Community-inspired initiatives, much like journalism, need a sense of purpose, passion and objective urgency – the ability to look unflinchingly at a subject and capture it in a way that’s surprising and insightful. With that in mind, here’s how some of the most popular communities and social networks are experimenting with original content — and what works and doesn’t.

Tumblr

Storyboard sought to surface and report on interesting stories and users within the Tumblr community, applying a kind of branded journalism and marketing mix that’s becoming increasingly commonplace.

The failure of Storyboard was in its inability to find an editorial voice that resonated in the community. Tumblr users communicate with a pidgin lexicon of reaction GIFs, memes, and blog entries, but Storyboard took a more print-oriented approach. The content (and layout) was reminiscent of an in-flight magazine, as if trying to sell the reader on a particular destination.

Of course, Storyboard did produce a variety of laudable content in partnership with esteemed publishers, most notably its Letters from Newtown project with Mother Jones and WNYC’s look inside the New York Times morgue (and the Daily Dot syndicated a significant number of Storyboard articles). But the numbers don’t lie and Storyboard’s most popular posts hover around just 6,000 notes – surely a factor in the decision to shutter it.

Facebook

Like Storyboard, Facebook Stories is a branded editorial effort that relies on publishing partners and user submissions. Last month, former managing editor Dan Fletcher proclaimed the social network “doesn’t need reporters,” because there’s “no more engaging content Facebook could produce than you talking to your family and friends.” To be blunt, it’s almost as if Fletcher hasn’t seen a typical Facebook post. The most talked about pages on the social network are dominated by image spam and mindless posts about “teen swag.”

The greater  problem with Facebook Stories has been one of approach. It publishes monthly, a bizarre strategy that utterly defies the very best characteristics of the site and is obviously in direct conflict with the online ethos. Content on Facebook is instantaneous and reactionary; it’s about celebrating small moments not just milestones, and any editorial effort should mirror that.

Facebook Stories needs to take a cue from Upworthy – a comparable editorial effort centered on inspiring content – and focus less on presentation and more on how content should be packaged and shared. 

YouTube

YouTube made headlines when it invested $200 million in original channels and programming last January. Then, after cutting its losses on 70 percent of those recipients, it promptly dropped another $100 million in November. The few shows that actually succeeded – most notably, Philip DeFranco’s SourceFed, Felicia Day’s Geek and Sundry channel, and the VlogBrothers’ Crash Course – were the ones that understood how to connect specifically with a YouTube audience and what makes content succeed on the platform. Notably, none of them are TV veterans.

The quick lesson is you can’t fake authenticity on YouTube, and celebrity status often doesn’t translate to subscriber counts. The content has to be immediate and impactful. As Hank Green of the Vlogbrothers (SciShow, CrashCourse) noted in a recent Tumblr post:  ”Online video isn’t about how good it looks, it’s about how good it is.”

LinkedIn

The career-oriented network is oddly the rare success story of implementing original content. Even before LinkedIn’s $90 million acquisition of popular news-reader Pulse, the professional network was making all the right moves in terms of content creation and curation with a leadership board in the form of LinkedIn Influencers and a daily news feed that distributes third-party content selected by users.

Where the company has invested in original content, it’s done so by popular demand, tapping proven influencers like Virgin CEO Richard Branson and ex-FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski for exclusive articles that cater specifically to the network’s business-savvy audience. As Jennifer Van Grove noted for CNET, “content is quickly becoming the new connection on LinkedIn.” 

Outliers

The web is becoming one big imageboard, where the emphasis is placed on viral sharing. That can be seen in everything from Facebook’s redesign to LinkedIn’s revamp. A recent study of Reddit found that 86 percent of the posts on the social news site were easily disposable: image macros, photos, and videos.

The challenge facing that site, not to mention communities like Pinterest and Instagram – whose content strategies thus far have been comprised mostly of curated tags – is to create something of permanent value for the community, to offer more than a temporary spotlight.

Simply put, you have to add value. Social networks need to support the native content efforts of their users and accentuate it where they can. But if they are going to provide editorial content themselves, it must be in the spirit of the community, not forced from outside of it.

Austin Powell is assistant managing editor of The Daily Dot, which calls itself the hometown newspaper of the World Wide Web.

