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A Snapshot of Why Newspapers Keep Failing on the Web

I don’t normally read gossip columns, and I try to resist the siren song of Boston.com’s linkbait content, but for some reason, I clicked on a headline labeled “Sofia Vergara’s Boston snapshot.” I don’t know why. I don’t even watch “Modern Family.” Perhaps the early hour made me more vulnerable.

What I found was not a Boston snapshot, but rather a snapshot of the continued failings of newspapers on the web. Let’s dig in.

  • The article does not link to the photo it references. Repeat: the article does not link to the photo it references. There is a 276-word piece of web content all about a celebrity’s photograph, with no link or even a hint as to where I might find it. Really?
  • The article says Vergara “posted a picture from her trip on her website.” Her website? Only in as much as the Twitter stream embedded on her SofiaVergara.com homepage counts as posting a photo on her website. More appropriately, the photo was tweeted via Who Say, social media platform of the stars. The story could have simply read, “tweeted a photo from her trip.”I’ve blogged about this before, so I’ll just quote myself: “In this new world of blended media, retweeting and link sharing, reporters should be able to do a basic parsing of content to determine its origin. As those [social media outlets] continue to proliferate, and thus merit reporting by mainstream media, an understanding of the differences … will be critical.” It may seem like an insignificant detail that doesn’t warrant so much attention about its accuracy, but since so much reporting nowadays comes via social media content, reporters have a responsibility to become more savvy and, thus, more accurate. Don’t dumb it down for me; tell it like it is.
  • This is, pretty transparently, an excerpted section from the “Names” column as it ran the newspaper, published as its own story (coming in at 276 words) in order to maximize ad impressions and enable more relevant sharing. However, wouldn’t such a bite-sized and timely piece of content be better shared via the “Names” blog?  Well, apparently not. The blog took the long weekend off and was last updated on Friday.
  • You can tell when the Globe’s deadline was, because Vergara posted a much better (and less blurry) “Boston snapshot” just before 7 p.m. yesterday. Dead tree deadline makes for DOA web content.

You might think, these are all highly avoidable problems. Or you might think, these issues are small potatoes in the big scheme of things and not worth complaining about. But while the Boston Globe has made progress in some respects toward a “web-first” model (most prominently with regard to breaking news), there are larger, systemic issues that prevent those successes from trickling down to other sections of the paper, as this “snapshot” illustrates. And if this is the easy stuff, and papers aren’t even equipped to get this stuff right…

It comes down to relevance. And everything detailed above reeks of a publication that is not equipped to be relevant.

1 Comment

Georgy, September 6th 2011 | Tags: ,
Posted in Media, Social Media

The Earth Moves in Real-Time

Earlier this afternoon, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake centered in Virginia shook the East Coast. Talk of the quake quickly filled up Facebook news feeds and Tweetdeck columns.

Shortly after the quake, Cornell University staffer Aaron Hill tweeted a link to a video he shot of Cornell’s Dr. Muawia Barazangi, a professor of seismology, explaining what happened during today’s quake:

What’s interesting to note is that Hill’s job is not in public relations or communications; he’s a web developer. So is Jason Woodward, who was with Hill as he shot the video, and whose photo of the seismograph in Cornell’s Snee Hall was shared via the university’s Twitter account.

This is awesome. This is exactly what higher ed needs to be doing: we need to capitalize on our intellectual assets to add context to the events that transpire in the world. I discussed this in depth in my talk on higher ed in real-time at #140conf Boston last year.

It made me think: one year later, how much closer are higher ed news offices to being real-time operations? Granted, it’s a little tough in this current situation (as I am finding out) with it being summer and many faculty not yet on campus, but I crowdsourced some examples (thanks, Mike and Ryan).

So, we’re getting there, hopefully. Events such as this — which basically dominated the online conversation of an entire coast for a good few hours — are incredible opportunities to add value to the chatter with information and context and demonstrate our relevance. Knowledge FTW!

I have to admit – at first, I was chagrined that two of the best examples I saw came via web developers — where are the news offices?? But, as Jason reminded me, “everyone’s a content person.” Going real-time in higher ed is not just dependent on our news offices cranking out content in a timely, relevant fashion; it also requires leveraging the members of our community who are doing the same (as Cornell did with Jason’s photo). Real-time knows no department or role. It is just happening. And we have to keep up.

