Results matching “use of wikipedia and”

Two recent university graduates have decided to stop updating the fake Twitter account they created for UK foreign secretary David Miliband, the Guardian reported. The fake account attracted attention when several news outlets including the Guardian, AFP, the Times and the Telegraph picked up the Miliband impersonators' tribute to Michael Jackson, once again highlighting the need for verification when journalists deal with social media.

The quote "Never has one soared so high and yet dived so low. RIP Michael" was published in several papers. Rory Crew and Knud Noelle claim that they were not aiming to trick the media, but think that journalists "learned something" about not taking such things at face value. They wrote in an email to the Guardian that "It does highlight the importance of the verification of sources, which is clearly becoming more difficult in the web 2.0 era." Crew expressed disappointment in the media and said he believes the mistakes were made as a result of newspapers cutting sub editors and hence falling behind on fact checking.

In November 2008, the New York Times' investigative journalist, David Rohde, was taken hostage by the Taliban not far from Kabul, the Afghan capital, where he was conducting research for his book.  His driver, Asadullah Mangal, and local reporter, Tahir Ludin, were also kidnapped. Rohde and Ludin escaped earlier this month and their freedom, say the press, would not have been possible without the self-imposed media blackout.

Thanks to the efforts of New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, for seven months news of the kidnapping did not enter the public domain. Fellow newspapers understood that lives were at stake and nobody was willing to compromise Rohde's safety by breaking the media silence. "But that was pretty straightforward compared with keeping it off Wikipedia," says one New York Times journalist.

This past weekend, Google News announced a new feature to enhance its search engine capabilities. The new feature allows online readers to search for articles and headlines specific to the author that they are interested in by simply clicking on the hyper-linked text of the journalist's name.

The enhancement is designed to aid users to sift through the 25,000 news sources that Google News aggregates. This is exciting news for journalists in the way that it assists them in promoting their work as part of their own brand. The update is great news for readers who are fans of certain writers, too.

After testing the practice with a small percentage of users, Google News has started recognizing Wikipedia articles as news sources in its round-up of the web's top stories. For many Internet users, the popular online encyclopedia represents a handy source to quickly learn about a subject that's in the news.

The number of Wikipedia links on the Google News landing page is not overwhelming; a recent visit revealed just three of the dozens of links on the site belonged to the online encyclopedia.

Online pioneer and blogger Dave Winer does not view his blog posts as 'published' until he has sent a link to them on Twitter. He describes in his blog Scripting.com how 'Tweeting' has become an integral part of his routine: "I've been posting links to new blog posts on Twitter since I started using it two years ago. It's just a natural thing, another step in the publishing process."

Essentially, he is encouraging newspapers, writers and bloggers alike to be Twitter junkies. In other words, one must litter the Twitter airways in 140 characters or less with news about a story they have published for it to be really considered 'published'. How else would you direct readers to your content if you do not broadcast it on Twitter?

Apture has created technology that aims to make flat web pages more three-dimensional: the third dimension being boxes that pop-up to show the reader further multimedia assets relating to an article. At first glance it does not sound too ground-breaking, but taking a closer look, the implications for both readers and publishers are considerable. The Editors Weblog spoke to co-founder and CEO Tristan Harris about how Apture works and how it can help publishers.

Harris described what inspired him to start working on Apture. He and his co-founders came up with the idea while studying at Stanford, during conversations with the Knight Fellows. Frustrated with the fact that despite the web being "truly the richest medium we have ever had to communicate with, with all the computational power and multimedia assets" it has "this flat characteristic of flat story-telling," they decided to try to do something about it.

Easy access to multiple multimedia sources

Apture has created a media search engine that allows writers to "quickly leverage all the media that's available on the web, in many different APIs and digital libraries," Harris explained. The journalist highlights keywords in the text, such as the name of a person, place, event, or a certain topic, and a box will then appear with a list of possible media assets to link to. These include reference tools such as Wikipedia, IMDB, Amazon, Twitter search, even the US Congress, photos from Flickr or Yahoo, videos from YouTube or Daily Motion, maps from Google Maps, documents from Scribd, and the journalist can pick what assets they feel are apppropriate - possibly more than one - and set up a link.