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Some of the commentary about Reddit and the bombings has made it seem as though all of Reddit was engaged in a massive “witch hunt” to find the identity of the suspects in Boston. But the reality is that other parts of Reddit were doing things that were much more valuable, and I think we shouldn’t lose sight of that. So here are a few things that I think Reddit got right:

• It collected verified information: There were multiple Reddit threads that did nothing but curate or aggregate information about the bombings, including links to police reports, news articles and other sources. These threads also helped collect photos and video clips of the Boston marathon that might have contained useful information — and asked anyone with that information to also send those photos and clips to the authorities.
• It helped people who wanted to help: A number of the threads early on in the aftermath contained lists of all the things that users could do if they wanted to assist not just the investigation but the people who had been injured — from links to Google’s Person Finder and the Red Cross help line to information on where to pick up bags left at the scene, or airlines who had changed their policies on cancelling flights as a result of the attacks.
• It helped to verify facts: In most of the information-gathering threads, there is real-time verification of the info occurring, as users challenge other users to prove their claims. It is almost identical to the discussion that occurs on a Wikipedia “talk” page, in which editors try to verify the information that is being posted to an entry. Multiple updates occur within minutes of each other, and each one is marked with the time and any edits that took place.

Is Reddit capable of journalism? Yes

Even Reddit itself posted a disclaimer on one of its threads that said it isn’t trying to be a media entity, and that what it does isn’t journalism. And the user who created the “Find Boston Bombers” sub-Reddit or thread told The Atlantic that he doesn’t think of it as journalism either, and that no one should ever rely on such threads as a source because there is so much conflicting information flying around. He also admitted that the attempt to identify the bombers from photos was “a disaster.”

So if even Reddit itself doesn’t claim to be producing journalism, why do I keep saying it is? Because I think Reddit and Twitter and other social tools are broadening the concept of journalism. Some, like my friend Raju Narisetti from News Corp., believe that we should call this kind of thing something else — like that horrible term “user-generated content” — and leave the term journalism for things that are produced by professionals who are held to standards (although some might question whether the New York Post fits that description).

@mathewi you should fear. Find a new definition for non-journalism and use it. Why call ugc, crowds as journalism. It isnt.—
Raju Narisetti (@rajunarisetti) April 22, 2013

In a nutshell, I believe that journalism is being atomized — that is, broken down into its component parts. One of those is the news-gathering function, whether it’s from eyewitnesses or just on-the-ground observation. This part of journalism can and is being done by anyone, thanks to what Om has called the “democratization of distribution,” and it can be hugely valuable. And the verification function has also been outsourced, so that people like Eliot Higgins can play a key role in identifying Syria weapons without leaving their apartment.

Reddit may have failed badly in one specific thread, and that is unfortunate. But other parts of the site have and continue to perform valuable functions that I see as part of the broader landscape or ecosystem of networked journalism. Instead of focusing just on the downside of that community, we should be thinking about how to take advantage of it — how to turn a negative feedback loop into a positive one.

Post and thumbnail photo courtesy of Shutterstock / wellphoto K

As part of its upgrade to version 4.0 of its service, Springpad on Wednesday unveiled a notebook-embedding feature for publishers and brands. The idea is that brands will create notebooks full of relevant content for their customers and then post those notebooks on their websites. Customers can browse and interact with those notebooks just as they would through Springpad’s web and mobile apps, and if they find something they like they can save those notebooks into their own Springpad libraries.

For instance, one of Springpad’s new partners, Glamour, is using embedded notebooks to aggregate everything from beauty tips and shopping list suggestions to specific articles on fashions or product pages. Customers never have to leave Glamour’s site to explore that notebook, but if they want to save the notebook it will be copied into a new or existing Springpad account. There the notebook lives on the user’s library – every time Glamour updates it, the customer’s digital copy reflects the new content.

Springpad co-founder and VP of Business Development Jeff Janer said that brands have long been taking advantage of social media and curation services to promote their content and products, but while Facebook and Pinterest generate an awful lot of traffic, there’s limited follow-through. For instance, many customers may “like” a brand’s Facebook profile, but there’s little chance they’ll return to it after the initial liking. Pinterest is a great way for brands to display their wares in a visually appealing way, but beyond the visual, there are few options for displaying other forms of content.

While embedded notebooks are initially targeted at companies  and advertising agencies that will pay Springpad for the service, Janer said they’re just a first step in the startup’s strategy to make all of its user-organized content portable. Right now a lot of loose information flows into Springpad, gets organized and then stays in Springpad. The company wants to encourage users to take those notebooks outside Springpad’s confines and show the world their organizational labors, Janer said.

Right now, anyone can embed a notebook into a Facebook page, but Janer said Springpad is working with blogging platforms and other social networks to increase its reach. Eventually Springpad hopes to make posting a notebook anywhere on the web as easy as embedding a YouTube video.

Springpad 4.0 isn’t quite a facelift of last year’s 3.0 upgrade, which effectively turned Springpad from a note-taking service into a social networking and collaboration tool. But it is supporting another nifty new feature: intent-based search. Springpad has created new search categories that parse a user’s content based on specific interests or activities.