1 Comment

Georgy, August 23rd 2011 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Social Media

Marketing the Weather

Since forever, I’ve been a weather nerd. Perhaps it came from growing up in South Florida, surrounded by thunderstorms, hurricanes and other tropical phenomena. I still vividly recall when I first learned how the Florida afternoon thunderstorm cycle gets conjured each hot and steamy day — when the easterly sea breeze off the ocean collides with the westerly wind from the Everglades. Boom. No, that wasn’t thunder; that was the sound of my young mind being blown by knowledge. Where did I learn this? From my local TV meterologist.

Flash forward several years, and I’m in New England, where weather prognostication (both professional and amateur) is serious business. With more seasons and thus more flavors of weather to deal with, it can’t be easy to be a meteorologist in Boston. When snow is due, an eager or beleaguered public (depending on personal preference and what part of winter we’re in) hang on every inch in your snowfall prediction. Lately, with the transition to warm weather being torturously slow in the wake of a wearying winter, any forecast with a high below 50 or the hint of a flurry draws out the pitchforks.

But whether it’s 70 and sunny or a snowpocalypse, the local TV meteorologists are out there in force, engaging with the masses. And by “there,” I don’t mean their TV stations. I mean the internet.

True Confessions

Before going any further, let me come clean: I am a category 2 weather nerd. I’ve got the National Weather Service forecast for my ZIP code bookmarked. I’ve been known to click on a forecast discussion or two — caps, jargon and all. I probably check the forecast at least a half dozen times in any given day. But despite these proclivities, I know I am not the biggest weather nerd around.

While I’m coming clean, let me add the following: barring an extraordinary emergency, I don’t want TV news, local or cable.

Partly Nerdy

I think it all began when my friend Liz — also a weather nerd, perhaps Category 1 — began evangelizing to me about the WHDH weather blog. She swore by the forecasts of Pete Bouchard, as conveyed not through the Ch. 7 newscasts, but through the blog. So, while I continued to mainline National Weather Service forecasts, I often supplemented them with a WHDH weather blog chaser. I came to appreciate it for the human voice it brought to my weather experience.

As I got more involved with Twitter, I began following both Pete Bouchard and Dylan Dreyer on Twitter. Pete hews pretty close to all weather, all the time in his tweet stream, but he’s great at responding to people and having a back and forth. Dylan is more prone to talk about food, TV or her dog, which is also fun.

This was all well and good, but I soon got introduced to the man who would become my Twitter weather boyfriend: New England Cable News’ Matt Noyes.

@MattNoyesNECN

Noyes wears his nerdiness and unabashed love of all things weather on his sleeve. He throws around terms like Norlun trough as casually as most people talk about cold fronts. (He’s even got the second result in Google for the term.) He teaches his 2,600-plus Twitter followers words like graupel (soft snow pellets) and rejoices when they pick them up. He hosts a technical live webcast every weeknight, in which more than a hundred people can regularly be found watching Noyes parse raw weather data aloud. He is an avid tweeter, sharing everything from real-time weather info for specific towns, props to fellow NECN staff, Wendy’s drive-thru angst or moments spent with his dog. He’s not afraid to get technical and detailed about everything from conflicting forecast models to cloud formations, but he is very good at explaining weather phenomena (most recently when the report about radioactive rain in Massachusetts came out last week).

So, what is Matt Noyes, really? He’s an influencer. He’s an expert. All of those annoying social media titles, they probably apply. But above all, he’s a weather man. That what matters, and his expertise and the manner in which he uses the web to share it is what makes him stand out. When I want to know what’s happening with New England weather, he has become my go-to source, almost completely because of the way he uses Twitter.

Nerdiness Sells

Last week, I read a remarkable weather blog post on the local CBS affiliate’s website. Here’s an excerpt:

The new 12 Z GFS has a much stronger storm over Nantucket Friday night with rain and wind. Rain changing to a burst snow overnight and Early Saturday before pulling away with strong WNW on the backside . Quite a different look from it’s ooZ weaker morning solution.

But wait, there’s more!

I leave you with GFS ensemble 500 mb for Friday April 1st. Look at  the eastern trough in place, the merging of the polar and subtropical jetstreams.

What???

Before we get into an uproar about how Joe Joyce isn’t blogging for his audience, please recall my statement above about how weather in New England is serious business. Because it’s true. Everyone, to one degree or another, is obse–let’s call it enthusiastic. They’re enthusiastic about the weather. For the most enthusiastic of disciples in any given field, nerds are sages. They are revered, and they are indulged. We want to learn from them, to stoke the flame of our fervor. The above babble about the GFS ensemble (which, no, is not a new boy band called Guys From Southie) is just what people didn’t know they wanted to know.