When the reader clicks on the hyperlink, instead of opening in a different browser window, another small box appears to display the article snippet, video, photo or map which the reader can consult without losing their place in the original article. And as Apture allows journalists to clip a specific section of a video or link to a certain quote in a book, the box will hopefully offer them only the most relevant information. Readers can click through to the original site by clicking on a link within the box.

For individual publishers, their own archives and assets can be incorporated into the search engine. Apture has also developed deals with some clients so that any Apture users can access their archives: for example Reuters videos, or snippets from New York Times, BBC or Washington Post articles. Apture just added Google Books and NPR audio podcasts to the asset list.

The technology is free to blogs and websites with fewer than 5 million page views per month. Harris added that as the company is "getting a lot of valuable information from people using it," meaning that the system is getting better and better. Larger publishers pay "hundreds and thousands a month" to use Apture, however. Harris explained that they are willing to do this because the tool creates a "more compelling experience on their websites," as shown by the fact that there is "a proven difference" in user's engagement with pages.

Benefits for publishers

According to Harris, putting one or more Apture links on a page leads to 2 or 3 minutes added engagement time. Looking at Comscore media matrix data, he clarified, it appears that 20 to 30% of publishers' traffic is lost to search. If a paper does not answer a reader's questions, it is extremely easy for the reader to just leave. Harris believes that if journalists are thoughtful and thorough about the links they add throughout a whole site, you could imagine that the publication "may well be able to double the amount of time spent on the site." And obviously, more time spent on the site means more advertising money.

As well as this financial benefit, Harris described a less tangible but arguably equally valuable advantage of using Apture: the fact that it allows newspapers to be a more effective guide for their readers and to offer them a more coherent reading experience. When a paper sends their readers away, either by linking to an external source or just not providing enough information, it is "severing its relationship with you as your guide to that information." By using Apture to supply necessary background information in multiple different formats while keeping the reader on its site, a news organisation can "be the guide to an entire web's worth of resources, but retain a relationship with that reader," Harris asserted. The fact that publishers are "the owners of that relationship" puts "a lot more power in their hands," he added.

For those publishers contemplating offering their content back to Apture, one concern might be that by displaying their content in boxes on other sites via Apture, they could end up losing traffic. Harris stressed, however, that readers can always go back to the source, and that rather than trying to remove traffic from websites, Apture sees its role as "providing an opportunity for those media partners to get their content in front of new eyeballs that they would not have seen before."

What next?

"What we are really doing is creating an efficiency in the market that really wasn't there before," Harris concluded. Apture is connecting information "in a way that wasn't possible before." He said that the company intends to improve its current product by continuing to integrate new content partners and bring costs down. He also hopes to create new products that will "transform the medium, changing the way that people interact with the web," and which are "not constrained to the two dimensions that we've had up until now."

The advantages offered by online journalism are numerous, and products such as Apture's should be welcomed by journalists striving to find better ways to tell their story in a multimedia environment. The fact that the Internet allows us to see, hear or find out more about pretty much anything and consequently make a story richer and more meaningful is something which papers should take advantage of. Arguably, going a step further and creating their own new multimedia experiences should be a priority for newspapers, but using existing content to supplement their articles is a good start. 

New search engine Wolfram Alpha went live on Friday, and describes itself as "the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone". The site collects all objective data and combines it with a search function, allowing users to search for the answers to all factual queries - and a few entertaining responses to more unusual questions thrown in for fun. The site has been billed as revolutionary, and its ability to throw up and compare data is indeed unprecedented - "if you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, it will cross-check and provide the answer."

Amidst speculation that the site could be the next Google, or is a potential Wikipedia killer, it must be recognised that the site provides a more specific function than either of the other two. It is, nonetheless, an incredible tool in its own right. A Nieman Lab report has written about the potential that Wolfram Alpha gives to database journalism, the most common problem with which is the maintenance and constant updating of the information and statistics provided. "As news organizations look to add high-value content that might form the core of paid-content sections for their sites, compilations and analysis of public information is one of the areas they're exploring."

Source: Wolfram Alpha, Nieman Lab, Wall Street Journal, Mashable

Reports recently out say that the Telegraph online attracts an impressive 8% of its traffic from
news aggregators and social networking sites such as Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Reddit, Stumbleupon and Twitter.

