The Evolving Newsroom

Staying with the 'what happens when you die these days' theme, the Guardian has a story by Dave Lee looking at what Facebook does when a member dies. Interesting.

Facebook was the number one social network in NZ in May, according to Hitwise.

Facebook accounted for 39.87 per cent of visits in "a custom category of 40 leading social networks in May 2008, tightly followed by Bebo with 39.15 percent of visits". MySpace had 7.81 percent market share, Orkut 2.86 percent and Windows Live Spaces 2.44 percent.

Facebook has attracted explosive growth in the past year amongst New Zealand Internet users, increasing 536 percent comparing May 2007 and May 2008. Facebook ranked as the sixth most visited website amongst all websites in May 2008.

Engagement with Social Networks remains high with New Zealand Internet users spending an average of 24 minutes and 45 seconds on the custom category. This is compared to an average session of 10 minutes and 53 seconds on All Categories of websites during the week ending 31 May 2008.

Top 10 websites in Hitwise custom category of Social Networks
by New Zealand Internet users, May 2008


1. Facebook www.facebook.com 39.87%
2. Bebo www.bebo.com 39.15%
3. MySpace www.myspace.com 7.81%
4. Orkut www.orkut.com 2.86%
5. Windows Live Spaces spaces.live.com 2.44%
6. Friendster www.friendster.com 2.05%
7. hi5 www.hi5.com 1.01%
8. Yahoo! 360 360.yahoo.com 0.84%
9. Yahoo! Groups groups.yahoo.com 0.68%
10. Tagged www.tagged.com 0.55%


Meanwhile, with the launch of Apple's third-generation iPhone set for 11/07/2008, Hitwise said "visits to Apple iPhone by New Zealand Internet users increased by 348% and the website moved 1062 places to rank 300 amongst all websites during the week ending 14/06/2008".

Also of note: "New Zealand searches for 'plenty of fish' increased by over 250% between 10/05/2008 and 14/06/2008, with the dating website Plentyoffish.com receiving the greatest volume of traffic from the term 'plenty of fish' (24 weeks ending 14/06/2008). Email Services (29.61%) and Search Engines (18.32%) were among the industries to refer the greatest share of traffic to Plentyoffish.com during May 2008. Now you know."

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, told CNET blogger Caroline McCarthy at the SXSW conference in Texas that he was a little tired of the way the press focused on the sensational stuff - how Business Week journalist Sarah Lacy had the audience turn on her over the questions she asked, the Beacon fiasco and the US$15bn valuation of the company. (Here's the link for video of Zuckerberg/Lacy keynote interview).

He'd prefer to talk about "the way in which we help people interact and communicate, both on a subtle level of helping people make connections and increase the number of people that they can keep up relationships with, and increase their trust...(and) the sum of all those connections, and all that communication that's being enabled through the service."

Well, good luck with that, Mark.

Meantime, he did manage to tell CNET more about:

• Facebook's plans to reduce app spam (by curtailing the activities of annoying applications that demand you bombard all your Facebook Friends with requests and invitations).
  
  
• Plans to introduce a PayPal-like payment system for Facebook apps and users.
  
  
• Having plenty of hardware lined up to support continuing growth: "We have multiple data centers. We have a couple on the West Coast. We have somewhat of a cluster on the East Coast too," he said. "We basically have this model where we can just put servers anywhere."
  
  
• Why it hasn't jumped into Google's OpenSocial developer initiative yet having earlier raised questions about its security: "We're still kind of in somewhat of the same place, where it hasn't launched yet. So we're still kind of waiting to see how it plays out. I have a lot of confidence in those guys."
  
  
• And on saving the world, a la Bill Gates' 'creative capitalism': "I think at this point, because we're not incredibly profitable, we're not at that stage of the company - hopefully we get there -that's not really something that we can do a lot of," he said in an interview on Monday. "But I'd like to think that just what the company is trying to do in general, just helping people communicate, is actually making the world better."

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.
• 
  
• 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).
• 
  
• 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.
  
• 
  
• Don't publish your mobile phone number unless you're prepared to change it somewhere down the line if someone gets creepy on you.
• 
  
• Don't publish your home phone number or street address.
• 
  
• 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.
  
• 
  
• 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.

A few big names got caught out not long ago using quotes from a Facebook profile purported to belong to Benazir Bhutto's son. The profile was a fake, although it turns out her son did have a profile but clearly one which reporters didn't stumble upon.

Subsequently, AFP has banned its reporters using either Facebook or Wikipedia as 'sole sources' and requiring additional, trusted, sources to be used corroboratively.

That should have gone without saying. Reporters should never use a single source. Even trustworthy sources are worth checking. After all, sometimes it's the discrepancy in view between trusted sources that turns out to be the story.

There's no reason reporters can't use Facebook, Bebo and Wikipedia as starting points for ideas, trends, information, sentiment and sources of potential interviewees. But they should double-check any information they come across on wikis and social networking sites. This is not rocket science. It's standard journalistic practice. Get on the phone, and check your biographical dictionaries, electoral rolls and so on.

The best way to prevent being duped is to know your beat - no change there. If you understand what your sources are talking about, you quickly get a sense when something's not quite right.

I know reporters don't always have the luxury of knowing their beat. I know you can often be thrown into story after story with little lead-in time, no specialist knowledge and a looming deadline. The answer then is to use common sense, check your sources, and talk to your editor.