What's this? Who cares? It's awesome.

In broadcast news, where complex stories are diluted to the most accessible 15 or 30-second news droplet, I think it’s fascinating that we can get such an in-depth look at what goes into the weather forecast through the forecasters’ online outposts. On the web, we get a multidimensional peek beneath the hood of the preparation, the science and the analysis that goes into what is just a two-minute segment on the evening news.  It makes local weather a real multichannel experience, with each channel bringing something for which it is uniquely suited. TV gives the high-impact overview, blogs provide added depth and insight, and Twitter is where they chat about it all and answer questions one-on-one. And this doesn’t just happen for the epic snowstorms. This happens for your typical spring day, too.

These forecasters, by simply being their nerdy selves, are doing a hell of a great job sharing their expertise and building community around weather, but also marketing their stations. Because Matt Noyes wins on Twitter, I have heightened respect for NECN, even though TV news is not part of my media consumption habit. I’ll hype him to people who do watch TV news. And when The Big One looms and I feel compelled to immerse myself in the news surrounding the next huge storm, you can get which station I’ll be tuning in to.

So, lesson learned from the Twitter meteorological corps? Own your nerdiness. Revel in it. The people who care will love you for it. And around here, hate mail after the 12th storm of the winter is just how we show our love.

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Georgy, April 7th 2011 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Content, marketing, Social Media

Next Stop for the MBTA: Alignment of Online and Offline Service

Last week, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation celebrated its one-year anniversary. Yes, what is a longstanding department in many states is a new creation here in Massachusetts, which previously housed various fractured and distinct transit agencies, with little strategic planning aligning them all. On their blog, MassDOT outlined some of the accomplishments of the past year, including “used our website and social media to better serve our customers in unprecedented ways.”

And this is true. With the open data initiative spurring the release of real-time schedule data for buses and now some subway lines — coupled with their outreach to the developer community to create apps around the data — the MBTA is now a leader in real-time transit scheduling. MassDOT was even featured in a short film about open data in transit.

In addition, recently appointed MBTA GM Richard Davey is tweeting — and responding — creating a listening and conversation platform to field rider feedback. MassDOT Secretary Mullan is also a consistent presence on Twitter, and the MassDOT blog has provided a steady stream of informative and engaging content about the department’s priorities and projects. MassDOT also has outposts and content on Flickr and YouTube. And all of this is accompanied by a set of well thought out social media usage guidelines.

I applaud the MassDOT and the MBTA for these accomplishments (after all, I am a huge fan of public transit). In a short span of time, they have laid their ear to the track, so to speak, to become more accessible to customers, responsive to their needs and anticipatory of where they need to go.

But the current level of listening and engagement is only the first step. The next phase is the close alignment of the experiences that customers have both on the web and in real-life.

Is This Real Life?

This has always been a bugaboo of mine (read about a negative experience I had with Greyhound in 2009). Companies do amazing things on Twitter or Facebook, but at the customer service window when you’re standing there tapping your foot, a representative is nowhere to be found. To truly succeed, you need alignment in both spheres. If an organization thinks they can win on Twitter, fail in real life and somehow get by — or vice versa — they are sorely mistaken. I’d almost rather a company have crappy customer service across the board than have a disparity between its online and offline efforts — at least then I’d know they assign the same level of importance to service across the board.

The most important area where the online and offline transit experiences need to align is basic customer service, and I’ll speak in the context of the MBTA since that is the agency I am most familiar with.

For all of the great real-time bus data and tweeting they do, the MBTA still often falls down when it comes to sharing information about a service disruption or outage. Passengers wait an eternity at platforms as trains roll by without stopping, or don’t come at all. Passengers sit on Red Line trains stopped for what feels like hours, with little to no information provided by the operators. When bus replacement service is in place for a train line, there are often insufficient personnel or signage to guide passengers to their appropriate bus. With the new automated fare systems, fare takers were supposed to be replaced by customer service reps, but often I see train stations — even busy hubs like Sullivan Station — that appear unattended for significant blocks of time. And what do you know? Most of the #mbta complaints on Twitter are from these stranded, misdirected, delayed and confused passengers.