The 8% figure is equivalent to a staggering 75,000 unique visitors daily. So, how does the Telegraph do it?

Journalists who use Wikipedia as a source for their articles have been "exposed" after a 22-year-old student in Ireland revealed that he had inserted a fake quote into a Wikipedia entry which was then used by multiple newspapers. Shane Fitzgerald, studying sociology at University College Dublin, decided to perform an experiment when he heard that French composer Maurice Jarre had died on March 30. He went swiftly to the Wikipedia page, entered his invented quote, and then watched to see who used it.

"I did not think it would have a major impact. I was wrong," Fitzgerald wrote in the Irish Times, after his words were used in obituaries in newspapers in the UK, India, the US and Australia. The Guardian issued a correction, having used the quotation to open its piece on the composer. In February, a similar hoax occurred in Germany, reported the Columbia Journalism Review.

The issue here is clear: journalists should not use Wikipedia as a primary source, as there is absolutely no guarantee that it is accurate. The site is an extremely useful resource for background information and for gathering more authoritative sources as most entries contain many links, but anything on it must be verified. The quote written by Fitzgerald was uncontroversial and the incident has only caused embarrassment, but deliberate misinformation could have more serious consequences if it is used in generally trustworthy sources.

Source: Irish Times, CJR

Last Wednesday, May 6, the US Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet held a hearing to review the plight of the newspaper industry, to better understand new media and the new model emerging, and to assess the role that government should play in the media as it evolves. The Future of Journalism hearing was presided over by Subcommittee chair Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who called the hearing in response to the threatened closure of his local paper, the Boston Globe, and the troubles facing newspapers across the country as advertising and circulation decline and the Internet replaces traditional media.

In his opening statement, Kerry says the committee has met to discuss not only the jolting condition of the newspaper, but also its implications for the future of journalism and the country. He believes it is important to "preserve the core society function served by independent and diverse media" and questions whether online journalism will "sustain the values of professional journalism the way the newspaper industry has." The committee invited five prominent representatives of various types of media to express their views about the Future of Journalism and offer their solutions.

"Why is the government interested?" asks Kerry. "We do have a responsibility for the licensing of broadcast. We have a responsibility for the regulatory oversight of ownership of cable, satellite, other issues with respect to communications; and needless to say, how the American people get their information--what the structure of ownership is--is of enormous interest to all of us because it is the foundation of our democracy." Is there even any government role at all, he wonders, or is this simply a normal transition in the marketplace?

Considering the nonprofit model

Before it heard from the media representatives, Maryland Senator Ben Cardin spoke to the committee about his Newspaper Revitalization Act, which proposes a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status for newspapers. Cardin stresses that online journalism does not supply the in-depth reporting and investigative journalism provided by traditional newsrooms that are essential to a free and democratic society. His bill would provide an opportunity for local supporters--whether individuals, foundations, or educational institutions--to come together to preserve their community newspaper.

The major criticism of Cardin's bill is that it could threaten a newspaper's freedom of speech: 501(c)(3) status allows editorializing but prohibits a paper from endorsing political candidates. The independence of journalism from government is crucial to its role as watchdog, and it is undesirable for a newspaper to have the government involved in judging its content. However, in their addresses to the Committee, both Steve Coll, former managing editor of the Washington Post, and former newspaperman David Simon, say that while they seriously oppose government interference in newspapers, they are intrigued by the nonprofit model.

Newsrooms provide an important public service, so why shouldn't the government give them the tax exempt benefit of becoming non-profits? After all, the danger of government interference in content could be exaggerated. Any single politician or political party attempting to manipulate a publication would be immediately exposed through other media outlets, and the threat is not much greater than private ownership where powerful investors might maneuver the paper to serve their own interests. Nonetheless, the greatest issue faced by nonprofit newspapers and their investors will be where to draw the line between endorsing and editorializing. If a newspaper's responsibility is to provide the public with unbiased information, then blatant political endorsements seem in violation of that role anyway, but nonprofit status could limit criticism and commentary on politicians and legislation that might reduce the media's role as watchdog.

As Coll and Alberto Ibargüen, President of the Knight Foundation, point out, nonprofit is not a universal remedy nor will it solve newspapers' profit problems. The initiative could be viewed less as a savior of the newspaper entity and more as a bridge to preserve local journalism during a transitional period. Ibarguen says that relieving profit pressures with nonprofit status might help newspapers "extend their useful life until we figure out what's next and what online model can afford professional journalism."

