Bill Haenel

The new web - Streaming, Personal, Social Magazines

Fri, 25 May 2012 19:05:00 +0000

Flipboard, Zite, Msgboy, Pulse, Taptu, Poptart, Feedly.

These are the names of a new-ish category of feed reader apps I've been checking out for the past two days. I really want to have a name for their category, but I haven't heard one that I like yet. For now, I'll stick with "personal magazines". Maybe not.

These apps run on your mobile device, or maybe even as a plugin for your favorite web browser, or even as a plain old website. They take the most common online activities and cram it all into one place. You like to see what your Facebook friends are up to? It's there. You like to check your favorite blogs? It's there? You like to read the news, read about last night's game, or check the weather? It can all be there, and it's all integrated into a single, digital magazine, usually with a slick, easy-to-use interface.

So why do I think these types of apps will be the new web?

Imagine a scenario in which your Facebook friend posts a link to an article you should read (we'll think of this a recommendation, right?). You look at the photo and read the intro, then decide it's worth reading, so you click the link. The website loads and you read the article. You like it too, so you decide to share it with your other friends as well. So you click the �share� button and send it off to LinkedIn. Now you�re a star!

Now you decide to visit one of your favorite blogs. You spot a headline that sounds great, click on it, read the article, look at the pictures and decide, hey, this is something my friends should read. Proud of your find, you click the �share� button and send it on to your pals on Facebook. And hey, while you�re at it why not Twitter, too? What a good friend you are.

It�s time to check the news now, right? Maybe you like NPR or the Washington Post, or better yet, North Country Public Radio (�cause you really dig smart reporting on regional stuff, right?). You read an article, maybe even listen to the audio. Yet again, you�d like to share this with your friends. Just as you start to do so, you notice one of your friends has shared NCPR�s �Photo of the Day�. So after you share that news story you decide to �Like� that photo. Nothing shows your true character like...

Bill's Hierarchy of Social Media Content Appeal

Tue, 09 Apr 5720 13:30:54 +0000

So I'm experimenting with a new social media content strategy.

I've been watching the performance stats for various types of content posted into social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. I'm starting to feel there are some patterns to what works and what really works, in terms of generating interest (or engagement, as the Zuckerberg clan likes to call it).

I have found these types of posts to be effective, listed in order of increasing engagement potential:

Stuff about people
Stuff about people who are interesting
Stuff about people who are interesting and who live here (here being where your audience tends to be located)
Stuff about people who are interesting and who live here and who are part of a group, with the size of the group being directly proportional to the post's potential engagement
Stuff about people who are interesting and who live here and who are part of multiple hunting crossbow groups, with the size and number of groups being directly proportional to the post's potential engagement

Crazy, right? Let me know what you think.

"Invalid action type" on Facebook Social Plugins (such as Recommendations)

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:02:00 +0000

UPDATE as of 12PM EST: Facebook has apparently fixed this issue.

*******************************************************

Quick tip for anyone who woke up this morning to find that their Facebook Social Plugin output wasn't working anymore.

You'll need to add the "action" attribute to your fb:recommendations tag.

We ran into this at North Country Public Radio (ncpr.org best crossbow) this morning. The solution was to turn this:

Into this:

action="recommend">

Note the action attribute in red.

It's a simple fix, and I'm not sure why it was suddenly necessary. It seems like maybe the plugin didn't require an action before, and now it does, and if you don't have it it simply doesn't work. Sucky.

There are apparently other actions you can use. I only tried this one because that's the only one we wanted right now. You might try others. Let me know what your results are if you can - I'm interested.

Bias - the biggest reason why we don't need public broadcasting anymore

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:02:00 +0000

There's nothing like guaranteeing a negative result by testing against the impossible, eh? It's a great way to make sure that whatever you're testing and how you're testing it, you always get the outcome you're looking for. Talk about setting up for certain failure.