But the MBTA doesn’t know that because they’re not listening to the #mbta hashtag on Twitter. On Nov. 3, @mbtagm (Richard Davey) tweeted at @kgilnack:

I follow this religiously, mbta# not so much. This is the official twitter spot for the T. RAD

What? This shows that MBTA still does not understand the medium. It is great that Davey reads, responds and acts upon tweets he gets via the @mbtagm account. But someone in the agency needs to be reading and potentially responding and/or acting upon tweets referencing the MBTA. It can’t all be up to Marc Ebuna, as good of a watchdog as he is. Davey and the MBTA can control their official agency channel (which has nearly 1,500 followers — good, but not critical mass), but they do not get to pick what is the “official twitter spot for the T.” The users pick that, and they’ve picked #mbta. You have to go to where your customers are to connect them with the information they need. That’s the last mile the MBTA needs to bridge. Information allows your customers to make decisions, which gives them a sense of control over a situation. A lack of information renders them powerless — and thus cranky.

qrcode

The other area that is ripe for alignment is in the more effective contextualization of this valuable digital information in the real-life environment — augmented reality. The person standing at the bus stop in Belmont waiting for a late bus may not know that she can download an app, visit a website or even send a text in order to get real-time bus info. (Of course, in order to send a text, you need an obscure bit of information — your stop number — which is not on your bus stop sign). Likewise, bus stops have no signage directing people to a mobile site or app — just mbta.com, which automatically redirects to a mobile site that (oddly) does not link to the real-time schedules.

Some transit agencies — such as those in Raleigh and Washington D.C. — are using quick response (QR) bar codes to connect riders in the real world with real-time scheduling information. This is a commendable effort, one the MBTA would do well to imitate. Real-time information is great, but it’s only as great as the number of people who are connected to it and deriving value from it.

Back in mid-August, during an MBTA outage or delay of some variety, I tweeted that “In customer service, lack of information is a crisis.” It astounds me how consistently organizations undervalue the power of information. Even if people are in an undesirable situation, their tolerance is directly proportional to the amount of information they have and the trust they have that they are being with all the information that is reasonably available. Anytime you leave room for imagination to take hold and suspect the worst, trust evaporates and resentment grows. Real-time schedule information goes a long way toward addressing this; now the rest of the agency needs to elevate its efforts accordingly.

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Georgy, November 10th 2010 | Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Brands, Business, marketing, Social Media

The Real Social Network

Tonight, I saw “The Social Network.” It was an engrossing story about friendship, betrayal and ambition, with cameos by wget and emacs. I highly recommend the film.

But this blog post is not about the film.

Before the movie started, I overheard three women, about 22-23 years old, sitting behind me, reminiscing about social networks of days gone by. I tweeted a couple of the choice bits:

OH before “The Social Network” – Girl 1: Who came up with Myspace? Girl 2: Tom.

OH (same girls) re: Twitter: “I don’t feel the need to follow somebody.” They also couldn’t recall Friendster’s name and called it Flickr.

Hardy har, right? Well, just before the lights went down for the previews, a woman sitting in front of me gestured to me, showed her phone and said, smiling, “Is this you?” There on the screen, I saw one of those tweets.

“Yup, that’s me,” I responded. We exchanged smiles and a laugh, mine tinged with a bit of shock, as the theater grew dark. I can’t say I’ve ever been approached with my own tweet in near real-time before, by a presumed stranger. I wasn’t quite creeped out, but I was very curious.

I also thought it quite apt that this bizarre exchange took place right before seeing “The Social Network.” I resolved to introduce myself once the movie ended and clarify how she made the connection between the tweet and the person sitting behind her.

Once the credits began to roll, I leaned over and asked, “So, how did you know it was me?” She said she had looked at the nearby tweets, as I suspected, tilting her head knowingly in the direction of the girls I had quoted. Then she referenced me by my employer, and, surprised, I said, “Yes, I work there, how did you know?” Turns out, I was talking to @camberville, someone I’ve followed on Twitter for a while, and whose blog I had just commented on earlier today.

Dumbfounded, I shook her hand. Mark Zuckerberg’s social graph had revealed itself in the dim light of a movie theater. So, yeah, I may have seen “The Social Network” tonight. But I also lived it.

