MediaShift

Magpile Brings Social Sharing to Print Magazine Enthusiasts

susan.sivek@gmail.com — Tue, 22 May 2012 06:00:00 -0800

Reading a print magazine doesn't have to be a lonely experience anymore.

Magpile, a new social site for magazine lovers, offers enthusiastic readers a place to share their favorite magazines and discuss them online. Founder and print magazine fan Dan Rowden, a web developer, noticed that although a number of websites let readers rate and discuss books, magazine fans were lost in cyberspace.

Magpile, still in its invite-only closed beta stage, fixes that problem. With a variety of features, Rowden's growing site might lend new social-networking energy to print magazines.

Features for Magazine Fans

Magpile lets users view a variety of international magazine covers, add more magazines and individual issues to the database, track issues they own in a personal "pile," and save issues they would like to buy someday on a wishlist.

Rowden currently lives in Saudi Arabia, which inspired some of these features. While he also reads magazines from outside the country on his iPad, his true love is print magazines, in spite of obstacles to getting them.

"The post here is quite slow. For example, I'm a Monocle subscriber. Issues normally turn up just as the next one is coming out," Rowden said. "When I come back to Europe, I bring a stack of magazines back with me, but otherwise I have to rely on family and friends to get them."

Rowden found his growing print collection difficult to track, and realized other print magazine devotees probably had the same problem. He coded Magpile in just a few months as a side project and launched it in March 2012. Since then, he's received a steady stream of invite requests, and users have added over 1,000 magazine issues to the site. Magazines and issues can be edited wiki-style by users. Most of the magazines added so far are British and European titles. Monocle is currently the most popular magazine in users' "piles," or personal magazine collections.

Rowden would like for the site eventually to include "every magazine ever."

"I want Magpile to be like the magazine database, or like a portal, for people to go to if they want to find out about a certain topic or to find magazines on a topic," he said.

In addition to managing their personal collections, Magpile users can follow each other's activity on the site. Users can comment on specific issues and discuss them with each other. Rowden plans to add the capability to comment on entire magazines, and hopes interaction will pick up as more magazine fans join the site.

"I don't know that there's another place online where people can yak about magazines, but I think people who are into magazines are quite passionate," he said.

Rowden sees Goodreads, the successful, book-focused social site with more than 8.5 million members, as a potential model for Magpile.

Monetizing and Publicizing Magpile

Rowden doesn't have professional experience in the magazine industry, though he'd like to work in it eventually. Instead, his drive to create Magpile comes entirely from his enjoyment of magazines.

"It's something I enjoy doing in my spare time. Combining magazines and web design is quite fun," he said. He's now developing a variety of ways Magpile can make money.

Some sponsors have already signed on with Magpile, such as Stack Magazines and the magazine Offscreen. "I tried to pinpoint some smaller magazines and some online shops, to give users useful ads," Rowden said.

Because Magpile helps users build their print magazine collections, a future option might be to link issues of magazines directly to publishers' back issue ordering systems, then collecting a referral fee from sales.

"There's a few different ways of monetizing the site," Rowden said. "As the site's so young, there's a lot of development that still needs to happen first."

In the meantime, Magpile's user base is growing through social media -- Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. Rowden doesn't have an official Magpile blog, so he's used Twitter and Facebook for updates on Magpile's launch and new features. He also used Twitter to distribute a special round of 50 invites announced through the MagCulture blog. Bloggers' posts about Magpile have generally been the most consistent source of new invite requests, Rowden said.

At the moment, Magpile's Pinterest presence is a collection of more than 100 favorite magazine covers on one board. Rowden said although referrals to Magpile from Pinterest are growing dramatically, not many people visiting Magpile from Pinterest sign up for invites.

Digital Love for Print Magazines

While it has the sleek design and features of a cutting-edge, niche social network, Magpile is at heart a celebration of the print magazine. By offering users the chance to inventory and talk about their print magazine collections, Magpile unites new and old media in a surprising way. The name "Magpile" and the use of "piles" as the term for users' personal inventories evoke images of print magazines.

"I don't want Magpile to become somewhere that digital is 'the thing,' because I think print is really important," Rowden said. "Personally, I prefer print. I want to push the print issues as much as possible. It's more about the social impact of magazines."

Magazines with time-sensitive content and less artistic presentation might better serve themselves and their readers today by moving to digital platforms. However, it feels like there's also growing momentum behind a movement to create and support publications with greater print sophistication.

These magazines delight print enthusiasts who, like Rowden, appreciate the medium's potential for "social impact." Magpile might be ahead of the curve in providing an online gathering place for celebrating the best that print magazines continue to offer.

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Linfield College. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

Mediatwits #49: Facebook IPO Mania; Internet Week; 16th Webby Awards

mark@mediashift.org — Fri, 18 May 2012 06:00:36 -0800

Welcome to the 49th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, with Mark Glaser and Dorian Benkoil as co-hosts. Today is the day for the Facebook IPO, so we've got it covered like a wet blanket. Special guests Debra Aho Williamson of eMarketer and Troy Young of SAY Media talk over the ins and outs of Facebook as it soars into the ionosphere. What are its possible weaknesses? Why is its ad revenue outlook falling short? Plus, it's Internet Week in the Big Apple, and Dorian and Troy are there. What are ad folks talking about, outside of the Facebook IPO?

Plus, it's web awards season time, and that means five-word acceptance speeches at the 16th annual Webby Awards, being streaming online on Monday. Special guest David-Michel Davies tells us why the awards will be even better this year, with geeky humorist Patton Oswalt hosting. But guest Josh Seifert thinks that digital awards can do better, and gives his own criticism of the Webbys and other advertising awards.

