Journalism Tech Review: IFTTT

If This Then That (IFTTT) launched in September 2011 promising to be the “gaffer tape that holds the internet together”. This means various social media, cloud archives and even physical internet enabled products (a full list of channels here) can be connected together with simple instructions and without learning code.

In practice

Automated online activity which would require you to wrangle with the unwieldy Yahoo Pipes or the intimidating Mac Automator, is given a user-friendly interface. You can also share your favourite ‘recipes’ and allow people to use them. I use them a lot to allow for a more organic duplication of social media. For example, every image that I 'favourite' on Instagram automatically drops into Tumblr (under the Instagram tag) or when a new photo is uploaded by me to Flickr it also uploads them to a gallery on my Facebook page. Pictures are the currency of these social media channels and spreading them across platforms increases their exposure and engagement.

How it helps you

The reason I decided to post about this web application is because of the announcement last week Google is to discontinue its RSS Reader service after July 2013. Since I’ve been experimenting with Feedly as a replacement and implementing a process that doesn't leave me relying too heavily on a single provider. News stories that I like are saved to Pocket from within Feedly and then from Pocket they’re piped with IFTTT to my Delicious and Pinboard bookmarks. This way I can organise my favourite stories and primary sources without depending on one web service. There are other recipes that could help your working life such as this which (once it allows for UK calls) would let you to effectively dial in a short story. If you were sending back photos or videos from a mobile phone you could speed publish across multiple platforms or notify a desk editor automatically. You can also sync certain documents with Google Drive or even use Google Drive to collect data on a single spreadsheet which might be useful for Data Journalism.

Drawbacks

Although there are 60 active channels on IFTTT with 433,065 tasks created by users in its first year it can be frustrating when you realise that your new app is not included. Particularly disappointing for me is Google Plus’s refusal to let people automate its updates (pages or personal) or Twitter’s restriction of their API. This platform really depends on an open internet.

Summary

A simple way of controlling your web and mobile activity.

Rating


Journalism Tech Review: Tweetbot

History

Tweetbot took advantage of Twitter’s relatively open API to develop an iPhone native app which easily outshone their basic mobile offering. Although Twitter significantly upped its game with a redesign last year (following the acquisition of Tweetie and its coder), Tweetbot broke free from some of Twitter’s more idealistic attributes - including the patronising and advertising heavy #discover option.

In practice

You can very easily flick between multiple accounts, lists and searches. Particularly useful is Tweetbot’s “gestures” - a simple swipe and you can view replies or conversations on any tweet. Tap once to view a link, hold down to use the link or save to any number of apps, or configure triple tap options for yourself.

How it helps you

For feeding back tweets and multimedia on the move it is very good, especially with the facility to upload in the background. Also, not only can you flick between multiple Twitter personalities (for example public and private you) but you can keep track of Twitter lists. You can even turn a Twitter list into your timeline of contacts’ tweets or monitor keep on top of a story by monitoring a hashtag.

Drawbacks

Although it can be always on you have to drag down to refresh your timeline. If you want to keep abreast of several areas you have to swipe around. Tweetbot only has column based filtering and searching in the iPad app. Both iOS apps come with a £1.99 price tag. And beware, if you like it and want to start using it on your Mac then it’ll cost you £13.99 – apparently raised by Tweetbot to discourage too many users after Twitter restricted its API.  Perhaps because of this, we’re unlikely to see anything developed for Android or PC anytime soon.

Summary

A neat, fast and easy way to keep on top of Twitter on your iPhone.

Rating


Making Our Presence Known #intheroom

According to Paul Murphy from The Destroyers one of the reasons why we missed out on the European Capital Of Culture award was that when the judges visited the city no-one on the ground cared about either the award or the cultural ongoings.

Listen!

The traditional perception with Birmingham is that we do plenty of creative and cultural things but we don't like to shout about it. Cllr Martin Mullaney has pointed out several times during this City Of Culture bid that as a city we have very low levels of cultural engagement per head of population. I was determined in my role as Social Media Manager to increase engagement and prove that, given the right platform, we would shout about it.

My first day on the job involved working on the 24hour Blog run by Jon Bounds. We received a phenomenal amount of contribution to the Posterous site in a 24 hour period. Since then our engagement was spread across Facebook, Twitter and the main website.

When monitoring other shortlisted cities social media activities it was interesting to discover their bids were mainly limited to Facebook. We on the other hand had a much larger amount of Twitter followers. Today it passed the 1000 mark.