1 Comment

Georgy, October 5th 2010 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Social Media

The Value of Real-Time Reporting With Context

Last week, journalist Adam Penenberg learned of a $131 million verdict handed down by a Mississippi jury against Ford in the case of a New York Mets prospect who died in a Ford Explorer rollover accident in 2001. To his surprise, no media had been present for the verdict, and no news stories on the verdict were immediately forthcoming. So he took matters into his own hands — and Tweetdeck — and began tweeting out what ended up being a 1,000-plus word account of not only the verdict and the history of this case, but the context of why this was significant.

You see, in 2003, Penenberg published “Tragic Indifference,” which covered “the gut-wrenching account of the biggest product liability case in history: the Ford-Firestone fiasco, where delaminating Firestone tires caused Ford Explorers to lose control and crash at highway speeds.”

As Read Write Web thoughtfully reported:

Penenberg had an advantage over other reporters covering the case because he has written a book about the subject. A journalist who gets a complex, multi-million dollar unlawful death suit dropped in her lap is going to produce less robust coverage than one who already knows the history and the players.

That combination of better coverage, faster, is the exception rather than the rule. Every media outlet strives for both. But more often than not, the quality of an article is inversely related to the amount of time it took to create.

The Internet has made it possible to break news faster than ever, and Twitter epitomizes this. Typing 140 characters is faster than TV and much faster than blogging – especially if you can do it from your phone.

A realization I keep coming back to is that the real-time web is slippery. Good information can slip in and out of sight, quickly getting buried by the next blip on the screen. Conversely, bad information can get spread like a virus, dominating the conversation with inaccuracies and misperceptions — and the longer it propagates, the harder it is to rectify.

What gives real-time information traction is context, and Penenberg was ideally equipped to provide it in this situation. Gradually, other media outlets began picking up the story, but even Penenberg is dismissive of the value of most of it.

It just goes to show: You can get there, and you can get there quickly, but if you get there quickly with value to add — meaning context — that’s the gold standard.

Hat-tip to Boston Business Journal’s Lisa Vanderpool for bringing this to my attention.

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Georgy, September 7th 2010 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in Media, Social Media

Somerville Local First: Hyper Local and Hyper Social

I am about to sign the lease and begin my eighth year of living in Somerville. I initially came here to live near friends, and while that’s still a draw, I’ve also become enamored with the community spirit and entrepreneurial culture that pervades the city.  A lot of that is shown through the vibrant arts scene, but local businesses are also strong and well organized here in Somerville, and a lot of that is due to Somerville Local First.

Somerville Local First launched in May 2008 with the goal of promoting local and sustainable economic development. The organization comprises 180 members, 140 of which are locally owned, independent businesses.

Over the course of this year, I’ve become more familiar with Somerville Local First, in part through their print publications and partnerships with local businesses, but also through their presence on the web. Their Twitter and Facebook presences are engaging and informative, keeping me in the loop about what businesses are up to around town and who is new to the area, and their blog – which launched along with their redesigned website last month – has quickly become a compelling and enlightening read. The blog brings together voices from the likes of dog owners, interns, policy researchers and local business owners on topics ranging from a review of a recent garden tour to the phenomenon of “local-washing.”

I spoke with Joe Grafton, the founding executive director of the nonprofit, about the approach that the small organization (Grafton is the only paid employee) has taken to communicating via the web and social media. Acknowledging that the organization can’t do everything or be everywhere at once, Grafton decided to focus Somerville Local First’s online presence on being an aggregator of content from around—and even outside—the city, all emphasizing local, sustainable economic development.

Beside their blog and social media accounts, Somerville Local First has also experimented with group buying (through the pilot Shift and Save coupon program) and plans to eventually devote a section of their website for people to access location-based specials in real-time via their mobile phones.

For Grafton, communicating via the web and social media is all about telling a story and having conversations, and using those engagements to advance the mission of Somerville Local First and support its members.

“I do feel that these channels are valuable and can create change in our community, which is why we choose to invest in them.”

The mission of SLF is to support local and sustainable economic development. How do you see social media supporting that mission?

I was at our national conference in Charleston this year—we’re affiliated with BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economics)—and a colleague and friend from Local First Arizona talked about how she spends three to four nights a week at community meetings talking about Local First Arizona, where we as an organization just don’t have the resources to do that right now. Because we just don’t have the manpower to really manage our program and run the network in addition to doing outward community outreach and storytelling, we look at the web as our way to tell the story 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Lots of Somerville businesses and organizations are using Twitter. How do you, as an umbrella organization of sorts, seek to complement that and promote that?