Check it out!

mediatwits49.mp3

Subscribe to the podcast here

Subscribe to Mediatwits via iTunes

Follow @TheMediatwits on Twitter here

Our show is now on Stitcher! Listen to us on your iPhone, Android Phone, Kindle Fire and other devices with Stitcher. Find Stitcher in your app store or at stitcher.com.

Intro and outro music by 3 Feet Up; mid-podcast music by Autumn Eyes via Mevio's Music Alley.

Here are some highlighted topics from the show:

Intro

0:30: Dorian Benkoil co-hosting from Internet Week in NYC

1:30: Is there another tech bubble? Different this time

3:00: Facebook IPO leads to real estate, luxury car boom in Silicon Valley

4:00: Rundown of stories on podcast

Facebook IPO and Internet Week

4:40: Special guests Debra Aho Williamson and Troy Young

7:00: Williamson: CNBC devoted all coverage yesterday to Facebook

9:10: Williamson: Facebook controls tons of data about people

11:15: Young: Question is how much advertisers will spend on Facebook

14:00: Williamson: Facebook's data store could be exciting... or scary

15:00: Dorian: Internet Week includes ad business movers and shakers

16th Webby Awards

16:25: Special guests David-Michel Davies and Josh Seifert

18:10: Davies: Webbys go beyond just the web

20:00: Seifert: Advertising online isn't so great

22:30: Davies: We've given out awards for more than just ads

25:10: Davies: Partnering with Buzzfeed to name "Meme of the Year"

Weekly Poll

Don't forget to vote in our weekly poll, this time about the Facebook IPO:

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit. and Circle him on Google+

Poll: What Do You Think About the Facebook IPO?

mark@mediashift.org — Thu, 17 May 2012 12:00:03 -0800

Now we have a date (May 18) and a price range ($28 to $35 per share) for what could be the biggest initial public offering in the history of tech stocks: Facebook. The company has grown by leaps and bounds since it was born in Mark Zuckerberg's dorm at Harvard in 2004, and now could make Zuckerberg richer than Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. If the IPO prices at the high end of the range, $35 per share, Zuckerberg could be worth $17.6 billion. So what's your take? Would you invest your hard-earned dollars in Facebook stock? Would you short the stock? Do you even care? Vote in our weekly poll, and explain your vote in the comments below.

Infographic: Moms Hold Big Influence Online

Matthew.Hurst@nielsen.com — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:00:00 -0800

This post and infographic originally appeared on the Nielsen blog Nielsen Wire here. It is reused here with permission.

Moms are often at the center of their family's offline life, so it's little surprise that they're also at the center of many of the biggest trends online as well. Whether to look up the latest product reviews or to connect with friends, families and even brands through social networks, American moms are particularly active and influential online.

Click on image for larger version.

Social Networking

American moms use social media frequently, with nearly three out of four moms visiting Facebook in March. When using social media, moms are 38 percent more likely to become a fan of or follow a brand online, and moms who blog are more than twice as likely to follow brands and celebrities compared with the online average.

Moms visit blogs more often, and are 27 percent more likely to visit Blogger and 26 percent more likely to visit Wordpress.com than the general online population. In fact, about one in three bloggers are moms, and 52 percent of bloggers are parents with kids under 18 in their household.

Shopping and Surfing

To help save time and money, many moms shop online; moms are 35 percent more likely to shop for clothes than the general online population, 50 percent more likely to buy toys, 29 percent more likely to buy music, and 23 percent more likely to purchase e-books online within the past 30 days. When browsing the web, Pinterest is increasingly popular as well, with almost 5 million American moms visiting the site, representing more than a third of its unique visitors from home computers in March.

According to an earlier study by NM Incite, at least half of moms use social media via mobile devices, compared with 37 percent of the online population. Overall, 54 percent of moms own smartphones (among U.S. mobile subscribers), keeping them connected with family and friends.

Nielsen Holdings N.V. is a global information and measurement company with leading market positions in marketing and consumer information, television and other media measurement, online intelligence, mobile measurement, trade shows and related properties. Nielsen is holding an upcoming webinar, The American Media Mom: Always-On, In Control, and Changing the Rules for Marketers

Mediatwits #47: Positively Dan Rather; Future of Facebook; Rise of Snip.it

mark@mediashift.org — Fri, 04 May 2012 06:00:45 -0800

Welcome to the 47th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, this time with Mark Glaser and the Rafat Ali as co-hosts. On this show, Rafat had the honor (and early-morning wakeup call) to interview news icon Dan Rather at 7 a.m. while Rather was traveling by train to Washington, D.C. Rather has a new memoir out, "Rather Outspoken," and talked to Rafat about why he's positive about journalism, the lack of online business model for news and the rise of Al Jazeera. With the Facebook IPO coming in a couple weeks, we had special guest Eric Jackson talk about his new Forbes story, with the catchy title: "Here's Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years." Jackson believes that a school of thought called organizational sociology might be relevant to the tech business today.

Finally, we looked deeper at a new social curation tool called Snip.it, similar to Pinterest but where people "snip" stories they like and put them into categories. Special guest Ramy Adeeb, founder and CEO of Snip.it, explained how he started the service after his frustration with sharing the best stories covering the Arab Spring a year ago. Now the service is growing, and helping to drive traffic to publishers' sites. But does it have staying power?

Check it out!

mediatwits47.mp3

Subscribe to the podcast here

Subscribe to Mediatwits via iTunes

Follow @TheMediatwits on Twitter here

Our show is now on Stitcher! Listen to us on your iPhone, Android Phone, Kindle Fire and other devices with Stitcher. Find Stitcher in your app store or at stitcher.com.

Intro and outro music by 3 Feet Up; mid-podcast music by Autumn Eyes via Mevio's Music Alley.

Here are some highlighted topics from the show:

Intro

0:20: News roundup

1:20: Could Facebook IPO tank (eventually)?