Relaxing antitrust could help publishers charge for online content

The other great appeal for government intervention in newspapers has been the request for changes to media ownership and antitrust policy. Last month the Justice Department rejected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's request to change the boundaries of media antitrust to include all media in a geographic area--including radio, TV, and newspapers--when deciding whether a sale is anticompetitive.

Pelosi's antitrust proposal raised obvious criticism about the independence of newspapers and consolidation of ownership. However, at the Senate hearing, Simon and James Moroney, publisher and CEO of the Dallas Morning News, approached antitrust from a different angle: they urged the Committee to give newspapers an antitrust exemption so that industry leaders could convene to discuss copyrighting from aggregators and charging for content online.

Unable to foresee the digital future, at the advent of the Internet newspaper publishers made the mistake of offering content free online. Now readers are accessing that content for free, not through the publisher's site, but through aggregators like Google News, which also does not pay publishers for content. Marissa Mayer, vice president of Search Products and User Experience at Google Inc., defends Google to the committee, calling it a "conduit" for journalism that provides a free service to online newspapers by driving traffic to their sites.

However, Simon and Moroney argue that aggregators do not provide adequate compensation for the revenue generated from publishers' original content. They contend that as of now, the profits publishers make from online advertising are not enough to sustain the quality journalism newsrooms have been providing. There must be an industry wide initiative to charge for content online, says Simon, as no individual can swim against the tide. According to Moroney, under the current antitrust laws, publishers cannot even begin to have a conversation about possibilities for pricing or charging aggregators.

If the government does relax antitrust to allow for this industry wide "conversation," it could possibly lead to major publications placing a pay wall around content, charging users and aggregators, but does such a pay wall threaten the free market? One of the virtues of the Internet is the accessibility of information, so where do pay walls and content hoarding fit in? A generation of Internet users already views information as a free commodity, and charging online users for content will significantly reduce traffic, which will in turn reduce advertising revenue. Even if industry leaders can convene and discuss, they still might find themselves at a loss for a viable solution.

Experimentation and innovation rather than government intervention

The hearing's last speaker, Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, opposed antitrust exemptions, paywalls, or really any government intervention. In fact, she countered some speaker's doom and gloom position with the opening statement, "Journalism will not only survive, it will thrive." Her main point is that the industry has changed and moved forward and there is no going back.

Huffington says, "The future is to be found elsewhere: it's a linked economy, it's search engines, it's online advertising, it's citizen journalism, and the foundations supporting investigative journalism. That's where the future is, and if you can't find your way to that, then you just can't find your way."

Ibargüen, Mayer, and Huffington all support embracing new media and encouraging experimentation and business models that promote digital possibilities. For Ibargüen that means providing universal, affordable digital action and adoption in the US and more inclusive public media that reaches every American. Neither he nor Huffington mourn the decline of investigative journalism, and both praise the efforts of nonprofits like ProPublica and the Knight Foundation supported Voices of San Diego for providing quality journalism outside the traditional newsroom.

According to Mayer, "The structure of the web has caused the basic unit--the atom of consumption--to migrate from the newspaper to the individual article," and because of the Web's ability to operate in real time, this allows for "living" instead of "static" stories that are constantly changed and updated like Wikipedia or the New York Times' "Times Topics." These changes to the way information is viewed, insist Mayer and Huffington, mean a different approach to monetization is necessary, which requires innovation and creativity. The solution for newspaper publishers is not to appeal to the government for a handout to preserve the old ways, but to adapt quickly and direct their time and resources into experimenting with the monetization of traffic through advertising.

What will the Senate decide?

Despite Kerry and Cardin's concern for the American newspaper, more than one of the subcommittee's senators held up a Blackberry during the hearing, proving themselves a part of the new digital audience. The general consensus of both the senators and media representatives seemed to be that their priority is not to save newspapers but to promote policies that sustain journalism.

How enlightening were the testimonies of the media representatives? Though certainly thorough in unveiling all the problems facing the media today, they failed to provide the government with a cure-all solution as to how it should proceed.