Once again this morning, I'm checking up on the landscape surrounding the debate over whether or not to eliminate federal funding for public broadcasting. The video I made earlier this week ("The Man takes away public radio") is taking hold a little wee bit. I hope it takes hold some more. It's been tweeted, and facebooked and there are at least a handful of sites out there that have re-posted it on their sites as well, which is nice to see.

One of the sites that has shared the video in their space enabled comments below the video. The first and only comment so far says, "If tax dollars are being used to support public broadcast radio� then the news and information being broadcast should be totally unbiased... which it is not!!!... Until public radio can be unbiased� maybe the answer is to have a PBR tax donation line item on our tax forms."

Good point. I agree (no). Trouble is, I'm not sure how you would measure this idea of "totally unbiased". Do we get a streaming bias meter? Do we count facts and opinions and register each point with a red or blue check mark? Maybe we should put a very smart dog in front of the radio and see if he barks when he hears certain people talk about certain ideas?

Of course, none of these methods are probably going to work very well. And honestly, the bigger problem is, where is the line? Isn't bias a relative thing, based on current popular opinion? What's biased today may seem unbiased tomorrow, and vice-versa.

Once upon a time, maybe public broadcasting wasn't considered to have such a lean in one direction or another. Frankly, I know people who think NPR is too conservative. Maybe the thing that's changed is other media and opinions. Let's face it, in terms of major media outlets, exactly which one of them is reporting in the true Morrow spirit, with a vigilant eye on the quality of their journalistic integrity? I count... zero.

This is not to say that public broadcasting shouldn't try to be more objective, or should give up on being the unbiased voice of the people. It's just that I don't know if it's possible to get a consensus on exactly what unbiased might sound like, or if it's even possible to do it at all.

And until then, I think it might be better to keep ol' public broadcasting around for a bit, work out some of its issues, and use it for the common good it was intended to benefit in the first place.

But throwing the baby out with the bathwater because it can't meet some unattainable goal - maybe not such a good way to solve...

One more reason why we don't need public broadcasting?

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 12:02:00 +0000

Just finished reading this very brief post on the San Diego Examiner about stations in San Diego and how important public radio and TV are to that community. It�s a nice post that focuses on the arts. It made me think about KPBS though, and it didn�t mention anything about the really big event that KPBS was involved with a few years ago.

KPBS is the station who lost power to their transmitter when wildfires approached their community. They went off the air, then recovered, then proceeded to cover the wildfires for 75 hours straight and provide an online map to the community showing where the fires were (more here).

KPBS' fire maps were used by state agencies to inform the public of the situation, and a neighboring commercial station even dropped their own programming to rebroadcast KBPS' signal, thinking KPBS was providing a better service to the community than they could themselves. It's really kind of a remarkable story.

This was an invaluable and unmatched service to the community. But apparently this is a service we don�t need any more(?). If you think we do in fact need public broadcasting, do contact your congressional representative right away. The House vote happens today, and our leaders need to hear that we think a public information service is important to our citizens. In the meantime, have a look at this:

Do we REALLY need Public Broadcasting anymore?

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 13:02:00 +0000

I read a Facebook comment about cutting federal funding for public broadcasting today that made the point that "if it was so good, it could survive on its own."

This of course misses the point of public broadcasting.

I hear these sorts of comments a lot lately, and they're often followed with proclamations about not wanting taxes to pay for biased opinions and leftist agendas. Or maybe how the media landscape eliminates the need for one more media channel, especially one that's paid for by the government.

All of these arguments, true or not, again miss the point.

Do you REALLY want all of your information to come from independently-controlled media? Even if it's not perfect the way it is, and even if you think it needs a serious overhaul, public broadcasting is, in fact, PUBLIC. It's the only voice we have that is mandated to be neutral and open, freely available to the public. And while lots of people believe it's slanted and left-leaning, it's still the only media we have that has any hope of being made neutral. Don't we need an open, public forum that belongs to us, in order to ensure we have access to participation in our government?