4:45: Byliner drops Amazon after a Buzz Bissinger story's price was dropped to 0.

7:50: Rundown of stories on podcast

Positively Dan Rather

8:40: Special guest Dan Rather, interviewed by Rafat Ali

10:00: Rather: I'm an optimist by nature, fairly optimistic about journalism

12:25: Rather: No one has created a new business model to support quality journalism online

14:20: Rather: Entertainment values have overwhelmed news values

17:00: What about newer international sources such as Al Jazeera?

18:30: Rather: I applaud the BBC coming into the American market

Future of Facebook, Google?

19:40: Special guest Eric Jackson

21:45: Sociologists don't give much credence to company leaders

24:20: Jackson: Google has failed at many businesses despite having money, brains

28:00: Jackson: Facebook will be slower to adapt to the new mobile world

Snip.it and social curation services

30:20: Special guest Ramy Adeeb

32:30: Adeeb: Social media tools good at info dissemination but not saving stories

35:00: Adeeb: Goal is to get people to go to Snip.it site, read more stories

36:20: Adeeb: We will make sure users know which content is sponsored

Weekly Poll

Don't forget to vote in our weekly poll, this time about the Facebook IPO:

Poll: Where Are Your Favorite Places to Share Photos?

mark@mediashift.org — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:54:27 -0800

You recently went on vacation to an exotic and new locale and you want to show people your great photos from the trip. So where do you post them online? Are you a fan of Flickr or Facebook? What about Instagram? Or perhaps you're part of the thriving photography community on Google+. And let's not forget the old school folks who still prefer getting photo prints and putting them in an actual real physical photo album! Vote in our poll -- you can vote for multiple items -- and explain in the comments what makes a good photo-sharing service for you.

Mediatwits #46: Photography Special: Creative Commons, Cameraphones, Instagram, Google+

mark@mediashift.org — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 06:00:45 -0800

Welcome to the 46th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, this time with Mark Glaser and the Rafat Ali as co-hosts. Rafat is celebrating his birthday, we're not sure how old he is, but we know that he loves photography. So this week we are celebrating his birthday by doing a special show focused on photography in the digital age. Our roundtable includes crack professional photographer Gregor Halenda, photo and multimedia guru Brian Storm and social photographer extraordinaire Thomas Hawk in a wide-ranging discussion.

First is the debate over rights: Is it a good idea to post your photos on social media under a Creative Commons license? Or should you be more restrictive of your photos online? We also talk about the state of stock photography and the democratization of photography now that the tools are more accessible -- and everyone has a potential global reach online. And what about the rise of amazing cameraphones, apps and filters? Now that Instagram has been bought by Facebook for $1 billion, what's the implication about the future of photo-sharing and filters? Thomas Hawk also cites Google+ as being a hotbed of photography. How did it surpass Facebook?

Check it out!

mediatwits46.mp3

Subscribe to the podcast here

Subscribe to Mediatwits via iTunes

Follow @TheMediatwits on Twitter here

Our show is now on Stitcher and being featured there! Listen to us on your iPhone, Android Phone, Kindle Fire and other devices with Stitcher. Find Stitcher in your app store or at stitcher.com.

Intro and outro music by 3 Feet Up; mid-podcast music by Autumn Eyes via Mevio's Music Alley.

Here are some highlighted topics from the show:

Intro

0:20: Happy birthday to Rafat!

2:15: Rafat got the photography bug in last two years

4:00: Pro photographers threatened by rise of amateurs

Creative Commons a good thing?

6:00: Special guests Thomas Hawk, Brian Storm and Gregor Halenda

8:30: Flickr has even started to innovate, along with newer players

10:20: Halenda: I won't post on Flickr or under Creative Commons, I want to be paid

13:20: Hawk: There are examples of pro photogs making a business from posting online

What skills do photographers need now?

15:00: Storm: Schools are teaching kids everything -- photography, video and multimedia

18:00: Halenda: Stock photography can't support pros anymore

20:10: Storm: Everyone has tools and distribution so now it's all about quality

22:10: Hawk: Google+ lets you share circles of photographers with all followers

Cameraphones get ever more powerful

25:30: High-end cameras are still selling well

27:30: Hawk likes Camera Awesome as one of his favorite photo apps

29:40: Halenda says knowing Photoshop is essential to pro photography

32:30: Storm helped start "The Week in Pictures" at MSNBC.com in 1998 as pioneer; had 100 million page views last month

Weekly Poll

Don't forget to vote in our weekly poll, this time about where you share photos:

As the 'Friction-Less' Web Grows, Friction Against It Does Too

dewatson@usc.edu — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 06:00:00 -0800

Control over our public image is incredibly important to us -- from the clothes we decide to wear each morning, to the music we blast loud enough for street-goers to hear, to the very words we speak aloud to our friends, bosses and strangers.

Often, they're carefully chosen within our rooms, our headphones, and our minds. We need these private labs.

But what if we lost these laboratories? What if every contemplation, every experiment, everything you did, was public?

That, some argue, is the future of a "friction-less" web -- a kind of stream-of-consciousness for the virtual world.

That story you just read about Kate Winslet being photoshopped? Just by reading it, you told every one of your 700 Facebook friends that you read it. Was it really something you wanted to share? On the friction-less web, that may no longer be your decision. And that is what has critics worried.

The mega-success that is the WaPo Social Reader

Last month, the WaPo Labs digital team, which researches and tests out digital innovation for the Washington Post, continued its tour of universities at the University of Southern California, where I study.

Privacy was at the core of the conversation.

The pride and joy at WaPo Labs is the Social Reader, a free Facebook application that allows users to read Washington Post news from friends, and automatically share those stories. Once a user agrees to the terms of the app, every time he or she decides to click on a Washington Post article within Facebook, it's shared with all his or her friends.