It seems fairly likely that the Senate could pursue the nonprofit solution as it seems basically harmless and might help some local newspapers stay on their feet at least long enough to find another answer. Relaxing antitrust could prove more risky, giving industry leaders the occasion to consolidate prices and possibly restrict information in a move that could prove more harmful than helpful to their own purpose.

The testimonies may have encouraged the Senate to do nothing at all for the newspaper but instead to accept that the audience and the market is evolving and no legislation can hold it back. If this is the case, then publishers will be faced with only one choice: innovate or fail. Instead of resisting change, they must get a grasp on technology and the new audience, paying attention to the success of others, then find ways to provide creative content and advertising solutions. As a few of the speakers said, this is still a transitional period for old media and new media, and there is still immense possibility for originality and advances. Though certain publications might lament their own fate, it is too early to be mourning the future of journalism.  

Google CEO Eric Schmidt's speech at the annual meeting of the Newspaper Association of America has been widely anticipated throughout the industry, as criticism of Google from newspaper publishers grows. The New York Times said the meeting "had the makings of a high-tension face-off" and more than one article described Schmidt's descent "into the lion's den;" a "battle of two Goliaths," according to FTM's Philip M. Stone. But in the end, the occasion seems to have been anticlimactic, with Schmidt giving a lengthy, uncontroversial speech followed by restrained questions.

However despite disappointment at the lack of a "face-off," what Schmidt said is worth noting, particularly his focus on future partnership opportunities. He praised the newspaper's importance in public life, and described how impressed he was that newspapers had started off strongly on the Internet, by introducing features such as blogs and reader comments. However, he continued, this innovation had tailed off, and newspapers need to act quickly to restore this if it is to get out of the trouble in which it finds itself now.

There has been much discussion of the state of regional press in the UK recently, particularly at government level, and a recent early day motion in the Commons in favour of supporting local journalism gained the signatures of over 100MPs. Much of the debate has surrounded the best way to help local newspapers and their journalists, and has centred on whether or not to relax strict merger rules. However in the Guardian, Stephen Moss has written a very interesting article more focussed on how events are unfolding at local level.

In Long Eaton, Moss demonstrates how the loss of the local paper (the Long Eaton Advertiser was closed down by Trinity Mirror in October) has had much more of an affect upon older members of the community, whilst younger members are happy to get their news online or buy the Nottingham Evening Post in its place. "The people who can least afford to be connected to the new world are also those keenest on being involved in their local communities," Mark Dodson, head of regional media at the Guardian Media Group says, in reference to a hypothetical world without local newspapers.

At this years Digital News Affairs conference, debates have ranged from the merits of the online aggregation business model to questioning who made Barack Obama President, and speakers have come from new online-only start-ups and established print publications alike. The two-day Brussels based event has been covered in detail by Journalism.co.uk, and has been live blogged by dedicated Twitter users both in the audience and on the podium.

Before proceedings began, associate editor of Wired UK and co-host of DNA 2009 Ben Hammersley spoke with Journalism.co.uk about how news organisations use social media and new technology online. Hammersley feels that many "have embraced an awful lot of stuff because it's fashionable or they feel they should", but that some hastily started projects are "not just a waste of time, they're a waste of creative resource and money". He believes that social media experiments are fine for bloggers, but that for mainstream media such action "needs to be assessed very strongly and thoroughly". He also says that news organisations need to be more ruthless and Google-esque in their attitudes to cancelling projects which aren't working - online "the key metric is which online companies kill the rubbish stuff the fastest".

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international association that develops Internet standards, reported that its mobileOK checker will provide tools to help authors and authoring technology developers to create "clean" content, according to W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee. According to the mobileOK website, the tools are also used to determine the "level of mobile-friendliness" that is attributed to Web content.

The W3C mobileOK checker is based on the Basic Tests 1.0 Recommendation, a standard that was recently established. The portal is already being employed by the Wordpress mobile plug-in, making it "easier" the international mobile community, Market Watch wrote.

MobileOK destinations include certain newspaper sites, content portals, phone books, search engines like Google and the mobile edition of Wikipedia.

Source: Market Watch

In April the washingtonpost.com partnered with multimedia technology firm, Apture to allow readers to view links with a pop up rather than leaving the page.  The new technology has now been applied to the washingtonpost.com political data, congressional records, video, news and abstracts.

