWeek put founder Kevin Rose on the cover and said he was worth $60 million. Now, what’s left of Digg has been acquired by Betaworks for a reported $500,000. Read more at GigaOM »
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 »
According to Parse.ly CEO Sachin Kamdar, the problem with shares data is solvable. And as accurate social data becomes increasingly important, the first publisher to fully take advantage of this information will reap massive benefits and potentially reinvent how editorial decisions are made. Read more at GigaOM »
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 »
A comScore study of consumer behavior following exposure to marketing messages on Facebook shows that both fans and friends of fans are more likely to buy things after they see such messages, data that Facebook badly needs to prove the value of its social platform. Read more at GigaOM »
Facebook is said to be working on new features that would allow children under 13 to access the network. Is this a way of helping parents encourage their children to develop better online skills, or does it open kids up to privacy problems and other issues? Read more at GigaOM »
Social marketing platform operator Buddy Media is rolling out a bunch of updates to its suite of tools including a unified social data API, the ability to track conversions and campaigns across their entire social media efforts, and a new mobile content development platform. Read more at GigaOM »
Google is doing everything it can to integrate the Google+ social network into all of its properties, so that it can become a “social layer” across the entire company. But that same behavior is irritating users like actor — and prominent Google+ user — Wil Wheaton. Read more at GigaOM »
Tumblr is finally ready to start opening the doors to brands and will begin with a new tool for placing branded Tumblr posts into its Radar feature starting May 2, said Tumblr founder David Karp, speaking at the Ad Age Digital Conference. Read more at GigaOM »