For the Washington Post, it's a goldmine. Just look at these staggering numbers from the few companies that first took up the technology. The more sharing of their content, the better. And for now, WaPo is among only a few news organizations (The Guardian, Yahoo News, Wall Street Journal) and social media companies (Spotify) that use friction-less technology. That number, however, is quickly growing, particularly as Facebook's Open Graph aspirations are taken up by more and more developers.

If WaPo Labs' visit and its presentation to USC was any indication, the Social Reader has been a mega-success for its news organization.

'Friction-less,' defined

The term "friction-less" is fairly new. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg first used it at the company's f8 developers conference in late 2011 while unveiling Timeline -- a dramatic redesign of user profiles. Zuckerberg described the new experience of using Timeline as "real-time serendipity in a friction-less experience." It all goes in line with the company's belief that privacy will become obsolete in the future.

Well, the term caught on. Now, it's got people thinking it will become necessary for companies online.

Simply put, friction-less sharing means you don't have to manually cut and paste a link into the "update status" box at the top of your Facebook profile, and then hit "post." For now, the auto-sharing is contained within Facebook, but it's likely to spread.

It's "a euphemism for silent total surveillance," developer Adrian Short wrote in his post "It's the End of the Web As We Know It."

The worry? What happens when all companies, including news organizations, are using friction-less sharing? And, will there be a day it becomes mandatory?

Here's the doomsday scenario:

One day, we're dependent on social media, ruled by a few companies. Every click we make is information beneficial to those companies. As a result, every click -- your digital footprint -- is shared, and then archived. There will be a day when friction-less sharing is so prevalent, and so important to companies, you will no longer have a private laboratory on the Internet. You will forget which terms you agreed to. Every click will prompt you to ask, "Will this go out to all my friends?"

Sure, upon first agreeing to the terms of the Washington Post Social Reader application, you are making a decision. Beyond that, you're not making any decisions -- about what to share or with whom to share it. You're only deciding whether or not to read content.

(Jon Mitchell of ReadWriteWeb this month also panned the WaPo reader, as well as other "social news" apps.)

Here's the problem

If you were worried about that pain in your chest, would you still read that WebMD article on heart attacks? Wouldn't your family, friends, co-workers worry for you?

If you were gay, but not out, would you look up gay bars and clubs on the Internet, or read articles on gay rights? What if others found out?

If you were sexually assaulted, would you stay away from crisis and treatment-center websites? Would you read articles about people who had triumphed over similar atrocities?

Fear would drive us away from a lot of things on the web.

However, as usually is the case, there is another side to the "doomsday scenario."

As one commenter to Short's article put it, "Social media is evolving, but as people with free will, we collectively decide the direction it navigates. Now, this is where your article comes to play. You have raised a point, and people will notice soon enough. We owe it to posterity not to create monsters."

It's inevitable as friction-less sharing gains notoriety, and more and more companies install WaPo Labs' social readers, a public friction will arise, and push back. Users, to an extent, will enjoy the ease of web surfing and sharing, without the hassle of manually working the "update status" input box. The idea that we all are Truman Burbank, living out our lives for the public spectacle, plays strongly to our egos.

But we need our private laboratories.

Already, the White House has unveiled its blueprint for a "Privacy Bill of Rights" to protect consumers online, including the "Do-Not-Track" technology that Google, surprisingly, has agreed to.

For now, online privacy is a growing concern, but friction-less technology is about to drive it to the very top of our concerns.

In the future, we will need to continue to balance our insatiable desire to share life experiences online, with our need for privacy and experimentation away from public scrutiny.

But now, we also have to contend with the bottom line-driven interests of companies that can benefit -- in some cases hugely -- by making public our once private laboratories.

Dan Watson is currently the editor-in-chief at USC's innovative digital website Neontommy.com, the nation's most widely trafficked college news site. He leads a staff of more than 50 editors and 100 reporters. Before returning to school to get his Masters in digital journalism at USC, he was an assistant sports editor for a series of newspapers on the beautiful Central Coast of California. Dan got his B.A. in journalism from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where he was editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, and launched its first true news site. Shortly after its launch, it was named the nation's No. 1 college news site. He has worked for five newspapers, and is currently a Carnegie-Knight fellow reporting on the 2012 presidential election for the Guardian.

This post originally appeared here.

Facebook Groups for Schools Raises Concerns

tbarseghian@kqed.org — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 06:00:00 -0800

The explosive growth of online social media sites specifically targeted at schools has compelled Facebook to edge its way back into the fertile ground of college campuses. Last week, the company announced a new feature available only to students and faculty with an active .edu email address, Groups for Schools. It's billed to be exclusive -- even alumni and prospective students aren't allowed in, limiting the scope of the groups and creating something that approximates the intimacy that was Facebook's strong suit when it first launched.

Groups for Schools is meant to network students in the same university community for social or extracurricular events, but also includes elements that make it useful as a study tool, like the popular platform Edmodo and a number of other similar sites that have cropped up. It allows students and teachers who are members of a group designated to a particular class, for example, to share comments on a class discussion and reading, as well as to share class materials like notes, assignments and calendars, up to 25MB.

The concerns

But just a week into its launch, red flags are already being raised. One of the main concerns that has not been addressed by Facebook is the potential liability that students, faculty, and universities might face for file-sharing through Facebook. Many universities are already cracking down on file-sharing through school-owned Internet networks, and Facebook's new tool adds yet another facet to the complicated question. Additionally, schools must consider intellectual property right issues. Facebook's terms and conditions specify that is has a transferable license to use any content associated with Facebook. Would that be the case for student-produced work? Facebook has not updated its terms and conditions to reflect the new product, so that remains to be seen.

