The Media Oxpecker: Mo Subscribers, Mo Problems
february 3, 2012 04:45 pm
Rounding up media & tech industry news you may have missed.
- One of the surprising findings of a recent study on how people respond to tweets:
Don't be afraid to be self-promotional. Surprisingly and intriguingly, the research respondents had pretty much the same reaction to tweets that contained plain old information and tweets that contained information that was created by the tweet-sender. "The Twitter ecosystem values learning about new content," the study notes -- so new info, it seems, is new info, regardless of who provides it. And sharing your own work conveys excitement about that work -- which means that self-promotion, rather than being a Twitter turn-off, can actually be an added value.
- Journalists who have enabled Facebook's subscribe feature are seeing increasing numbers of spam subscribers and commenters. Says Jim Romenesko:
I was hoping to hear from subscriber "Mah'nicknameiz BabyBoo ThereforI'magirl" and see what she thought about my recent post on the Fox News PR machine. But no such luck.
And female journalists have to deal with the added problem of harassment. Slate's Katherine Goldstein writes:
Last week, I put up a post asking these new subscribers how they’d found me. Of the 34 comments I got back, eight were appropriate and on-topic. Fourteen of the replies were in Arabic. The comments in English included: "b.coz you are god gifted honey," "BECAUSE YOU ARE IMPORTANT TO ME!," "hi bayby," "becase of you are very beautifull so i hope that if i add you/ you give me response," and the extremely classy "you are so beautiful and i want to fuck you."
- Is there a glass ceiling for social media managers in the newsroom? Here's Mandy Jenkins on the dilemma facing professional "Twitter Monkeys."
- What Pinterest is doing that Facebook isn't. (h/t Becca Sickbert)
- Mobile ad clicks have gone up 711 percent in a year.
- So will 2012 be the Year of Mobile Advertising? Sure, why not.
- The number of Americans owning a tablet computer or e-reader nearly doubled over the holidays.
- ProPublica will release some of its already-published works in e-book format, and will include videos, maps, documents and interviews with journalists in addition to what has already appeared online.
- The Chicago Tribune is introducing a Sunday books section as premium paid content which subscribers can purchase as an add-on feature.
- Introducing: Longform.org the iPad app.
- A new Google search algorithm tweak punishes sites with excessive "above-the-fold" advertising.
- The American Press Institute (API) and the Newspaper Association of America Foundation (NAAF) are merging.
- Data from the 4th quarter of 2011 shows continued traffic growth for newspaper websites.
- Here are 5 Tips for an effective hyperlocal advertising campaign.
- 6 self-service platforms to help merchants maintain control over daily deals.
- The latest entrant to the daily deal space? Bank of America.
- Tales of layoffs, sabotage and suicides at the Los Angeles Times.
- "A favor: Can we take the blaring correction off the online version so the writer of this huge hit story can send the link without embarrassment? Or perhaps if not we can tuck it at the bottom?" wrote a Washington Post senior editor to a colleague. Instead, her email was forwarded to TBD and promptly published on the site.
