The Evolving Newsroom

Martin Hirst raises some interesting thoughts on how reporters in NZ are plundering Bebo, Facebook and other social network profile pages for quotes and pictures. He talks about the coverage of murdered economics student Sophie Elliott.

"I just wanted here to draw attention to the ways in which Facebook, Bebo etc are now being used extensively as a "source" for reporters. Usually in the context of horrible murders, like the one discussed in the SST article. In the print edition the frontpage splash is illustrated with photos taken from Sophie Elliott's Facebook page, including a photo of her with her alleged killer.

"I wonder did the SST get anyone's permission, presumably Sophie's family, to use this pic, or any pic of her from Facebook? Or is the assumption that because Facebook is 'public', no permission is required, stuff can just be ripped from there without regard to privacy or copyright issues.

"And what about potential contempt of court. A photo of the alleged killer - can this influence potential jurors?"

He goes on to say:

"What about the invasion of privacy? Oh, there is none. Bebo is like a public park. If you stand in the park and have a conversation, and a reporter overhears it, would you expect it to be in the next day's paper?"

I don't know that such coverage is 'extensive' but certainly some journalists seem to see social networks as targets for 'easy' reporting. There are a lot of ethical and privacy issues here, which I'd like to return to another time. But two quick points now: one, lazy reporting does no one any favours; two, every user of social networks needs to set aside 10 minutes to adjust their privacy settings.

The message seems to be getting out that people, especially kids, need to be safety-conscious online. It would help if newspapers would run useful tips and links whenever they run scare stories. That said, I haven't got any links together to include with this post, but I'll try to do so soon. In the meantime, here are a few suggestions from me...

• go to the Privacy tab in whatever network you're using and answer the questions about who you want to be able to see what. If in doubt, choose to have your details visible only to your friends. For example, my Facebook friends can see my profile, groups, friends, pictures, contact details etc; non-friends can only poke me, request my friendship or send me a message, they can't see my profile or my friends.
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• Don't post anything you don't want your boss/father/grandmother/spouse to see. (They're logged on too and if they're one of your friends - or your profile is entirely public - they can see what you got up to over the weekend).
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• Expect potential employers/extended family members/old flames/old school buddies (or enemies) to search for you and check out your profile. Protect your profile or don't post anything you don't want them to see.
  
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• Don't publish your mobile phone number unless you're prepared to change it somewhere down the line if someone gets creepy on you.
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• Don't publish your home phone number or street address.
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• Don't publish your birth date (you have to provide it when you sign up but you can request that it doesn't appear on your profile). This is one less detail lying around for fraudsters.
  
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• Job done. Now hang out with your friends and have fun.

I'd be glad to hear other thoughts on how to keep safe online. You can leave a comment here or email me at juliestarr@offshoreeditorial.com.

NZ-born social networking site iYomu is trying to entice me back by offering me money, well, possible money - the chance of finding a US$100 icon in my vault, whatever that is.

It's not going to work though. It's not that I have a problem with iYomu, which bills itself as a social network for grown-ups and uses some quite nice Flash in its interface. (Although they do make it hard to quit, as I recall, which is why I haven't gotten around to it yet).

It's just that there's only so many hours in a day and I can only reasonably use so many social networking tools. I've been experimenting with networks and am still doubled up in a few areas while I make up my mind which service I like better, but my digital life works best when I have just one of each - one social network, one professional network, one photo sharing service etc.

Facebook is, by default, my primary social network, for no reason other than that I joined up along with a bunch of work colleagues and a few friends not long before I left the UK. It's thus become quite a nice way for me to drop in on them from time to time and see what they're up to. I don't have the energy to cultivate networks elsewhere, although I sometimes join to have a look around as part of my work.

I'm using both LinkedIn and Naymz as professional networks, trying out the two in a spirit of exploration. So far I use them as profiles - mini CVs - and have yet to work on the networking opportunities. I haven't decided yet which I prefer, but am unlikely to look at another.

I use Twitter for posting status updates, questions, watching news break and following people who interest me. I'm finding it really good for picking up on ideas, sentiment and links to useful tools and blogs. I've looked at others, like Jaiku and Pownce, which also have merit, but Twitter's sating my needs in this area for now.

So, my digital life boils down to: Facebook, Naymz and/or LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogger (this blog), Tumblr (mini blog and aggregator of links and posts), Delicious (public bookmarks), Jumptags (private bookmarks), Flickr (for sharing pictures), Picasa (also for sharing pictures, will probably move all to Flickr), Feedburner (my RSS feeds), Bloglines (my RSS reader) and You Tube (for sharing and bookmarking video), along with text and email.

And what if friends and colleagues end up using different services to me? So far I tend to encourage people to go where I go, which works reasonably well given that a lot of my friends and colleagues, especially here in NZ, aren't connected much at all yet so are open to suggestions (or completely uninterested and would rather be at the beach). And I'm meeting new friends and colleagues on the networks that I use, so no trouble being in contact with them.

The good news is that the rise of lifestreaming applications will make it possible for us to read all our friends' feeds and updates in one place, regardless of where the feeds originated. So I'll be able to read your Facebook status updates, tweets and blog posts without having to visit any of those sites. Now that's networking.

Hitwise reports that Bebo remains the most popular social networking site in NZ, with 16.87% market share for the week ending 5 January 2008. Facebook followed closely at second position with 14.2% share. Bebo has strong brand recognition, Hitwise said, and was the leading search term for 2007.

The report says people spend considerably more time on social networking sites than they do on other websites.

"Bebo had an average session duration of 26 minutes and 22 seconds for the week ending 5 January 2008, compared to websites across all categories, which had an an All Categories average of 11 minutes and 8 seconds. The average session time by New Zealand internet users on Facebook was 17 minutes, 54 seconds and on MySpace it was 13 minutes and 54 seconds."

After logging out from Bebo and Facebook, most users then head for "News & Media, Shopping & Classifieds, Multimedia, Games, Photography, Education and Sports."