Another complaint is that by creating Groups for Schools, Facebook is undermining apps already built by partner developers, like Inigral, which markets itself as a way for universities to increase enrollment and retention through social networks that meet student needs. Now Groups for Friends will offer almost the same service. Inigral founder Michael Staton says the company isn't too concerned about Facebook's new product because the more students communicate with one another, the better it will be for their business. But there is a sense that Facebook is an unwieldy landlord, who doesn't pay much attention to the innovations of others that use its platform.

A different conversation

Another criticism of Groups for Schools is that it doesn't inspire the kind of online discussion other education-related social media sites do. When Facebook tested the product at Oberlin College, a small liberal arts school in Ohio, for example, the students simply weren't active in groups that formed -- in some groups, the creator was the sole member, according to an e-campusnews article. One theory behind the flop at Oberlin is that Facebook is an escape for many students and they'd prefer to keep it unconnected to their academic pursuits.

One very noteworthy aspect of the new Groups for Schools is that it loosens the privacy settings so that any Facebook user with an .edu email address that corresponds to the individual university can be messaged. On the rest of Facebook's network, two users must be "friends" to exchange messages. While the new looseness in privacy settings might work out fine at a small school like Oberlin where people might even know each other in person, it could be more disconcerting at a larger school like University of Washington or Texas A&M, where much of the student body is just as much a stranger as any other random Facebook user.

Groups for Schools is still rolling out and will eventually be available at higher education institutions across the globe.

Thumbs up graphic by Flickr user birgerking

This post originally appeared on KQED's MindShift, which explores the future of learning, covering cultural and tech trends and innovations in education. Follow MindShift on Twitter @mindshiftKQED and on Facebook.

Socializing the Space Shuttle's Farewell

terri@territhornton.com — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 06:00:00 -0800

More than a decade ago, I was driving down a Tampa, Fla., street when I saw one of the most amazing things I'd ever seen -- and may ever see. A space shuttle, piggybacked on a jumbo jet, came out of nowhere and seemed to fill the entire sky. It was massive -- seeing it on TV was one thing, but seeing how incredibly big it was compared with its surroundings was staggering.

In those days, before social media, I could only tell my friends, not show them. So when I saw the recent Twitter chatter about the Discovery's farewell flight from Kennedy Space Center to Washington, D.C., where it will be displayed at the Smithsonian, I was elated. People could not only share what they saw -- they could share the experience itself.

personalizing a historic moment

News organizations used Twitter to let people know they were carrying it live. But once the 747 bearing the shuttle touched down, and the news cycle went back to normal, witnesses to history were still uploading fresh videos. Many showed how the fighter jet accompanying the flight looked as small as a housefly in comparison.

People shot photos and videos from rooftops, balconies, windows and the ground. Many videos posted on YouTube and other sites included dialog that captured the witnesses' exuberance and awe.

Everyone from members of Congress to us common folk took to Twitter to share their emotions. "Sad to see Discovery retire as it flies over DC," tweeted Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. "America needs a space program we can believe in again."

"Not when there are people on Earth who can be helped with all that money saved," replied one follower.

Hashtags including "SpotTheShuttle" and "Discovery" helped people follow conversations including words such as "beautiful," "incredible," "patriotic" and "amazing." Instagram pictures had effects that emphasized the event's historic nature.

But few things are so serious that they can't be put into an appropriately skewed perspective. When I see the Shuttle atop the 747, I can't help but think about a baby koala on its mother's back. Others take a more common-sense approach.

"If the shuttle can sit on a plane, I'm calling bullshit on overweight luggage," tweeted D.C. resident Alison McQuade.

People will have many more chances to shoot and share images of the Shuttle Discovery. But never again can photos be taken of it in flight. I for one am glad that social media exists to give us the opportunity to share and "socialize" the experience.

And if you live in the Northeast - heads up! The shuttle Enterprise will leave Washington April 23 and do a similar fly-over of New York City, as it heads to its permanent home at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.

Terri Thornton, a former reporter and TV news producer, owns Thornton Communications, an award-winning PR and social media firm. She is also a freelance editor for Strategic Finance and Management Accounting Quarterly.

Governments Increasingly Targeting Twitter Users for Expressing Their Opinion

jillian@eff.org — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 06:00:12 -0800

This piece is co-authored by Trevor Timm.

In its six years of existence, Twitter has staked out a position as the most free speech-friendly social network. Its utility in the uprisings that swept the Middle East and North Africa is unmatched, its usage by activists and journalists alike to spread news and galvanize the public unprecedented.

As Twitter CEO Dick Costolo recently boasted at the Guardian Changing Media Summit, Twitter is "the free speech wing of the free speech party."

But at the same time, some governments -- in both not-so-democratic and democratic societies -- have not taken such a positive view of Twitter and freedom of expression. Instead, they've threatened, arrested and prosecuted their citizens for what they express in 140 characters or less.

Not surprisingly, in a number of authoritarian-minded states, journalists are often the first targets. And as bloggers and pundits take to the ephemeral style of Twitter to criticize rules, the government has been -- in a number of cases -- one step ahead. While some countries, such as Bahrain and Tunisia, have chosen to block individual Twitter accounts, others prefer to go straight to the source.

Crackdown in the Middle East

In February, Saudi blogger and journalist Hamza Kashgari fled the country after threats on his life. His crime? Tweeting a mock conversation with the Prophet Mohammed, an action which many called blasphemous. Though Kashgari was on his way to a country that would have granted him asylum, he transferred in Malaysia where, upon his arrival, he was detained, and finally extradited back to his home country, despite pleas from the international community to allow him to continue onward.