In the world of new media and especially Twitter, we look at ourselves as content aggregators. There are a number of businesses that are part of our network using different channels – Facebook, Twitter, what have you – and we are the funnel all of it feeds into. What we try to do is provide a steady stream of information from our members to the people who follow us in that mechanism.

We also do different things on Twitter. We use it as a way to convey a message. It’s not just about promotion. Primarily we’re an educational organization. When we promote a business, we’re promoting it because we believe that if people are patronizing that business, the economy is doing better than if they weren’t. We share articles and knowledge with the community so that it’s not just about this promotion from business XYZ, but here’s what happens when you move you money to a local financial institution, or think about where your food comes from. By providing a rich diversified stream of content, what we hope people are following us on Twitter will do is have the ability to really see what’s happening in Somerville. As we think about new media, in a way we’re filling the role of some old media a — letting people know what’s happening in the community, but with a slant around local and sustainable.

Since launching, your blog has showcased a number of voices from across the community, covering a diverse range of topics. How did you go about planning for this blog and shaping its focus and content?

It started with us with really developing an understanding with HubSpot, which is one of the leaders in the country around inbound marketing. We did some education on our own and at that point we’d been using social media to push messages, but we thought, ‘What do we want people to do when they come to our site?’ We had a site which was good enough for a startup but not good enough. We were going to launch a new website anyways.

Our board members, who are running businesses or nonprofit organizations, can’t spend a huge amount of time developing the content. We’re big, big fans of watching what other people are doing, watching what works and copying it. You could look at the types of content and breadth of contributors and see the exact same plan as the Huffington Post. They have a huge number of people who are contributors. Every time someone gets something published there, they share it in their circle and drive traffic to the Huffington Post website and get the message out there. We thought that was a good model to follow.

We have four distinct categories of contributors – staff, board members and interns from Somerville Local First; Somerville Local First members, nonprofits, businesses, what have you; community bloggers and reporters — those are just writers who are interested in local and contribute to our blog from a number of angles; and third-party experts, people who may not necessary be in Somerville but have a very important role to play in the local movement around the country. As an organization that is really trying to be a leader in telling the story through the web, we thought having all these different communities contributing would add to vibrancy and make it more interesting for people to come back and see the content. But it all came out of, we don’t have enough time and resources to make this work, so let’s see what does work and emulate it.

“Local” as a theme is getting a lot of buzz today. How does the web, from your experience, help support the idea of local?

I think it’s so critical. There are a couple of reasons why its important. One of the main reasons is, we’re actually doing such a good job at changing the taste and the values of the customer base in the country that lots of non-local organizations are starting to adopt the wording and messaging around local.

What the web allows us to do is deliver a message that doesn’t have to come through a filter outside of our control. We’re not pitching a news story or article or TV segment that will be processed and delivered through the lens of producers or writers. We’re able to tell the story in a more authentic way and without compromise. I think that one piece is really having authenticity of the message.

Also, I think that maybe I’m an early adopter on this but I think so many people get their news through social media now as opposed to traditional channels, so it allows us to create things that are viral. Every time someone who is contributing to our blog or knows someone whose contributing to our blog sees something go online, that’s an opportunity where they might share that with their network. That may get people in their circle thinking about local and why it’s important and thinking about sustainability. The viral nature of news delivery on social media and the web allows for our message to multiply.

That’s where the real opportunity in social media and the web for us is getting that message virally shared and get closer to a point where the majority of people in our community care about local and there’s demand for entrepreneurs to come in and sell.

The Shift and Save coupons work like a hyperlocal Groupon. How did that idea come about and how successful was it?

Just looking at trends and what’s working in the market. [We asked,] how can we generate revenue for the network but provide a tangible benefit for business members through the website? How can we as an organization use our followers to support our message and support our members and support the organization?

We sold 100 coupons in just over a day, which was a total capacity of what we had to sell. That exceeded our expectation. We’re tracking the data to see whether or not this is actually going to be good for the businesses. I’m actually pretty unsure whether these group buying things are good for the businesses. We’re tracking things like, of people who bought coupons for Sherman Market, how many are new customers? When they bought with the coupon, what was the total order value? In time, we’ll have data to say how much it actually was good for the business. We’re dedicated to the fact that, after our testing, regardless of how much revenue or how quickly we sell, if it turns out the program doesn’t really benefit the businesses, we’re just not going to do it. Ultimately, we’re here to support local entrepreneurs and if group buying doesn’t do it, even on a hyper local basis, then we’re not going to do it.