According to Editor & Publisher, Apture's "Media Hub is a Web-editing interface that sources, captures and delivers relevant resources in any format -- video, audio, map, documents, photos, reference guides -- that producers want to share."  Media hub allows "editors to easily include rich media content of their choice from more than 25 sources, including YouTube videos, Wikipedia content, Google Maps, or in-house archives, to add richness and depth to stories."

Despite positive feedback from users, the BBC online ended its August trial of embedded links in news articles.

Apture, a multimedia technology firm, partnered with the BBC for the trial, embedding links to external news and organization sites and others such as Flickr, YouTube and Wikipedia within selected articles.

The series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Indian financial capital Mumbai have gained worldwide attention, and the speed with which Internet users were able to read first-hand reports within hours of the initial attacks is proof of a revolutionized way that information reaches an audience.

Although mainstream news coverage has dominated headlines thus far, social media has been a major outlet for news at the scene and around the world.  Internet users are sharing news and information for updates and reactions.

At the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) conference in Las Vegas, Google senior advisor Richard Gingras, talked about the future of Google News, its relationship to the newspaper industry and the future of online news content.

According to the study of online traffic flows to websites, around 50% of traffic comes from Google searches, essentially making homepages less significant.  Google is able to direct traffic to news sites by crawling around 40,000 news sites globally every ten minutes.

Google executive Marissa Mayer has presented her "atomic unit" theory to demonstrate the segmentation of online media.  She provided a metaphor using the introduction of the MP3 and how it altered the "atomic unit" of music from albums to songs.  Essentially, what this means for news sites is that its no longer about the site, "it's about the article," Gingras explained.  

In an interview with BNET, Gingras offered the example of Wikipedia as a possible direction for news providers; "Wikipedia is doing living resources and newspapers are continuing to do ephemeral, here-today-gone-tomorrow article pages -- one of the last vestiges of edition-oriented publishing."

Gingras believes one of the greatest assets news providers have today is their professional reporting staffs and methodologies.  He believes that it is vital use this resource by providing users with the ability to identify the original source of all news reports.

According to Gingras, news providers need to rethink the structure of their content, maintain a "living" news model, increase their content volume, and take on a more aggressive approach to reporting.  

Sources: BNET

SpinSpotter, a new tool designed to spot media bias launched on Monday, 8 September. The program is designed to work with a toolbar users download called Spinoculars, which is used to spot words and phrases that are considered bias.  

SpinSpotter is available through Firefox and scans web pages to spot indicators of bias and highlights phrases that it finds bias in a big red box. Users can then click on the box to get more information on why SpinSpotter found the phrase biased.

The framework is based on algorithms set to identify six key tenets of spin and bias as defined by the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics.  The six tenets are a reporter's voice, passive voice, a biased source, disregarded context, selective disclosure, and lack of balance. In addition, it will highlight phrases that are similar to the language used in the press release.  

According to Todd Herman, SpinSpotter's founder, the technology will rely heavily on the input of its users, much like Wikipedia, allowing users to flag instances of spin. SpinSpotter seeks to highlight bias in order for users to draw their own conclusions and to keep the press' power in check and to "makes news media transparent."

Sources: Business Week, Media Channel, SpinSpotter,New York Times

Yahoo News Japan reports it has now joined the likes of Wikipedia and Google's Knol in offering user-generated content in its "Editable related section", allowing other readers to suggest and edit material using their "expert knowledge", reports the European Journalism Centre.

The sources may be outside of Yahoo and may even be in other languages. However, Yahoo's influence in Japan implies that the majority of referenced content "is its own anyway".

The way in which Yahoo Japan differs from its US counterparts is that user editors have to apply for the non-paid position and take a test to distinguish the "sheep" from the "goats".

Japan's Yahoo only retains the name in common with US Yahoo.

Source: European Journalism Centre, Tech Radar

See also:

Yahoo! aims to be "number one" independent news source
Opinion: Is Google closer to becoming a media company after releasing Knol
Knol could learn from predecessors

Twitter reported this week that it is axing its SMS service outside India, the US and Canada, causing consternation across the Twitter community. Almost immediately after this was announced, reports emerged of IT entrepreneurs taking up the challenge to look for a solution. The Editors Weblog spoke to - we think - the first organisation to launch a solution to the Twitter SMS issue: Twitsms.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

The Editors Weblog spoke to Delia Timms and Jeff Bonnes (the founders of Twitsms) after receiving their email announcing the launch of Twitsms, which was just two days after our posting on the SMS issue. (Our interview with Delia and Jeff follows below.)