Kashgari remains in detention in Saudi Arabia, while outside of prison, members of the public continue to call for his murder. Nearly as chilling is the threat to his livelihood: Saudi Minister of Culture and Information Abdul Aziz Khoja has banned Kashgari, a journalist by profession, from writing in "any Saudi paper or magazine," meaning that even if he walks free, he'll be prohibited from continuing in the only profession he has ever known -- and all for a tweet.

In the United Arab Emirates -- no stranger to Internet censorship -- political activist Mohammed Abdel-Razzaq al-Siddiq was arrested in late March for criticizing one of the country's rulers on his Twitter account. Earlier in the month, blogger and activist Saleh AlDhufair was arrested for criticizing repressive actions by state authorities on Twitter as well.

According to one source, UAE authorities also detained three other people in recent weeks for postings on social media, including one young citizen who faces charges for commenting on uprisings against autocratic rulers in the region on Twitter. All are free on bail for now, but their ultimate fates have yet to be determined.

In Oman, police arrested prominent blogger Muawiya Alrawahi in February after he posted a series of tweets in which he criticized the country's rulers on a variety of issues. Alrawahi's arrest directly followed that of two journalists charged with "insulting" the Minister of Justice. And in nearby Kuwait, writer Mohammad al-Mulaifi has been held for more than a month over accusations of "insulting the Muslim Shi'ite minority," a charge which for another activist, Mubarak Al-Bathali, whose "crime" was also committed on Twitter, resulted in a prison sentence of three years (later commuted to six months). His detention was not the first of its kind in the country either; in the summer of 2011, Nasser Abul spent three months in prison for criticizing the Bahraini and Saudi royal families on Twitter.

Outside the Gulf, Egypt's Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) has taken a similar approach. Last summer, SCAF court-martialed young activist Asmaa Mahfouz and charged her with inciting violence, disturbing public order and spreading false information via her Twitter account. Tunisia and Morocco have also cracked down on social media punditry of late and have arrested Facebook users for expressing themselves politically.

Facebook is as likely a target as Twitter. In the West Bank, Palestinian authorities arrested two Palestinian journalists, which may prove to have a self-silencing effect on other local reporters. Two journalists and a university lecturer were recently detained for comments made on Facebook that offended the Palestinian Authority. The lecturer remains imprisoned.

Democracy?

Arrests and prosecutions based on tweets is not relegated to Middle Eastern countries, however. A string of cases in otherwise robust democracies have raised questions by using the legal system to attempt to jail citizens who many would say are engaging in free speech.

South Korea -- one of a handful of democracies that justifies online censorship on the basis of "national security" -- has used its National Security Law to mete out harsh punishments to those who "praise, encourage disseminate or cooperate with anti-state groups, members or those under their control." The law applies to "affiliation with or support for" North Korea, and allows the government to censor websites related to North Korea or communism.

As reported by the New York Times in February, authorities arrested Park Jung-geun, a 23-year-old photographer, who re-posted content from North Korean government site Uriminzokkiri.com to his Twitter account. Ironically, South Korean media regularly cite the government-run website in news reports. Though Park claimed that his Twitter posts were intended sarcastically, prosecutors disagreed, countering that the Twitter account "served as a tool to spread North Korean propaganda." If convicted, Park could face up to seven years in jail.

In the United Kingdom, where the prime minister already floated the idea of censoring Twitter accounts during the London riots last year, a judge sentenced 21-year-old college student Liam Stacey to 56 days in jail for tweeting racist remarks about a prominent footballer for the Bolton Wanderers. While the tweets were certainly "vile and abhorrent" as the judge concluded, his statement that "there is no alternative to an immediate prison sentence" is misguided. By making an international case out of the tweets, the prison sentence ended up giving them more reach than if had they been ignored.

In the United States, strong free speech protections under the First Amendment have kept Twitter users out of jail for expressing their opinion, but increasingly, the federal and local governments have been going after Twitter users in a different way -- by subpoenaing their Twitter information in criminal investigations. Most notably, this tactic was used against three former WikiLeaks volunteers, who saw their Twitter and email information subpoenaed in a Grand Jury investigation into the publishing of classified information -- a practice normally protected by the First Amendment.

But more recently, a series of subpoenas have been issued by the Boston and New York district attorneys offices in response to Occupy Wall Street protests. At least four accounts have been targeted, and often the subpoenas come with requests for months of information for minor crimes such as disorderly conduct that often don't rise to a felony, require jail time, or even show up on one's permanent criminal record. Critics have seen it as an intimidation tactic against protesters who are engaging in legitimate First Amendment-protected speech.

While social media sites like Twitter will continue to proliferate in the coming years, governments -- whether they are fearful of the power of communication, because of existing strict speech laws, or a combination of both -- will find ways to "fight back" against increasing venues for expression. Journalists -- whose livelihood is increasingly bolstered by social media -- must continue to call attention to them.

Occupy image by asterix611, CC BY-NC-ND-2.0

Jillian C. York is the director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She writes regularly about free expression, politics, and the Internet, with particular focus on the Arab world. She is on the Board of Directors of Global Voices Online, and has written for a variety of publications, including Al Jazeera, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Bloomberg.

Trevor Timm is an activist and blogger at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He specializes in free speech and government transparency issues. Previously, he helped the former general counsel of the New York Times write a book on press freedom and the First Amendment. His work has also appeared in The Atlantic and Al Jazeera.

5 Creative Strategies for Magazines to Use Pinterest

susan.sivek@gmail.com — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 06:00:00 -0800

Despite what you may have observed, you can pin more on Pinterest than recipes, home décor, fashion, and enough DIY projects for a lifetime.

Much has already been written about magazines' use of Pinterest. Because the majority of the site's users are women, much of the coverage has focused on how Pinterest has presented opportunities for women's magazines to share content with wider audiences and drive traffic to their own websites. But magazines of all types, beyond just women's publications, can use Pinterest creatively to craft interesting selections of content to intrigue current -- and potential -- readers.