For instance, if you want to be entertained, you can hit the “watch something” button and Springpad will dig up every movie or TV show you’ve ever “sprung” and display them in a menu. Any movie or show that is available instantly through Netflix will pop up on top. Movies that are available for rent or purchase on iTunes or Amazon will appear next. And finally showtimes and prices for films in the theater will appear at the bottom.

It also said that last year’s redesign would make subscriptions more meaningful, but has since found out that average users still don’t know what subscribing actually does.

I wanted to see how that actually stacked up in the real world. So I asked both established online video experts like Zadi Diaz, YouTube stars like Amy Pham and average users: How exactly do you do YouTube?

Annette Brown, 47, business owner and mother

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

I watch YouTube videos when I’m on Facebook, but other than that I probably go directly to YouTube once a week or so.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

To search for a new video. During the election if I found a video on Facebook and went to YouTube to watch it, I would usually see similar videos and keep watching but usually I go to a specific video, rate it if I liked it or not and then leave YouTube.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

No. I thought YouTube was a channel by itself.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

N/A

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

I find them through Facebook or email.

Matt McLernon, 29, YouTube communications manager

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

About every 5 minutes, by choice. When I’m not on YouTube.com, you can probably find me on the Android app or using the send to TV feature to send videos from my phone to my Google TV.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

It’s both. At work, I do a ton of searching for videos and channels to look for the awesome people making videos for fun or for a living. At home, I’ll flip through my channel guide and watch anything from folks like Vice, The Gregory Brothers, DevinSupertramp and others on YouTube.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

About 50. When I first started paying attention to my subscriptions, I found I had a ton that I never watched (hundreds), so I removed a bunch and channels became much more useful. I have a mix based on what I like and how frequent they post – some folks post a lot like NASA or The Laugh Factory, some post about weekly like BadLipReading, and some run in seasons like Video Game High School.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

I flipped through my Watch History and I think it’s Red Bull. They do some of the craziest, most inspiring stuff all within a few minutes, and they’re always trying to push the limit with their next video. I know I’m in for a surprise every time from them, from their Kluge video to their Enduro Chronicles series.

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

These days it’s through the Social Feed on my guide. It’s a feed just of what my friends are sharing on social networks (G+, Facebook, Twitter). It’s like replacing all those “gotta watch this video” emails you get from friends and parents, with a feed you can easily flip through.

Christina Boland, 24, Director of Operations at Grind Spaces and casual user

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

Probably daily.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

To search for a video or theme that I’m thinking of already.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

No.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

Not sure of any channels — I watch a lot of animal videos and a lot of music videos.

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

Through word of mouth or Facebook.

Zadi Diaz, Head of Content Development, Disney Interactive Entertainment

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

Seems like I’ve had YouTube on an open browser tab since 2005. I check videos several times a day because it’s an important part of my job and because I’m obsessed with this form of entertainment. It’s what I’ve been doing for the past nine years.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

Both. I do a lot of search through video. YouTube has in many ways taken the place of Google text search when it comes to finding and collecting specific topics of discussion. When I’m on YouTube, I do end up browsing through my subscriptions, especially if the thumbnail and title look engaging.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

I’m currently subscribed to 157 channels.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

Besides the Disney network of YouTube channels (my favorite is DisneyShows), there are three channels that I keep coming back to: iamOTHER, SoulPancake, and THNKR. I love their smart, positive vibe.

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

I find videos through sites like Reddit, Buzzfeed, Tubefilter, NewMediaRockStars, and even Kickstarter. I’ll also find new videos through my social feeds on Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, and Twitter. I have a wide network of online friends and colleagues who produce, direct, write, or perform in web shows, so I’ll find new videos through them. And sometimes, I’ll even get a video that I haven’t seen from my mother-in-law via email!

Kristina, 12, student (and my second cousin)

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

At least every day.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

I normally search for a video.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

Yes, I do subscribe to many people.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

Um I probably watch Shane Dawson more than anything.

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

I find out through what YouTube recommends actually.

Mickey Meyer, 28, EVP of YouTube network Jash

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

Too Much. Daily if not hourly.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

A little of column A, a little of column B. It’s fun to develop a subscription feed. Most people don’t even know what that means, so it’s cool to just be exploring how it could work, which it seems like no one, YouTube included, knows right now.

When I don’t see anything appealing in my feed, I tend to go to my most top pages, and see if they uploaded something I missed. If not, then I’ll just comb the most popular videos of the day. YouTube’s unfortunately made that harder to do in an effort to prove itself in the realm of original/consistent programming.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

Too many. Again, it’s really just fun to watch how it’s evolving. I subscribe to some I don’t regularly watch just to keep tabs on them.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

I’ve watched every Epic Rap Battles of History, but I’m a little biased as I used to work on them. I’ve been watching Dead Kevin a lot lately. When Fatal Farm releases new content, I’ll watch any and all of that too.