Twitsms buys the SMS in bulk in advance to keep costs low. Prices start at 7 pence in the UK and 11 cents in Australia per SMS.
 
The Editors Weblog also contacted Twitter, to find out how it feels about Twitsms and other such services helping out the Twitter fans that have been affected. Twitter has previously acknowledged that SMS is a key part of its service, saying: "We love SMS. The lowest common denominator aspect of this service is a defining part of Twitter."



Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter Inc, told me: "We do not officially endorse any one service. However, we are interested in seeing what the response to these services will be."

There has been a certain amount of annoyance in aspects of the Twitter community about how Twitter have handled this issue, especially following Biz Stone's blog on the Twitter website calling for "perspective" on the issue. Svetlana Gladkova (Vice President of Business Development at Profy) does not sugar coat her views in her blog on Twitter's reaction, stating: "In my opinion, the team over at Twitter has committed quite a number of mistakes in handling this situation."

Here at the Editors Weblog, we try not to dwell on the negative and focus instead on solutions to our readers' problems; and Delia and Jeff look like they might just have one:

What inspired you to launch this service?

We use Twitter ourselves to keep in touch with friends and family both in Australia and overseas.  Jeff is American and particularly liked Twitter for staying in contact with his friends overseas.  So we understood personally how important it was for some Twitter fans to keep getting their SMS - even if they had to pay a very small fee for it.  Living in Australia we already have to pay fees for our SMS, so it is not unusual for us to pay to get our Tweets too.  We felt Twitter fans should at least have the choice to get their SMS, rather than just being cut-off by Twitter altogether.
 
How did you manage to set this up so quickly?

Experience and enthusiasm. We have built a few other successful internet businesses and have gained valuable experience over the past few years.  So we were fortunate to start out with some knowledge, skills and code. Jeff was able to apply learning from previous projects to speed up the coding for www.twitsms.co.uk. One of our other businesses does messaging and SMS already, so we were one step ahead with this. We were also able to use hardware and hosting from our other internet operations. We crowd sourced the graphic design for a fast turnaround.
 
What technology are you using?

We use Java and a web development framework called Grails. This allowed us to build  a very robust site quickly.
 
Can you explain exactly what arrangement you have established with the mobile companies?

Currently we buy SMS in bulk to keep the cost for users as low as possible.  As the site grows, we will look for ways to reduce costs even further.
 
Have you had any contact with the Twitter team about your project?

No we have not made contact yet, but will in the future. We hope that Twitter is happy that www.twitsms.co.uk and www.twitsms.com.au are keeping their fan-base connected outside of the USA, Canada and India!
 
What have been the early indicators been for Twitsms?

Early business is very strong. We knew there was a solid Twitter community and we knew they were annoyed about being shut off.  But were not sure whether they'd pay for their Tweets. However we have been happily surprised by the immediate interest from Twitter fans. They are more annoyed about Twitter shutting their service down, than having to pay a few cents to get their SMSs. Another surprising aspect for us has been the global interest.  www.twitsms.co.uk has been live for 4 days now and we've had contact from customers in the UK, Australia, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, Israel, Russia and France (of course!).
 
The use of Twitter itself has been a great springboard for www.twitsms.co.uk.  Twitter is a handy and powerful tool for communicating and getting immediate feedback from customers! It is also an efficient way to keep our customers updated as we are responding to requests and developing new features quickly.
 
What is your competition?

There is one site that has launched in competition and several still 'coming soon'. There has also been one site that has stopped development before they released. We are not worried by competition; we developed www.twitsms.co.uk because it is a service that we needed and wanted to share with the Twitter community.  Being first to market has been great. The feedback and early input from our customers is helping us ensure that www.twitsms.co.uk is the best alternative for the international Twitter community.

Sources: Twitsms, Twitter, Profy

See also:

Twitter reduces its mobile service, ends SMS updates service

 

BBC News is experimenting with external links within the main body of its text to provide users with more external information. The trial will last for four weeks and is only available on the UK website.