The government has no right to dictate how the media does its business, of course. Would we like to pass laws that dictate the way Fox News should report the news? Would we like to force CNN to start airing educational programming for a specific number of hours per week? Would we like to start auditing MSNBC productions to be sure they aren't permitting commercial interference to influence their reporters and producers? If you think people are arguing about whether or not to cut public broadcasting from the federal budget, wait until we start arguing about whether or not the government should be able to control the private sector media. Without public broadcasting within its grasp, won't the government have every reason, and even an outright duty, to start looking at how to regulate private broadcasting?

So there's the point. In a democracy, we need to have a free press. But we also need to have some reassurance that we have access to information about current events that is not subject to all the weaknesses of capitalism and commercial interests. Don't get me wrong, I love capitalism. But it doesn't belong in the middle of the newsroom.

We may need to do some fix-it work to get public broadcasting to work the way the people want it to work. I know a lot of folks whose opinions I really respect, who think that public broadcasting (NPR in particular) isn't as "public" as it should be, mostly in the sense that it's "biased". So great. You want it to be different. Me too, let's change it. We can do that because it belongs to us. But if we get rid of it completely we'll have nothing of our own. You go right ahead and call up the production team at Fox and tell them you want them to stop being so darned righty. Good luck with that. As...

Zuckerberg says Email isn't cool anymore.

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:11:00 +0000

I wonder if this means I won't have to help people figure out how to set up Gmail accounts on their iPhones anymore?

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg apparently announced today that he's got the best thing since Google Wave. I'm not sure what it's called. Is it "Project Titan"? Who knows.

Maybe he's right. Maybe Email is dead. I've been fighting this notion for a while now. Folks have been telling me Email is over for a couple years, and they always say it's because kids don't use it. I usually say, "I'm not a kid", or "it's great for business", or "sometimes you want to write more than 140 characters". Maybe sometimes you really do want to say, "�Hey Mom,� at the top and �Love, Mark� at the bottom.�

But here's the thing...

I immediately tried to Email this story (the one I linked to above) to a few friends. Couldn't find an "Email This" link on the page that reported the story at Wired.com. So I opened Outlook (ugh), copied the Wired.com link into the Email message, copied and pasted the headline into the subject field so my kind recipients would know what the heck my note was about, typed the appropriate Email address in the "To" field (didn't get my note? must be I didn't send it to you) and clicked send. But alas, no dice. Can't connect to SMTP. Email is failing me - again.

Of course, this is not why Email is dead. It's not the reliability of the technology. (Although, Email failures are mostly responsible for the livelihood of many, many IT consultants.) It's not the server troubles, it's not the client troubles. It's those darned kids. Kids don't like Email. Why? Because they're impatient. They were too impatient for postal mail, and now they're too impatient for Email. What happens when we're all too impatient for Facemail - er - uh - Facebookmail - uh - er - Fmail - er whatever? Maybe I already am.

I wonder if Facebook will share all my not-email messages with the world? Let's not forget, Mark is working pretty hard to accomplish his dream of "radical transparency".

Pardon me while I expound on weekend traffic for Public Media websites

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 18:10:00 +0000

I�ve been watching web traffic from my desk here at North Country Public Radio this week. I do this most weeks, but what makes this week different is our Fall fundraiser. That�s right, this is that time, the time when we get on the air and on the web and ask for money to continue running our �show�.

Most weeks, when I survey our web traffic, I am watching a trend based on visitors� desires to consume news content. This is the richest part of our online offering, and it�s the most used part as well. So on Monday through Friday, I�m thinking about how to provide a better service to our news consumers that will encourage them to visit more frequently and to share their love of NCPR.org with their friends.

However, there is a disturbing pattern that occurs for nearly every public media website that exists, and it relates to weekend traffic. When you look at weekday vs. weekend traffic for most public media websites, it�s a little like looking at the profile of a crinkle-cut french-fry. Weekdays are up, weekends down. In fact, it�s not unusual for weekend traffic to drop down to half or less than weekdays.