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

Friends. I watch what people whose taste I trust, post. Outside of that, Facebook in general is a good barometer of what’s actually worth watching. If three people post the same thing, I’ll check it out. Two, it better have a good thumbnail.

Rebecca Lando, 30, Network Director, Nerdist Channel and Creator, Working Class Foodies

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

At least twice daily.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

Both.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

Yes; about 25.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

MinutePhysics.

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

Word of mouth/friend recommendations and links; search; memes.

Sam Louderback, 13, student (and son of Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback)

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

Every day after I finish my homework, for about 3 hours.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

Since I have been using YouTube for so long, I have so many YouTubers that I am subscribed to, so I just browse through my subscriptions.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

Yes. I am currently subscribed to 64 YouTube channels.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

Right now I mostly watch two different YouTubers: Ijevin and vintagebeef.

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

I find new YouTubers through collaborations and dual commentaries.

YouTuber Amy Pham, Host of The Platform’s “The Fashion Statement”

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

Weekly, I check in every week to see what’s going on in the YouTube world and the type of feedback we get on our content. I try to keep up with what’s working and what the viewers are responding to, in addition to what isn’t.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

I usually go to Youtube to browse through any new videos that pop up on my radar; sometimes thought I do find myself searching when I’m on the hunt for a specific music video or tutorial!

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

Yes! The Platform of course, Andreaschoice, MakeupbyCamila, Beautycrush, Essiebutton, Pixiwoo, ClothesEncounters, etc. All the lovely beauty and fashion channels whom I’ve come to respect and become huge fans of!

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

The Platform! Although I might be biased in that regard (I check the channel constantly to see what’s working with our audience, and to see if there’s anything I can do to help improve my show).

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

YouTube, YouTube, YouTube. If you’re looking for new online videos, why go elsewhere but the source?

Final Thoughts

The big thing I observed from doing this survey: The responses from these folk, civilians and industry pros alike, show that social is still a huge part of discovery, even the people who understand the intricacies of the YouTube channel and subscription system.

However, the people actively using YouTube’s advanced features and finding new content through strategies like collaboration aren’t just the YouTube savvy — the youth of today are highly engaged with these methods. The question now becomes for YouTube: Is there a way to get everyone using the site behaving like a 12-year-old?

Want to add your own answers to the survey? Feel free to do so in the comments!

In her latest post, Sullivan takes on the case of NYT reporter Scott Shane, who wrote a story about former CIA operative John Kiriakou, a man who is facing a prison term for leaking classified information to journalists, including background information about one of his CIA colleagues and his involvement in a mission to capture a suspected terrorist. The journalist who was given that information — during a series of off-the-record interviews with Kiriakou — was none other than Scott Shane, who described what happened in detail in a recent piece for the Times.

Objectivity, fairness and the “View From Nowhere”

In her post on the story, Sullivan notes that the NYT was criticized by a number of journalists and other observers — including the former director of the investigative reporting unit at the Miami Herald — for allowing someone who was involved in a story to write about it. This was a “glaring conflict of interest,” said the Herald editor, suggesting that the Times should have had someone else write the story and interview Shane to get his side of what happened. But Sullivan disagrees:

“In this case, no one could have told this important tale as well. Those who have read it know more about how government and reporting work than they did before. It’s the kind of story that makes you think; it may make you question the status quo. That’s a pretty good definition of what effective journalism does.”

Sullivan also tackled the broader issue of transparency vs. objectivity a few days earlier, calling it “an increasingly important subject, and a complex one.” She described a conversation with Rosen in which the NYU journalism professor talked about how a rigidly objective piece can become a useless “he said/she said” exercise. “The View from Nowhere is slowly getting harder to trust,” said Rosen, whereas the disclosure by a writer of his or her viewpoint can actually make that person’s work more trustworthy rather than less.

The NYT public editor said she wasn’t prepared to admit that “transparency is the new objectivity” (a phrase coined by David Weinberger of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society), but she agreed that the idea has merit — at least insofar as it means that journalists should “let readers get to know their backgrounds, their personalities and how they do their jobs.” And she agreed that the “view from nowhere” should be tossed out. But she still maintained that expressions of opinion on public issues by reporters was a problem, and that the Times shouldn’t allow it:

“The Times should continue to enforce its rules that bar journalists from the most visible forms of partisanship: contributing to campaigns, joining rallies or making public shows of support for candidates or causes. It would be hard for readers to believe that a reporter who contributed to a campaign or carried a sign in an abortion-related rally could report without bias.”