Only eight people were allowed to present the Birmingham's case to the judging panel in Liverpool, we wanted to increase our presence. Birmingham had plans to take a Battle Bus which would stage cultural flashmobs around Liverpool on the day.

UK City Of Culture Bid

Public Relations Manager Geoff Coleman mentioned doing something similar to 24hour blog and I pitched the idea of using Cover It Live as a scrolling commentary which could be displayed 'in the room'. It was important to gather all the different threads across multiple platforms. I also thought it was an ideal opportunity to make a virtual event out of our final submission. I passionately stated at the time,

"Can I just say that Birmingham's strength as a digital city is one of our greatest assets and it would be doing ourselves a great disservice not to do something really innovative."

I'm pleased to say that it was a success, there were around 900 messages of support over the period, and the Council Site where Cover It Live was embedded reported a spike of over 1000 unique users.

@Katchoo has blogged about what it was like to be involved in the event. A point well made was that it wasn't just the usual people mentioning the same things. The real success of the event came from the variety of comments, the amount of people involved and the many cultural things Birmingham offers. We're a culturally rich city that deserves recognition. And for once we really shouted about it.


What Village Underground can learn from the Barbican

For my MA Online Journalism I'm conducting a Production Lab placement with Village Underground, London. Following the last group Skype meeting, I thought it would be useful to do a case study on a venue that already has its online presence sorted. I managed to arrange a face to face meeting with Maryam Ashgari from the Barbican, a 28 minute edit of the meeting can be listened to below.

[audio: http://dandavies23.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/barbicanedit.mp3]

But if you don't have half an hour to spare here are my conclusions.

Read more


AOP Microlocal Media Forum Part 2

These are 'as live' notes from the second part of the Association Of Online Publishers (AOP) Microlocal Media Forum which took place on 9th December. At the very bottom of this post there is also a recording which caught all of Roger Green's presentation and most of the panel discussion.

Click here for AOP's own round up of the event or here for Paid Content's article.

AOP Microlocal Media Forum Part 2
Presentation: Roger Green Newsquest

Speaking for himself not necessarily Newsquest (NQ)
Current media model more robust than given credit for - lots of things tried over the last few years
Nevertheless NQ now compete with zero cost players

NQ cover 150 sites who have alligence with local
Use media brands they have run through central system at local level: enablers for local people
Engaging with audience they have grown consistently
Amount of time people spend interacting
Websites but also telephone calls and texting
Westmorland Gazette: huge growth in audience significant spike when news event kicks off - ie. recent flood coverage

Big challenge= less dictating and more collaborative process
Very hard to motivate community correspondence - fill newsgathering and information gaps - channel needs to be worked hard. In Bingley, Betty Newell is the local contact works information

Involving people in more of the stories that matter, Basildon Echo (Basildon Uni Hospital story) 15 significant comments added to the story by the time it wound down 60 comments which moved narrative on
Compared to BBC local story couple of interviews were getting recycled so didn’t really engage with evolving story
NHS project attempting to bring together information - but only a few comments since 2007

Can do local without news - very brave according to RG
Almost all of it catefully integrated - geocoded - doing more than is appreciated
Newpapers to local regional media brands

Adoption of Twitter - Cover It Live
Watford Observer: @Observer_Owl
Turfed out of office and worked remotely routinely work out of cafes: cafes approve good cache from it
Get more local stories out of it
Won’t claim every editorial group as equally adept at taking on these tools
Lancashire used Twitter anti-terrorist movement via Twitter
Brighton: Jo Wadsworth leading field in terms of followers to following therefore she listens as well as talks

Tactics for Publishers
Adopt tools and use effectively
Make up own mind but don’t be disco dad: nothing that is zero cost can be sustainable - make up mind on what matters ignore everything else
Geocoding not always necessary, must be relevant to story
Observe decent analytics
Be commercial - not just about journalism even not a lot, publishing, distribution and sales
Be prepared to partner- Bloggers can be ‘upset by partner arrangements’ especially if on terms of the partner - partnerships need to behave in humble fashion
Not sustainable don’t bother: no point in a shiny local website launched by a publisher around one news event. Hardly any coverage of major news events, even worse covered better in Wall St Journal
If already have some great local media brands then maybe not worth launching at all