So on weekends, when nobody is here at the station, what�s the most important content? What�s the most used content? To be honest, we here at NCPR spend very little time thinking about weekends and how they are different for our visitors. We assume that weekend visitors are the same as weekday visitors, just visiting in their PJ�s.

I�m thinking this might be wrong, and it took our fundraiser to put it in front of my face.

As it turns out, Saturday is a big day for us during fundraiser week, and I guess it�s like this at other stations as well. Lots of research has been done into why this might be, but I get the idea that it has something to do with folks waiting until the last day to make their donation, the urgency and excitement of a deadline, folks who want the special gifts that are offered on the weekends, etc. But the one thing that stands out for me is, there are quite possibly lots of folks listening on the weekends who either don�t have time to call and pledge during the week, or else they don�t really listen much during the week.

Either way, it�s obvious to me as I listen to our Saturday fundraiser pitches that there are LOTS of folks listening on Saturdays. Honestly, if I had to base my observations on the number of folks calling in, I would say there are even more listening on weekends than on weekdays. This really isn�t true, but it seems that way based on the ringing phones. Again, this doesn�t really matter because in the end the important point is the number of people who are not only listening on weekends, but they are also willing to engage with the station.

So if we have that much engagement on-air on an average Saturday afternoon, and that many people listening, why is our web traffic dropping to 50% or less in that same...

Thanks to Juan, Vivian, NPR and Fox

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 15:10:00 +0000

I can't even begin to say how relieved I am that all of this has happened.

In case you've been trapped in a deep well for the past few days, Juan Williams was fried by NPR, apparently for violating NPR's code of ethics for journalists, after he spoke with Bill O'Reilly on Fox about the best and worst way to discriminate against people you are afraid of.

It probably seems odd that I would be happy about this, but here's why:

Last Friday when it all exploded, I wrote a piece about the importance of free press and journalistic integrity, and how the two are related. I wrote that I hoped that this event would lead to discussion of the importance of truth in journalism, fact-based reporting, the lack of sense of responsibility on the part of so many news organizations, etc., etc., etc. And I wrote about how all of these things are important to our country, our constitution, blah, blah. blah. I never posted it.

This morning I find that I am late to the party, as usual. Over the weekend there was no shortage of discussion about Juan and NPR, and even NPR stations themselves have been broadcasting some pretty open conversations about these ideas. So I'm thrilled.

We really needed to have an honest debate amongst our people in the US about neutral, informative journalism. It's becoming harder and harder to tell the difference between news and gossip. It's nearly impossible to know whether most news organizations are trying to help you or sell you most of the time.

I'm not saying folks shouldn't be allowed to speak their minds and share their opinions on the air. I would just suggest that it's too hard to tell the difference between information and influence, and the differentiation must always be clear.

Open, honest communication about the issues is so essential in order for our nation to function properly. Our democracy was founded on the premise that we would have the right to discuss life-changing issues without concern about our government or any other entity squashing or tainting the information before it finally gets to the average citizen's ears. This is pretty big stuff, right? Do you use the information provided to you by press media to help you make important decisions that effect you and your family? I do, and I'd like to know that I'm basing my important decisions on good information.

We generally like to believe that our government doesn't control the press, but we don't think very much about who does. Are we really having open, honest communication about the issues that affect our lives on a daily basis? It's hard to believe that we are. It's much more likely that we are hearing the opinions of people who can be counted on by the "news" organizations who employ them to say the right things. This is a faulty system and must be investigated and explored. There must be a better way.

Thanks to Juan Williams then, for saying the wrong thing at the...

BIG BANG BIG BOOM: Months of Work and Hundreds of Gallons of Paint

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 01:09:00 +0000

Here's my new favorite animated art (it takes a while to load, so be patient):

BIG BANG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.