Transparency doesn’t replace other journalistic virtues

The only problem with this approach is that it’s like King Canute ordering the ocean to stop advancing: banning reporters from rallies is one thing, but what about expressing opinions on Twitter? Is everyone going to get a NYT editor appointed as their dedicated social-media nanny, as Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren recently did? Should reporters be blocked from joining Facebook groups or “liking” certain things? Why is Shane allowed to talk about his reactions to things, but Rudoren isn’t? In a follow-up post to Sullivan’s, Rosen argues this particular horse has already left the barn:

“Viewlessness as a means of trust production in news came with voicelessness for the individual author. That is now ebbing away, especially with social media and two-way interactions between journalists and users… The costs of sticking with the default model in trust production are visible and mounting, and increasingly journalists are looking for a way out.”

Rosen’s larger point, as I understand it, is that transparency and intellectual honesty shouldn’t be seen as antithetical to the other virtues of journalism — things like fairness and accuracy, for example — but should be seen as worthwhile additions to the modern journalist’s approach. Alex Howard of O’Reilly Media wonders whether journalists should adopt a kind of scientific method, by providing their hypotheses and evidence as they construct a story, and that is certainly worth further discussion as well.

In the long run, it’s worth asking what we can gain by allowing reporters to be human beings while they do their jobs, instead of only asking what we lose by doing so, and Sullivan’s posts appear to be a step in that direction — albeit a small one.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Shutterstock/Donskarpo and Getty Images/Mario Tama

Since the “democratization of content” that was created by both blogs and social media is fairly well established now, both Svbtle and Medium seem to be focused on the process of curation and design rather than simply giving writers a new place to publish their content. How they are going to monetize this new form of curated blogging remains a mystery, however.

Svbtle was born last March, when designer and developer Dustin Curtis decided to create what he thought was a more elegant and simple way of posting content (interestingly enough, this is almost exactly the same motivation that David Karp has said was behind his creation of the Tumblr network in 2007). And while Svbtle seemed at first like a personal project involving Curtis and some of his writer and designer friends, it has grown fairly substantially, with more than 200 bloggers generating what Svbtle says in its blog post are “millions upon millions of pageviews” a month.

Svbtle admits it doesn’t know how it will make money

Curtis told TechCrunch that he raised the unspecified amount of funding from a group that includes SV Angel, the CrunchFund and New York-based incubator Betaworks (the startup also got some earlier funding through the Y Combinator program) because he wanted to hire developers, but also because he needed a “cushion for experimentation.” Among other things, the Svbtle founder admitted he doesn’t really have any idea how the company is going to monetize the content it is curating on the network.

As Curtis put it in the TechCrunch interview: “Monetizing content, especially written content, is extremely difficult. I think Svbtle’s biggest innovation will be in this area, but I don’t know what it is yet.” But he provided some clues in a response on Twitter on Tuesday:

You can't make money in publishing by monetizing the content. You have to monetize the delivery system.

—
dustin curtis (@dcurtis) November 21, 2012

Medium is also focusing on curation and design

In many ways, Svbtle seems to be aimed at the same kind of market niche as Medium, the startup that Evan Williams founded last fall after leaving active duty at Twitter — where he was a co-founder and CEO — along with Biz Stone and Jason Goldman, both of whom were co-founders and/or early staffers at Twitter and Blogger. Reinventing blogging seems like a particularly fitting task for Williams, since Blogger (which was acquired by Google in 2003) was one of the early success stories in what was then a brand-new way of publishing and distributing content online.

And like the Svbtle network, Medium seems to be focusing on the curation process as a way of adding value to the blog market: it is invitation-only, although the company has said it plans to open up to more contributors in the future. And Medium recently hired a content editor, former literary agent Kate Lee, whose job appears to be finding new writers and encouraging them to blog on Medium — as well as perhaps finding ways of distributing that content in other forms such as ebooks. But much like Svbtle, the company hasn’t given many hints about how it plans to monetize its network.

Blog networks like Pajamas Media and others were a staple of the early days of blogging too, but most failed to achieve any kind of actual business success — although some managed to earn advertising revenue through ad networks like The Deck and Federated Media, which was an early backer of blogs like TechCrunch and Laughing Squid. The Huffington Post arguably started in the same way, with a core of unpaid bloggers that eventually became a business, and so did Talking Points Memo.

Can Svbtle or Medium find an alternate route to success, possibly by imitating the “artisanal” approach taken by entities like Marco Arment’s The Magazine, which is iOS-only? That remains to be seen. But one thing seems clear: just when you thought blogging was dead, someone comes along to reinvent it.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user Wesley Fryer

As detailed by BuzzFeed, the problem started late Christmas evening, when Vox Media staffer Callie Schweitzer shared a funny photo on Twitter of the Zuckerberg family using the social network’s new Poke feature — an app that allows users to send messages or photos that self-destruct after a certain amount of time (a feature that itself can be seen as a response to privacy concerns). Randi Zuckerberg saw the photo because she was mentioned in the tweet, which has since been deleted, and told Schweitzer that sharing it publicly on Twitter was “way uncool.”