Two way conversation - but no-one found a decent way of monetizing e-mail
Based around popular social networks: Scope to get more out of community correspondence - open to talk to anyone ’we can help monetize that type of publishing’

Roger Green ‘Look forward to partnering or taking you on’

Q&A Discussion

Panel
David Higgerson: Trinity Mirror
James Thornett : BBC Local
Lori Cunningham Johnston Press
Roger Green: Newsquest
Paul Bradshaw: BCU Lecturer Help Me investigate

What new skills need in micro local:
LC: Curration and oversight and a two way dialogue to bring forward
JT: Curration much more aware of market out there, awareness of local personalities - less about the brand and the company more about the people themselves
DH: Much more aware of impact of what they say and way say it. Journalists more open minded about the way to tell the story
PB: Social capital - contributing to their community being a participant. Understand distribution networks. Distribution part of journo’s role
RG: Can’t really add. Listening very important skill and distribution - related links to things

Struck idea of platform how people produce outside whether it’s a priority. Predicated on whether there is a destination but the assumption people won’t go to specific site...

RG: look for places to pick up content as feeds. Most people who use sites are regular users

Paywall
LC: not one approach - it's an evolving landscape, people are arriving through different manner. More consistent loyal users. As an experiment we've put 3 titles behind pay wall. Understand what dynamics are, quickest way to measure dynamic is to try it out.

Whether panel do pay to get information

LC: Wall St Journal
JT: No
PB: Bearded Magazine
RG: worth looking into Telegraph used to subscribe to Wall St Journal then Murdoch said would be free so never renewed.

Partnerships: are you going to pay for information from other sources
RG: Almost other way round with bigger companies in NQ experience. We do pay for information.
DH: Case by case basis.
LC: Fragmented network partnership which works with person.

What assurances do you have that BBC not threatening competition for local publishers?

JT: BBC local broadcasting as the state funded broadcaster are funded to deliver what the UK want. UK popular website, whole ecosystem would work together. BBC do have a sizeable audience in terms of traffic. We are in the same space, find a way to make ecosystem work.

Whether BBC are against pay wall?
LC: We have a viable parntership with BBC. But we see them as a threat. Well funded organisation coming into an area or two guys in a garage. There’s no easy path forwards.
RG: Wouldn’t add to that. Except to observe if not for BBC we’d all be working for Google.
PB: BBC if pulled out of local would be accused as ’London centric’ Needs to justify licence fee. Would like to BBC adding in certain areas. Similar to what PA doing.
DH: Would like to see BBC come good and link back to content.
JT: BBC local are county level publishing - not local on the internet. Works well for us.

Chris PA: Can you monetize atomised news?

PB: No don’t think you can. Have to look what people use news for. Distribution channels are quite high, difficult to make money no point buying in atomised news. Can’t charge for stickers in playground.
JT: BBC will look at buying picture or video.
DH: Could do better at following up people who lift content word for word. Sunday Mercury does need to chase. Maybe go after the sites that take that copy.

What about people who have blogs who don’t want to be citizen journalists still worth partnerships?
DH: Could work more closely with local sites. Exploring partnerships and what can give back. Perception that newspaper websites are nicking content from hyper local or papers considering sites are run by ‘sid nutters’ - Will Perrin.

Local versus location - is there a difference in definition?

PB: Yes. Legacy issues of local publishing. Online 3rd of audience is from outside area or people who used to live in the area. Opportunity to capitalise on that. Newspapers haven’t done a lot around monetizing ’location’.
LC: Of great interest. Looking to evolve something along these lines. Make sure syndicated commercial opportunities. Our publishing experience used to defined by geography not the case online. Bring those people together across boundaries.
JT: Trap not to fall into, unique set of location interests and personal interests spread across the country. The next step is personalisation of a set of content through mobile devices and small laptops disseminating news specific to location.

Advertising revenue stream, how demonstrate to advertisers money is well spent?
LC: Process of rolling out idea. How getting people to engage with sites how people coming to us. Thinking traditionally - build up local database not had before.
DH: Area need to explore more. Lot of advertising know going to business community. Northumberland- long ago trailing Addiply coming back time and time again. Now seeing more good than bad examples.
RG: The advertising we do carry is pretty accountable enough. Methods of selling if we were to sell for micro local.

16.50

You can right click 'save target' for the MP3 here or you can listen to it below.

[audio:http://dandavies23.wordpress.com/files/2009/12/aopmicrolocalpt2.mp3]

Part one can be found here.