I spent hours on Pinterest looking for innovative ways that magazines -- especially smaller publications, and those on non-lifestyle topics -- are using Pinterest. Here are five creative strategies I found that might also be new opportunities for other magazines.

Pinning More than Pictures: Multimedia

I was surprised to see how few magazines were posting links to collections of videos or other multimedia. Music and video provide a refreshing change of pace from Pinterest's mostly static content. A few approaches to multimedia include:

Oxygen, the women's fitness magazine, posts collections of music videos for playlists designed by each month's cover model.
Entrepreneur magazine has a selection of videos on its "Online Business Videos" board, featuring the voices and experiences of real-life entrepreneurs.
Surfer magazine showcases some of its own videos on a dedicated video board.

Pinning for a Purpose

Some magazines focused on social and political issues are using their boards to curate their own work and other online material related to their causes.

Mother Jones has created boards that feature its excellent infographics and flowcharts, neatly combining the visual nature of Pinterest with its investigative journalism. (And, more typical for Pinterest: It also has a board of its food bloggers' recipes.)

Cannabis Now magazine collects infographics supporting marijuana legalization on one of its Pinterest boards, giving visitors the chance to re-pin weed right alongside knitting projects.
Latinitas magazine, a small digital magazine for young Latina women, uses some of its Pinterest boards to collect poor media representations of women and encourage media literacy.

Pins Offer Insider Experience

Pinterest boards can also collect "insider" content from the magazine to encourage readers' identification with it and make them feel like they have special access to the magazine's inner workings.

Dance magazine has a board of "Cover Outtakes" that shows the photos that were not selected for their print covers -- but that are still beautiful images that help readers feel like they were there in the studio.
Lucky magazine, focused on shopping, also has a board of "Models Being Models," showing what models are like when they're not being photographed.

Quite a few magazines have created boards of "vintage" covers. One interesting example is Seventeen. Most of Seventeen's boards have relatively few images pinned, seeming to reveal a minimal investment in its presence on the site. However, its "Vintage Seventeen Covers" board includes 79 covers dating back to the 1950s. Seventeen's reader demographic, with an average age of 16, doesn't really match Pinterest's primary users yet, but the somewhat older women who are on the site might enjoy the nostalgia of the vintage covers.

B2B Magazines Get Pinning

Most of the magazines on Pinterest are lifestyle-focused consumer magazines, to be sure. But business-to-business (B2B) magazines haven't ignored the site entirely. Finding the right approach for B2B content on Pinterest might be tricky, but here are a few magazines that have given it a shot.

Convenience Store Decisions, designed for convenience store owners, has a Pinterest account, with boards featuring food service and convenience store designs. The food pictures blend naturally into the rest of Pinterest's content, though the convenience store interiors clash a bit with the lavish home interiors that generally populate Pinterest.
Architect magazine, the magazine of the American Institute of Architects, has an appealing selection of building photos, movie suggestions and books on its boards, offering design-obsessed Pinterest users another source of inspiration.

Challenge magazine isn't a household name for most people, but it's the magazine offered at Flying J and Pilot truck stops for truck drivers who frequent them. It has a variety of content beyond just trucking topics, including sports and news. It is also running a photo contest. The "likes" and "repins" on Pinterest will decide the winner, who -- appropriately -- will receive a GPS device.

Bonus: Going Magazine-Meta with Pinterest

Other fun Pinterest items for magazine enthusiasts:

Jeremy Leslie of magCulture has a fascinating board of magazine covers and magazine ephemera.
Condé Nast recently redesigned the website of its U.K. magazine Easy Living with a very Pinterest-esque layout.
Pinterest might also be a way for new magazines to generate reader interest pre-launch, as Cosmopolitan Latina is doing. As editor-in-chief Michelle Herrera Mulligan told Advertising Age: "We debuted the Pinterest page in early March as a way to begin a compelling, visual conversation with our readers and develop a strong relationship with them before the magazine launches in May."

Despite all of these creative uses of Pinterest, we don't know yet whether the initial burst of hype about the site will really lead to more magazine readers long-term. Consider this comment from a Pinterest user who learned about an apparently short-lived print magazine based on Pinterest content: "[O]ne of the things I love about Pinterest is that it's not in print, no paper, no waste, no junk in my mailbox, no what page, what issue was that. WTF?!"

Online Privacy: Kids Know More Than You Think

tbarseghian@kqed.org — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 06:00:00 -0800

Much of the anxiety around tweens and social media lies in the fear that they don't care about or understand privacy settings. Parents worry that kids will either willingly or unintentionally expose themselves to dangerous anonymous predators, or that they don't fully understand that the information they share about themselves can be used against them.

But tweens are much more savvy about their privacy settings than adults give them credit for, even when it comes to subtleties of "frenemies" dynamics, according to a small, qualitative study by researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education that's forthcoming in the journal Learning, Media, & Technology.

"Tweens value privacy, seek privacy from both strangers and known others online, and use a variety of strategies to protect their privacy online," wrote researchers Katie Davis and Carrie James, who conducted in-depth interviews with 42 middle-school students for the study. "Tweens' online privacy concerns are considerably broader than the 'stranger danger' messages they report hearing from teachers."

'Fairly sophisticated'

Most kids are well aware of risks, and make "fairly sophisticated" decisions about privacy settings based on advice and information from their parents, teachers, and friends. They differentiate between people they don't know out in the world (distant strangers) and those they don't know in the community, such as high school students in their hometown (near strangers). Marisa, for example, a 10-year-old interviewed in the study (who technically is not allowed to use Facebook), "enjoys participating in virtual worlds and using instant messenger and Facebook to socialize with her friends"; is keenly aware of the risks -- especially those related to privacy; and she doesn't share highly sensitive personal information on her Facebook profile and actively blocks certain people.