Schweitzer apologized, and said she believed the picture was public because it showed up in her feed, and that she sees Zuckerberg’s updates because she signed up for them via Facebook’s Twitter-style “subscribe” feature. After some back-and-forth, Zuckerberg determined that the Vox staffer saw the photo because she is connected to a mutual friend — a friend who tagged Zuckerberg in the photo, and thereby shared it with her entire social graph. Zuckerberg then shared what she felt was the lesson we should all take from this incident, namely: “always ask permission before posting a friend’s photo publicly.”

It would be nice if figuring out online privacy was that simple, but it isn’t — not by a long shot. And it’s not just Facebook, although it is the most obvious example of this problem, if only because it is so massive that virtually everyone is either using it or knows someone who is. It’s tempting to think of this as just another sign of how Facebook is an evil social overlord, deliberately tweaking privacy settings so that it can sell our private details to the highest bidder, but that’s a little too facile.

Privacy becomes infinitely more complex online

The reality is that privacy issues we normally take for granted in the “real” world become almost infinitely more complicated when we move online: if Randi Zuckerberg had taken a physical photo of her family, she could only have shared it with a small group of people — and by definition, those people would be close to her and her family, and so privacy wouldn’t be a problem. But when anyone can “tag” a photo and instantly re-share that photo to an audience of thousands, things get complicated really quickly.

Sure Randy Zuckerberg asked all in her family if she could share that pic before posting. That's just human decency bit.ly/Umu32r

—
Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) December 26, 2012

Should Randi have asked before she shared that picture on Facebook? Maybe. But she (perhaps naively) trusted that it would only be seen by close friends and family — not thinking of how a friend’s decision to tag it could affect where and with whom it was shared. Should her friend have asked before she tagged it? Perhaps. I tagged a friend once in a photo and she got upset with me because she didn’t want people to know where she was — not because she was doing anything bad, but because she didn’t like the feeling of being tracked. That never even occurred to me until she mentioned it.

To be fair to Facebook, figuring these kinds of nuances out isn’t easy — and implementing them in the form of software controls isn’t either. Facebook has gotten a lot of flak (much of it from Google) for not allowing people to download the emails of their friends, but it has always argued that those emails belong to your friends, and sharing them should be their choice, not yours. We may disagree, but there are good arguments on either side (Facebook now lets you do this but only if your friend specifically allows it).

There are all kinds of things we need to learn — or re-learn — when it comes to online behavior, and how to handle privacy is one of them. It’s easy to throw rocks at Facebook or make fun of Randi Zuckerberg, but the bigger issue is not going away: if anything, it is getting even more complicated.

It’s true that the network wants to do away with the voting process that it implemented as a way of improving its governance policies, which required it to get 30 percent of its users to support something before it could make a significant change. But this approach was mostly a failure before it could even get started, since the last vote the company held saw .03 percent of users participate — and as more than one person has pointed out, getting 30 percent of Facebook users to vote would mean 300 million people, which is more than twice as many as voted in the recent federal election in the United States.

Soon, Facebook ads could follow you around the web

In any case, the company has other goals it needs to meet first, and one of those is generating enough revenue to make Wall Street and other investors happy with its $50-billion market capitalization. And that has put a lot of pressure on Facebook to come up with a winning mobile strategy, among other things, since its clickthrough rate for traditional ads is abysmal.

Sponsored stories (which have been criticized in a number of jurisdictions, and could become illegal soon in Norway, according to one recent report) are one way of trying to solve that problem. An external advertising network — one that uses information about users and their activity on Facebook as a way of targeting external ads on other websites — is another way. Chris Dixon, the Hunch founder who just became the newest partner in Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, has described this as an “embedded option” for Facebook investors, meaning it could stand to significantly enhance the company’s financial prospects if it is handled properly.

“An external ad network is inevitable. Google proved this model with Adsense. With an already huge base of advertisers bidding on CPCs, it is impossible for most other ad networks to compete on publisher payouts. But Facebook’s traffic is so great now that an external ad network might increase their revenues by 2x or so.”

To put this in perspective, if an external ad network did manage to double Facebook’s revenues, that would take them to almost $10 billion a year from their current level of about $5 billion. Theoretically at least, it could push them even higher if Facebook manages to attract enough advertisers with its targeted data.

Your activity on Facebook = ads outside of Facebook

There have been hints that the company was planning to roll out such a network: earlier this year, Facebook experimented with sponsored stories on Zynga’s website that were governed by the data that the social network had about users based on their activity inside Facebook. And the company also provided a preview of the latest changes in May, although most of the attention at that time was focused on the privacy implications. Now it has become even more obvious that an external ad network is the goal — and Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer said as much in a comment to Forbes magazine about the new rules:

“Everything you do and say on Facebook can be used to serve you ads. Our policy says that we can advertise services to you off of Facebook based on data we have on Facebook.”