The 'in-page links' direct users to background information about the topic of the article from across the BBC News site  and to other external sources, such as, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, and external news organisations' sites.

External links are identified by symbols and open up a separate window previewing the linked-to page.

Steve Herrmann, BBC News website editor says of the trial: "We wanted to include these sources because they promote sharing of content, have a huge array of material of potential editorial relevance, are technically easy to work with and also we wanted to gauge your thoughts about us linking to these user-generated sources."

He went on to say, "We're not taking an exclusive approach to which sources we link to, the whole idea is to try out and develop a system that is flexible enough for pretty much anything."

The system has been developed in partnership with multimedia technology firm Apture, which implemented a similar feature for the WashingtonPost.com.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

Jack Schofield, of the Guardian, questions Google's choice to ignore its predecessors when creating Knol.

"While Knol is based on the same idea," writes Schofield, "inviting users to create pages on topics they know about - HubPages looks better, reads better, and is better organized."

While Knol debuted just this December, HubPages has already passed its second anniversary and Squidoo is even older.

The major difference between Knol and Wikipedia, the site it is so oft compared to, is that Knol encourages competition, not collaboration. Knol, which identifies authors, who take full responsibility for their pages, also offers these authors the chance to make money. "A thousand people can all create pages about the same topic and hope the best one wins," says Schofield.

Schofield's major complaints:

-Knol is painfully academic and "dull;" HubPages invites users to "Publish your passion"

-Hubs are easier to browse than Knols and separate pages with tags like Love, Finance, Business and Health. You can also search by author, vote for hubs you like, comment, become a fan of authors, and request hubs you can't find.

The question remains with HubPages fate, since, as Schofield points out, "it also makes more than 90% of its revenue from Google Adsense advertising, and Google features HubPages as a case study. For a small start-up, this is success. Can that success continue now that Google has invaded its turf?"

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Knol, Google's Wikipedia rival, may be inciting fear in media companies as they increasingly begin to see it as a competitor, reported The New York Times (NYT). Knol features user-generated content which authors have control over and which Google may pay for through advertising.

"Google can say they are not in the content business, but if they are paying people and distributing and archiving their work, it is getting harder to make that case," said Jason Calacanis, chief executive of Mahalo, a search engine that employs editors to write on different subjects.

Google will not own the copyright to Knol content and neither will the website contain the Google logo. The company's aim is to guide people towards the "answer" they want and it doesn't intend to own or create any content, said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker. Knol allows people to create and publish information and the only role that Google has in this is to "organize that information", according to Stricker.

While some people like Wenda Harris Millard, co-chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, worry about the bias of Google search results, Stricker said that if Knol pages do rank high, it is because they "earned their position", reported the New York Times.

Calacanis expressed concern about Google overtaking search results, which may "alienate Web publishers that are Google's advertising partners" although Google might not actually "artificially favor its sites", reported the NYT.

Google currently owns YouTube, blogging service Blogger and Usenet archives, a digital discussion board collection that is older than the Web. Google also digitalizes books that show up on search results as well as containing stories from the Associated Press in its Google News service and publishing stock market information on Google Finance.

Source: NYT

See also:
Google launches paid Wikipedia alternative

Google has announced last Wednesday the launch of its Knol feature, a website dedicated to providing user-generated articles on a range of topics, similar to Wikipedia. 

Jack Schofield, a Guardian blogger, warned that Knol may harm the media industry since writers not only have the chance to sidestep editors but also be able to earn money from the ad revenues on their pages.



A "knol" or a "unit of knowledge" will offer articles on a wide range of topics, written by experts on those subjects. Individual knols will be treated like web pages, indexed in Google's search engine.

"The ultimate goal is: we want to improve search," said Cedric Dupont, Knol product manager.

The difference between Knol and Wikipedia is that the latter has anonymous articles that are edited a multitude of times, reported the Guardian. Knols stress authorship, according to Dupont.

Knols may be edited if the author opts for the "moderated-collaboration" mode, but he or she has the right to chose what changes may be made, reported ZDNet UK.

Google partnered with the New Yorker magazine to let authors add cartoons from the publication to their knolls, ZDNet UK wrote.

Source: CyberJournalist.net, The Guardian, ZDNet UK