Apr 30th, 2008 | Media 2.0, Social Media | No Comments
According to a study that is to be published in New Scientist magazine tomorrow, Facebook and Wikipedia are better at getting crucial information out during emergencies than either government agencies, emergency services — or the traditional media. The study, done by researchers at the University of Colorado, looked at how Facebook and Wikipedia were used by students during the Virginia Tech shootings, and how Twitter and other social media were used during the forest fires in California. As the Telegraph story describes it:
“During the Virginia shootings, they found the emergency services were slow to update their reports on the latest situation and the names of those killed. Within just 90 minutes of the first deaths, however, a web page accurately describing the events appeared on Wikipedia.”
The study found that dyring the fires in California in October, web users on various websites and those using Twitter were keeping their friends and neighbours informed of their whereabouts and the location of the fires on a minute by minute basis, and were also posting links to Google Maps with which others could track the progress of the fire and mark areas where schools and businesses were shut down as a result of the threat. The media weren’t so useful, however:
“The mass media were unreliable… as they struggled to access remote areas from which website users with an internet connection could easily report. Media sites also focused on the ’sensational’, such as fires close to celebrities’ homes, which distorted the overall picture.”
Some interesting lessons there, for both emergency services and the media, about information delivery on the Web.
Jan 16th, 2008 | Blogs, Media 2.0 | No Comments
Without going into too much detail, I’ve taken some lumps for supporting Gizmodo during the whole CES affair (see past posts too numerous to mention), and I admit that my defence of their prank with the TV-B-Gone remotes was somewhat less enthusiastic than it could have been — if only because the sophomoric nature of the situation didn’t really jibe with the great post on a free press and unfettered inquiry that Brian Lam of Gizmodo wrote after the fuss died down.
That kind of sums up a lot of my thoughts about Gawker and its overlord Nick Denton: sometimes it’s great, and sometimes it’s really not. Two recent items written by Denton — and described by Peter Kafka at Silicon Alley Insider — summarize this dilemma, since they come from pretty much the opposite ends of the spectrum. One has gotten him in hot water with Scientology, and the other in hot water with Facebook.
The first item was a post about Tom Cruise, and included a video clip in which the actor talks about Scientology and how it is the only solution to the world’s problems, how he deals with SPs (i.e., “suppressive persons” — cult jargon for those who are negative on the church) and other topics, using that really determined voice and piercing gaze that I associate with his crazy motivational speaker character in Magnolia.
The clip was removed, but Denton found another copy and posted that, and says he will continue to do so despite any attempts by Scientology to force the site to take it down. Denton is also posting copies of the correspondence between Gawker and the church, in which the site claims it is justified in using the footage because it is reporting on a news event. In this one I am 100 per cent behind Denton, even if he is doing it primarily for the traffic. So in this particular case, Denton = good.
And the second item — the other end of the Gawker spectrum? A post about Emily Brill, the daughter of media mogul Steve Brill. The item seemed primarily designed to make fun of the girl for going on a vacation with her friends and for losing some weight, and used screenshots from her profile on Facebook. That breaches the site’s terms of use, of course — but that’s not the part I really care about. It just seems like an invasion of someone’s privacy for no real purpose. So she went to Cabo or whatever with her rich friends — so what. Denton = evil. See my problem?
Jan 9th, 2008 | Media 2.0, Social Media | No Comments
Perpetrating a media prank via Facebook or YouTube or some other combination of social media sites isn’t a new thing. Among other things, news stories have been written about a guy who (allegedly) had dumped his girlfriend in front of a huge crowd — all of whom had come to the site because of a Facebook message — with the whole event filmed and posted to YouTube. But I don’t think anything has reached the kind of scale Ouriel Ohayaon talks about in this story.
Since I’m not fluent in French, it’s hard to comprehend just how big this Facebook President hoax got, but from the description by Ouriel at TechCrunch and by Loic Lemeur, it sounds like pretty well every major French media outlet, both print and television, picked up the story about how he had supposedly been elected Facebook President and could instantly message hundreds of millions of people on the site.
To anyone who has even a glancing relationship with Facebook, this sounds pretty comical — Loic says he was called by the guy in question and dismissed him as a kook. But it’s worth remembering that not everyone is familiar with Facebook, apart from knowing that it’s really big. So why didn’t someone check into it and realize how ridiculous it was? One likely reason: No one wants to get in the way of a good story.
Hopefully there will be a little bit more skepticism about such things in the future. All it takes is getting burned once or twice.
Dec 7th, 2007 | Media 2.0, Social Media | No Comments
Updates from Michael Learmonth at Silicon Alley Insider and from Adam Ostrow at Mashable show that ABC’s election-coverage deal with Facebook isn’t exactly setting any records in terms of participation from members of the social network. Learmonth says that the application has just over 10,000 daily users, and Mashable says it only has a little over 8,000 — about 3 per cent of the total who signed up.
So what does this mean? It could mean nothing. Maybe the application just sucks, or maybe it doesn’t really take advantage of Facebook and how a social network operates — I took a look at it, and while it allows you to support a particular politician and read the news, it doesn’t do a whole lot other than that. The ABC Politics page is more useful, in the sense that you can join in debates (vote on issues) and follow ABC reporters. Several of the questions asked have close to 10,000 responses, which isn’t bad.
Maybe 8,000 to 10,000 people is a respectable number for signups to the ABC app (although it doesn’t look like much next to the 50 million people who are on Facebook). Or maybe it’s too early, and not enough people are aware that it’s even there. One other explanation, of course, is that the social network “is made up of kids who would rather play Xbox and “poke” each other than read the news,” as one commenter at Silicon Alley put it.
Is that true? I’m not sure it is, as I mentioned when the ABC app was first announced. Plenty of groups have gotten a fair bit of traction for political concerns and issues (although I’m not sure I would include the “Stephen Colbert for President” group in that). It’s possible that members of a social network like Facebook just aren’t looking for news from established media outlets, but would rather find it somewhere else.
Nov 26th, 2007 | Media 2.0, Social Media | No Comments
According to the New York Times, the ABC television network has signed a deal with a social-networking site you might have heard of — a little site called Facebook — that will allow users of Facebook to “follow” reporters through the U.S. election and talk about the issues, and also pose questions for political debates that will be jointly sponsored by ABC and Facebook. Not exactly a new idea, as many have pointed out.
Caroline McCarthy of CNET doesn’t think Facebook or ABC News are going to have much success with this idea because, well… Facebook users see “the site as a platform for social recreation, not information consumption.” In other words, they’re too busy goofing around with Super-Pokes and sharing photos of each other staggering drunk at frat parties. I’m extrapolating, but I think that’s more or less what Caroline means.
Is that true, though? I know that Facebook started out as just for university students, but the user base has broadened considerably, I would argue. There has been a tremendous response to issues such as the Burmese army attacks, not to mention Iraq and other U.S. issues. Admittedly, people still primarily use Facebook for social purposes, but I don’t think that necessarily precludes there being a political aspect to it as well.
On the other hand, maybe this announcement between Facebook and ABC is just a lot of blather and not much will come of it. Even All Facebook’s Nick O’Neill doesn’t seem to think it amounts to much.