As Quartz points out, the first outcome of this new approach could be the introduction of ads into Instagram, which was acquired by Facebook earlier this year for $735 million. But the social network is sure to extend that to other websites and services it could partner with — if only because the kind of data that Facebook has on user behavior (even though it is anonymized) is one of the biggest potential treasure troves of ad-targeting that exists online. Access to information about the browsing and liking habits of a billion people isn’t something that comes along every day.

Google has built a multibillion-dollar advertising business around showing people relevant ads while they search, and so far nothing has been able to match the effectiveness of that approach. But if Facebook is able to target ads on external websites and services based on the data that it has, we could see one of the first major challenges to Google’s ad dominance.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user Balakov

One of the first major complaints came in a piece in the New York Observer that accused the social network of being “broken on purpose.” Not long afterward, a blog called Dangerous Minds wrote a long polemic about how what the social network was doing was “the biggest bait-and-switch in history” — since users (including brands) were enticed to use the service on the understanding that they could use it to build up a giant fan base, and were now being charged for the right to reach those same fans. The cost to do this by paying for sponsored posts, the blog said, was just too exorbitant:

“We simply can’t afford to pay Facebook $2000 to $3200 a day and we can’t afford to do nothing, either. Their shockingly greedy business plan offers us no alternative and we’re not alone.”

Hiding valuable content or blocking spam?

In response to this criticism, Facebook explained — both in a post by one of its engineers and in comments to TechCrunch and Ars Technica — that the newsfeed filtering was designed to eliminate spam and noise, and that it was constantly being tweaked in order to show users things they were actually interested in, not just things that brands wanted them to see. The message seemed pretty obvious: don’t be spammy with your posts and lots of your users will still see them for free. And if you want to spam them anyway, you will have to pay for sponsored posts in order to do that.

This didn’t stop the criticism from flowing, however: one user wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, complaining about the moves by the social network and urging the founder and CEO to remain committed to his stated goal of “giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” Actor George Takei responded to this letter with a Facebook post, saying he was devoting a chapter in his upcoming book to the issue. On Tuesday, Mark Cuban — who had been posting complaints on Twitter for days about Facebook’s behavior — unloaded to Dan Lyons at ReadWrite about the impact that the changes were having, and how he wasn’t going to stand for it any longer. The sports mogul and star of TV show Shark Tank said that he was shifting the focus not just of his own presence or that of the Dallas Mavericks but all of the other businesses in which he is an investor to other platforms, including MySpace:

“We are moving far more aggressively into Twitter and reducing any and all emphasis on Facebook. We won’t abandon Facebook, we will still use it, but our priority is to add followers that our brands can reach on non-Facebook platforms first. We have already pushed more to Twitter. The new Myspace looks promising.”

Filtering is necessary for Facebook, and for users

As Wired points out in a response to Cuban’s complaints — and App.net founder Dalton Caldwell also does a good job of explaining — this kind of criticism makes little sense, unless you assume that Facebook is supposed to be a utility of some kind, broadcasting the messages of its users far and wide without any kind of filtering whatsoever. The reality is that a proprietary platform like Facebook is very much a double-edged sword, and Cuban and Takei are feeling the sharpness of that alternate edge: yes, it reaches a lot of people, but it is also a business that faces significant financial pressure.

Do Cuban or any of Facebook’s other critics really think that Twitter or MySpace are going to be any different? Twitter started off as a much more open platform than Facebook — which is one of the reasons that users like me have responded so negatively to some of the restrictions it has been imposing on external services — but it is heading down the same inexorable path. In order to justify their multibillion-dollar market value, both companies have to find new sources of revenue, and traditional advertising just isn’t going to do it. Sponsored content is the future, whether we like it or not.

It’s one thing to excuse George Takei for not realizing the implications of this, but Mark Cuban is a notoriously sharp businessman who routinely criticizes entrepreneurs on his TV show for failing to understand how markets work. Facebook is a business, not a charity or a platform for social well-being — and it provides that platform free of charge, on the understanding that users agree to be marketed to in a variety of ways. The idea that it should somehow allow Cuban to spam all his followers with marketing content for nothing is nonsensical.

Not only does Cuban’s criticism not make much sense from a business standpoint, but as even social-media evangelist Robert Scoble points out, what Facebook is doing by trying to tweak its filtering algorithms is arguably in the best interest of users as well, since they are already being overwhelmed by noise and marketing spam. From that perspective, Facebook has to do what it is doing or it will suffer a lot more damage than some angry emails from celebrity users. We can argue about how it is filtering and the way it is communicating that to users, but the fact that it is doing so seems inevitable.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr users Cotidad and See-ming Lee

These are questions that seem to be coming up more and more frequently as we live increasingly large parts of our lives online: When is it okay to publicize someone’s identity for things they said on Twitter, and what kinds of consequences do we think are appropriate for online bad behavior?