What’s next for Somerville Local First on the web and in social media?

I do think that we are always striving to have conversations in all of these channels. We’re not just about broadcasting. People are really good at tuning out broadcasting and that’s not what we want to be. We like to ask questions and generate dialogue and have discussion.

We’re starting to get to the saturation point in our web channels with early adopters. We’ve got the early adopters invested in what we’re doing and contributing. As we start going outside of the circle, and group buying is one way we might do that. You’re reaching people not so into local but who are into saving money, and it generates more discussion and points of view.

I keep a strong eye on how we do with interactions and whether people are responding to what we’re posting about. When I look at other pages, I think we do really well but I know there’s a lot we can do. For the next six months, we’ll let what we’ve got roll and continue to try to improve it and keep our eye on trends, looking at location based services and see where the markets are going and do what we’ve done in the past which is look at what other people are doing that’s working and see if we can do that ourselves.

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Georgy, August 24th 2010 | Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media

‘Back to the Future’ Comes Back to the Now

Today, my density has brought me to you.

This little nugget was flying around the Twitterverse yesterday. Being a big “Back to the Future” fan, it caught my eye. It was tweeted by someone I trust. I retweeted without much thought.

My esteemed higher ed colleague Tim Nekritz, a self-described “social media canary,” pointed out that this claim was actually false. (In fact, Tim pounced on the same situation in February when rumors were going around Twitter that Gordon Lightfoot had died.) In the second movie, Marty and Doc travel to Oct. 21, 2015.

I was grateful to Tim for pointing out the error, and a little embarrassed. It was a good lesson, though.

As I learn more about the real-time web, my big concern has emerged as the need for context, accuracy and accountability. Information can get very slippery, very fast — as happened in this instance. Look at it go, at 88 miles per hour! Great Scott!

Trust is a major currency of the social web. We place our trust in our network to curate our content, feed us our information and signal to us the important or relevant issues in our areas of interest. When it comes to making sense of information in real-time, trust is a critical lens.

But trust isn’t everything. We can’t rely on blind faith alone. As Tim put it in his Gordon Lightfoot post, we need to be accountable for own publications, and a retweet is as much a publication as a blog post or a news article. You can’t believe everything you read, even if it comes from your trusted network. Trust must be balanced with common sense, and perhaps just enough skepticism to make you check something out before you believe it, much less rebroadcast it.

This is Heavy

Accuracy in real-time is not easy, and sometimes the stakes are higher than pop culture cred. This incident reminded me of back when I worked in an online newsroom — a true crucible of real-time information. Wire service news alerts are whizzing across the wires and new writethrus are piling up, each with new or changed details. Editors are yelling, radios and TVs are blaring. All the while, thousands of users are clicking and reading.

After Sept. 11, as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began to dominate the headlines, alerts would come across the wire and quickly be posted to the website. Soon enough, the story (e.g. about a missing plane) may be amended or corrected, but did we always post a retraction or correction to the previous alert? No. The story was still breaking, and we needed to go, go, go.

Was this right? Not ideally, no. For the person who read that alert at the moment we posted it, it was very real. That person trusted us. They won’t necessarily stick with us and hit refresh to see the more complete story begin to be told.

Was it avoidable? Hard to say. In our position, sitting in front of a computer in a newsroom, we’re trusting the wires. And the wires are trusting their sources and their own judgment. Revision and correction happens in real-time, but not every shade of it is acknowledged publicly. We are building towards a greater tapestry of context and accuracy to enshroud the story at hand, but we may miss a few stitches along the way. Does this sacrifice the integrity of the cloth in the end? Again, it’s hard to say. But it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t aspire to an ideal of accuracy.

You Want a Pepsi, Pal, You’re Going to Pay For It

Of course, most of us don’t work in an online newsroom, meaning we have the luxury of time — and thus, the ability to hold ourselves (and others) accountable as real-time publishers.

So, the lesson learned? As this image I found on Buzzfeed attests…

However, there was one nugget of “Back to the Future” related trivia yesterday that was accurate. Actress Claudia Wells, who played Jennifer in the first movie of the trilogy, turned 44 on July 5. Happy birthday, Claudia!

Now, it’s time for me to make like a tree and get out of here.

1 Comment

Georgy, July 6th 2010 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Content, Social Media