"A growing body of research suggests that while teens share a great deal online, their willingness to share does not mean that they care little for privacy," the authors wrote. In fact, they're well aware of the importance of protecting their reputation and safety -- even their future job prospects, according to a 2010 survey by Kim Thomas.

Just as adults do, tweens want to be in control of how they share personal information -- and they do it in order to cultivate friendships and intimacy. Ironically, their sense of invasion of privacy comes not from friends or strangers, but the growing presence of adults, according to a 2011 study by danah boyd and Alice Marwick.

Rather than fearing the unknown stranger, young adults are more wary of the "known other" -- parents, school teachers, classmates, etc. -- for fear of "the potential for the known others to share embarrassing information about them"; 83 percent of the sample group cited at least one known other they wanted to maintain their privacy from; 71 percent cited at least one known adult. Strikingly, seven out of the 10 participants who reported an incident when their privacy was breached said it was "perpetrated by known others."

Most of the kids interviewed admitted that they withhold some information even from their friends. One 12-year-old said she wanted to protect herself from people "who like to start drama."

And they recognize privacy breach from adults, too. "Like one day, I was using my phone and [my teacher] took it from me and they went through my texts to see who I was texting," one tween told the researchers.

A 14-year-old said, "I just want it to be like a teenager world ... because you do talk about your teachers or your parents and what they're doing, and how it frustrates you and gets you mad and stuff."

In terms of strategies for privacy, 90 percent of the tweens said they don't include their full names, addresses, phone numbers, and birth dates (only day and month, not the year). About 36 percent said they embedded false information to protect their privacy, and some did so as suggested by their parents.

But it's worth noting that five of the 42 interviewed either didn't know about specific or general privacy settings on Facebook, or hadn't bothered to adjust them.

What Roles Do Adults Play?

Many tweens said they consult adults -- such as parents or educators -- about privacy concerns online; 89% said they conferred with parents, and 63% said they heard messages from educators.

In one case, a student reported a teacher using extreme scare tactics. "My computer lab teacher said that people on the Internet, they can threaten you -- they're going to hunt you and kill you. And that ... they can find you and rape you."

These kinds of messages fall short of conveying the social complexity of online interactions, the researchers say.

"Engage youth in conversation about approaches to privacy," James said at a seminar at the Hechinger Institute last year. "Avoid making them more fearful than they are. Discuss and encourage empowering privacy. Educators can facilitate those conversations among youth. They can balance protective messages with those about responsibility and respect for others. Because fear can undercut the value of participating with communities."

Additional reporting by Chelsea Hawkins.

Tina Barseghian is the editor of KQED's MindShift, an NPR website about the future of education. In the past, she's worked as the executive editor of Edutopia, a magazine published by the George Lucas Education Foundation, as well as an editor at O'Reilly Media and CMP Media. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Poll: How Is Social Media Changing Activism?

mark@mediashift.org — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:45:37 -0800

How do people end up in the streets protesting something? What motivates them to take action, even when that action could lead to their arrest? Last year, Facebook and Twitter played major roles in helping organize street protests during the Arab Spring, to the point where dictators were focused on either blocking the services or using them to spy on protestors. And now, with the recent Trayvon Martin shooting, the backlash against "pink slime" in meat, and the protests against the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, action has spread through social media like never before. Are we at a tipping point for activism fueled by social media? Is it all good or is there a dark side? Vote in our poll, below, and share your thoughts in the comments below.

Mediatwits #44: Social Media's Role in Activism, Trayvon Martin; Pinterest's Legal Drama

mark@mediashift.org — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 05:00:01 -0800

Welcome to the 44th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, this time with Mark Glaser and the Rachel Sklar as co-hosts. Sklar is a writer and social entrepreneur, and is filling in for Rafat Ali. This week, we convene a special roundtable to discuss how social media is changing activism, in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, in a backlash to Rush Limbaugh, and in many other cases. Our special guests include BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti, Ohio State civil rights history professor Hasan Kwame Jeffries and Change.org's Brianna Cayo-Cotter. How do activist campaigns go viral, and can they go too far?

Then we talk about the recent legal drama around social network Pinterest, where some copyright holders have been upset with use of their images. The social network recently changed its Terms of Service so it no longer had the right to sell the images of people who posted on the site. Plus, it now allows self-promotion. Special guest Steve Eder of the Wall Street Journal talks about the various copyright debates Pinterest has spawned in the legal community.

Check it out!

mediatwits44.mp3

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Follow @TheMediatwits on Twitter here

Intro and outro music by 3 Feet Up; mid-podcast music by Autumn Eyes via Mevio's Music Alley.

Here are some highlighted topics from the show:

Intro

0:20: Co-host Rachel Sklar en route to save Obamacare

1:35: Rachel: Social media activism is a gateway drug to real activism

3:30: Rundown of topics on the show

Social media makes activism contagious

4:40: Special guests Jonah Peretti, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Brianna Cayo-Cotter

7:50: Peretti: Things spread faster now than ever before

9:20: Cayo-Cotter: 2 million people joining Change.org each month

13:30: Jeffries: The medium of information dissemination has changed

16:10: Rachel: Mainstream media now taking part in social media

18:00: How one woman spread the word about pink slime on Change.org

19:50: Cayo-Cotter: 2.2 million people have signed petition to prosecute Trayvon Martin's killer

21:55: Jeffries: Social movements don't just form online; they move into the streets too

Legal issues for Pinterest

23:40: Special guest Steve Eder

26:00: Eder: People uncomfortable with Terms of Service that allowed Pinterest to sell what they pin

28:00: Eder: Pinterest didn't want people to self-promote, but backed off that idea

30:20: Rachel: The sharing issues are not much different than copyright issues with blogging years ago

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