The post by Jezebel co-founder Tracie Egan Morrisey — which was entitled “Racist Teens Forced to Answer for Tweets About the ‘Nigger’ President” — was a followup of sorts to a previous post that highlighted a number of racist tweets posted to the service following Obama’s election victory on Tuesday night. None of the users who posted them were specifically identified, but in the more recent piece, Morrisey identified several students at a number of schools in the U.S. who posted similar comments. The story also went into some detail about them, noting that one student “plays football for Xaverian High School, a private Catholic prep school in Brooklyn, NY,” and that others also play sports for their schools.

What is an appropriate response for a single tweet?

The point of doing this seemed to be that most schools have codes of conduct, particularly for those who represent the school on sports teams, and racist tweets would appear to be in contravention of those rules. But is publicly identifying these students — who are legally children — on a website like Jezebel really an appropriate response to what in some cases was a single tweet? In an email, Morrisey said that she felt there was no issue with writing the story, since the students in question had already publicly identified themselves through Twitter profiles and Facebook profiles:

We actually did not “out” the identities of these tweeters — they did, through their public Twitter accounts and Facebook profiles. They used their real names, listed their schools and their locations, and thus broadcasted these details to the entire world by virtue of putting them on the internet.

We chose to get in touch with the school administrators who are charged with educating these individuals because the institutions not only have mission statements about their educational goals, but they also have student conduct codes.”

Some commenters on Jezebel clearly disagreed with the site’s decision. One comment that got a lot of votes from other readers asked “Is this what we’ve come to?? Internet shaming children, blasting their crimes across the web?” And others who specialize in online behavior, including sociologist Zeynep Tufekci from the University of North Carolina, also said they found the public shaming troubling:

@mathewi Wow. Publicizing racist tweets like this is not healthy or good for combating racism, or educating teens or letting them grow.

—
Zeynep Tufekci (@techsoc) November 09, 2012

Many of those who took part in a Twitter discussion of the issue with me on Friday believed that the students in question should have to face the consequences of their actions — after all, the internet is a public place, they argued, and even children need to realize that making such comments could affect their lives. Others said that public shaming of racism is the only way to effectively fight such beliefs, and therefore what Jezebel did was appropriate.

@mathewi the Internet is not anonymous. Online comments have real world consequences. Best kids learn that lesson early.

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  (@kathodgson) November 09, 2012

Is there no room for online mistakes any more?

One of the things that troubles me about this incident is that it shows how quick we can be to judge a person — especially someone in high school, who may be acting badly for all kinds of complicated reasons — without any real understanding of what is going on, or what the repercussions may be. Making people face the consequences for saying things online is a noble goal, but is there no room even for children to make mistakes without the full force of the internet being brought to bear? As far as I can tell, Morrisey didn’t even try to contact the high-school students she profiled, or their parents.

@pwthornton @mathewi @AdrienneLaF Or maybe they're just clueless kids who think it's cool to say wild stuff without grasping implications?

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Elaine Clisham (@eclisham) November 09, 2012

A quick internet search of one of the individuals mentioned shows that this incident is the top result for their name. Maybe that will fade over time, especially since some of those involved seem to have deleted their accounts — or maybe it won’t. Couldn’t the same thing have been achieved by calling the schools to identify the students, without doing so in the article itself? Morrisey denied that there was any attempt to “shame” those involved, and yet the headline talks about forcing these students to answer for their alleged crimes. Is this kind of online vigilantism really going to solve anything?

@mathewi These Tweets are hateful & vicious but Jezebel could've made those calls without publishing names and school affiliations.

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Liz Pullen (@nwjerseyliz) November 09, 2012

Similar issues came up during the recent public outing of a notorious Reddit “troll” named Violentacrez, who was profiled in a Gizmodo post, and the similar revealing of a Twitter user who went by the name ComfortablySmug, who posted inaccurate information during Hurricane Sandy. The Reddit moderator was seen as fair game by many because he created threads devoted to child pornography and other offensive content, but ComfortablySmug was a less obvious case — as we noted in a post and an internal debate that we published about the issues raised by such online lynch mobs.

Both of those individuals were adults, however, and presumably understood the consequences of their actions before they engaged in them. How much should we expect high-school students to suffer for what might have been an offhand comment or an attempt to impress their friends? How much public ridicule or online condemnation is too much, and when does it cross over into outright bullying? These are issues we are going to be confronting more and more as we live out our lives online, and the answers are not obvious.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr users Cotidad and See-ming Lee