That means, of course, that editors need to understand social networks. If they don't, they will be incapable of properly weighing the importance of stories and unable to direct reporters. I'll be honest, I've seen a few cringeworthy stories in recent times which showed loud and clear that the newsdesk didn't understand them.

I'll get off my soapbox now and finish with a few tips. I blogged recently about Telegraph Communities Editor Shane Richmond's ideas on how to minimise the chance of getting tripped up by fakes. (I gather the Telegraph did get tripped up by the Bhutto profile but I'm confident it wasn't Shane doing the reporting). You can read them here.

And Jennifer Woodard Maderazo, associate editor of PBS's Mediashift blog, writes a great set of guidelines on how she uses Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in her researching and writing, along with the pitfalls to watch out for. It's a worthwhile read.

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."

Wired science reporter Alex Madrigal is interviewed about his exploits so far in beat blogging.

He's trying some interesting things, among them:

running a Facebook group for people who read science stories; posting pieces to the group ahead of publication (such as a list of 'top 10 new organisms') to keep people interested, posting video of reporters and editors at work in the office so readers can see what it looks like

looking at running debates: reader versus reader, or reader versus expert. Then perhaps create Reddit widgets so people can vote on who won the debate.

looking at asking readers to tag science journal articles that they're interested in, maybe using Del.icio.us, which Wired can then monitor and incorporate into their reporting.

Every day's a good day to talk about Facebook. There is endless chatter online about how big it's going to get, whether it deserves to be big, how much it will sell for, whether it will sell, how safe it is, how big a mistake the Beacon fiasco was, how long it will take for people to lose interest in being bitten by mutant ninja zombies and so on.

My three favourite posts recently are from a geek who's losing interest, an early adopter who intends to carry on but wants to strip it back to its basic components, and a Guardian columnist who is eschewing it entirely on ideological grounds.

Alex Iskold of ReadWriteWeb interviewed his sister, a senior student who was an early adopter. I think she strikes a chord when she says she's unimpressed with constant invites to join Zombies and Vampires and Happy Hour. "When they started to add new features like the wall, photo albums, video capabilities, and groups, people became more interested," Julia says. "But then Facebook took it too far. Now I find Facebook to be a suffocating bombardment of useless applications and features. I prefer an older version of just the basics - messaging, walls, photos and groups."

Phil Whitehouse, a British software geek, thinks Facebook faces a "slow, steady and painful demise". He cites the following evidence (in a heavily edited nutshell): "I'm hardly ever using it... my friends use it less and less...On the rare occasions I visit, it's just to 'ignore' all the invitations I've received.... I haven't read a positive thing about Facebook in the past three months."

And last but not least, Guardian columnist Tom Hodgkinson chimed in this week with a cutting critique of the investors behind the social networking site (which include a CIA venture capital fund and 'neoconservative libertarian' venture capitalists). He ultimately decides that 59 million users can't be right, that Facebook is a "heavily-funded programme to create an arid global virtual republic, where your own self and your relationships with your friends are converted into commodites on sale to giant global brands" and announces he's logging off to do some gardening and read Keats. Good for him.

Mr Hodgkinson seems to share the rather odd view, though, that using Facebook precludes people from doing anything else, or doing anything of value. I'm going to "spend the time I save by not going on Facebook doing something useful, such as reading books", he says.

I have analog friends who argue much the same thing. It's bad for people, they say, to be cooped up and spend all that time online when they could be....out walking/at the beach/reading books/gardening/talking to people in person etc.

Funny, I use Facebook and talk to people in person, and read books, and go to the beach, and go hiking, and blog, twitter, email and talk to people on the phone, sometimes all in the same day.

But I'm with Phil, in the end. I use Facebook less and less and I ignore almost all invitations. But I like to check in on my friends in the UK from time to time, I'm glad it reminds me when my friends' birthdays are and I love playing Scrabulous. So I'll stick with it for a while yet.

Here's a Facebook group for reporters. It was set up by Ryan Sholin, an energetic blogger whose posts hit the nail on the head again and again. He recently posted five simple things you can do to modernise your newsroom. Check him out.

Shane Richmond, Communities Editor at the Telegraph, brings a few notes of common sense and caution to his advice on how reporters can use Facebook. His first point is 'be suspicious' and he gives good tips on things to help you spot fake entries, blogs etc. He also includes sensitivity and awareness of privacy and confidentiality.

BBC Newsnight's Paul Mason talks to Beat Blogging about Newsnight's exploits on Facebook, his blogging experience and more.

"Me and my editor, Peter Barron, have the view that you've got to be on everything and try everything.

"It's got to be guerilla-ist and full of zeitgeist and very witty otherwise nobody is interested."

It's a good read.

From another Beat Blogging post comes Venture Beat reporter Eric Eldon's explanation of how he uses Facebook to find stories. Kicks in around halfway down. Well worth a read.

Nice bit of advice from Eric. He says reporters "have to look around and figure out where their readers are online. If people are on MySpace - go there. If they are on a random forum, that's where you have to be. You can't just think like a reporter, you have to think like you are part of the community. You are not cut off from the rest of the world."

Well said.

I'm not a reporter anymore so haven't tried finding stories on social networks. Have you? If so, let us know, I'd be really interested to learn how you're going about it.