Category Archives: Content Aggregation

11.20.13
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Social Media: Geofeedia

Use: Search content by location across social media networks to surface interesting local stories, commentary,  sources and content

Geofeedia is a Web-based application that allows media publishers to search social media activity by location across Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram and Picassa.   According to Geofeedia: “Once you create a Geofeed – by simply entering an address or drawing a boundary around a location on a map – you can search, monitor and analyze all social media activity from that location.”  The search can be refined with additional filters such as source, date, keyword and hashtag.

The data collected can be archived so you can track trends or tie activity to a particular past event.  Journalists can use the tool to uncover and curate relevant content for a particular location.   Sales executives can use the tool to pin down sentiments about a particular retailer by store location.

Geofeedia offers a 24-hour pass for $49 and special plans for events

More:

ijnet: How newsrooms can use Geofeedia to curate social media by location

Poynter: Geofeedia helps journalists locate real-time photos, tweets where news breaks

iRevolution: Geofeedia: Next Generation Crisis Mapping Technology?

 

 

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10.17.13
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Content Development: Google Media Tools

Use: Leverage Google tools to create new content and products

Google Media Tools aggregates all of Google’s various tools for media companies in one location.  The site is organized by categories (Gather and Organize, Publish, Engage, Develop and Visualize) and includes 27 “tools” such as Advance Search, Google Consumer Surveys, Google Analytics, Google Maps Engine and Google Charts.   YouTube, Google+, Google News and other Google properties are also considered tools for journalists.

 

09.09.13
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Social Media: Facebook Conversations

Use:  Supplement news coverage with related real-time conversations on Facebook; provide added value to advertisers with real-time brand discussions

Facebook has launched two new APIs to track and integrate conversations into news coverage.  According to the AllFacebook blog, the two APIs include:  “the public feed API, which displays a real-time feed of public posts for a specific word; and the keyword insights API, which tallies the total number of posts that mention a specific term during a specific time period, as well as enabling news organization to feature anonymous, aggregated results based on gender, age, and location.”

These new features are additional arsenal in Facebook’s competitive battle with Twitter.  As described on Facebook’s Newsroom blog: “Over the past few months, we have rolled out a series of products aimed at surfacing the public conversations happening on Facebook including hashtags, embedded posts, and trending topics. We are committed to building features that improve the experience of discovering and participating in conversations about things happening in the world right now, including entertainment, sports, politics and news.”

The APIs currently are available to only a few media companies but Facebook says they are “beginning discussions with other media partners and preferred marketing developers (PMD’s) and will make it available to additional partners in the coming weeks.”

You can imagine that the new APIs will be mostly useful to national media organizations who are covering topics that impact a larger group of users.  But a big local news item — disasters, college or professional sports teams, salacious trials — could also generate enough conversation that local publishers could meaningfully tap into.

More:

Mashable: Facebook’s New APIs Help Media Outlets Highlight Real-Time Conversations

AllFacebook blog: Facebook Releases Two APIs That Allow News Organizations To Tap Into Its Real-Time Public Posts

PCMag: Facebook Goes After Twitter with Real-Time Conversation

 

 

 

08.07.13
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Roundup: Tips and Tools for Writers and Journalists, Part 2

Following is an aggregation of stories with tips and tools for journalists and writers.  Part 1 is located here.

Journalism.co.uk: 6 lessons from BuzzFeed as it launches in the UK

Streetfight: 7 Strategies for Generating Localized News Stories

Social Media Examiner: 3 Tools to Help You Discover and Share Great Content

Storyful: Facebook for news: maximising the effectiveness of Facebook newsgathering

Journalism.co.uk: 16 online tools for newsgathering

Journalism.co.uk: 20 search tips and tools for journalists

Mashable: 13 Best Free Audio Editors

Journalism.co.uk: Journalist launches iPad app for logging video interviews

PaidContent: Check out Slate’s cool tool for better Twitter headlines

Journalism.co.uk: Twenty Tumblr tips for news outlets

API: 10 tips for understanding your audiences and targeting new ones

07.30.13
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Social Media: OpenFuego

Use:  Curate Twitter conversations on topics of interest to your users or advertisers

OpenFuego is the new open-source version of Fuego, a tool created by the Nieman Journalism Lab to automatically monitor Twitter feeds and curate conversations based on designated topics.

Here is how the tool author, Andrew Phelps, describes the process: “You create a database and follow the instructions in the config file….Choose a group of authorities — the Twitter users who will seed the universe you want to track. ….After you identify these 10 authorities, OpenFuego does the rest. The app follows them on Twitter, as well as all of the people they follow, up to a total of 5,000 sources. When one of those sources shares a link, the link is scored according to the source’s influence. Influence is determined by the number of authorities who follow that source.”

The tool provides the back-end curation.  Publishers will have to create their own tool to display the content on the Web page.

Publishers can use the tool to supplement or provide background information on designated topics.  That information can be solely a tool for journalists or can be packaged online for users.  The tool could also be used to find “friendly” references to particular brands that can be added to the toolkit of advertiser services.

More:

Nieman Journalism Lab: Introducing OpenFuego, your very own heat-seeking Twitter bot

 

 

07.03.13
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Content Aggregation: CrowdyNews

Use:  Increase engagement by aggregating relevant social media conversations

CrowdyNews is social media aggregation tool that uses proprietary technology to comb specified sites/accounts/news feeds and pulls in relevant conversations and content.  A widget scrolls the aggregated content on the home page and users can select “full screen” to display all of the content.

The Chicago Tribune uses the technology to power their news.chicago.com platform, which includes news, sports and entertainment categories.  Digital First Media is using the technology on their newspaper sites (and calling it SocialWire) to enhance local content.   The New Haven Register, for example, uses CrowdyNews to aggregate content from various Twitter accounts, RSS feeds and video from several media outlets.

More:

Update 8/23/2013: NetNewsCheck: Gatehouse Adds Social with CrowdyNews

Journalism.co.uk: Digital First Media gathers social content with CrowdyNews

06.09.13
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Content Aggregation: GuardianWitness

Use:  Establish deeper connections with your community by facilitating sharing of content from the community to the news outlet; bolster an advertiser’s product with “testimonials” from community

Guardian News and Media created the GuardianWitness platform (Web and mobile app) which allows people to easily share text, photos and videos directly with Guardian editorial staff and view what other citizens are contributing.  Some contributions could be featured in Guardian digital on print publications.

The Guardian posts “assignments” and asks for community contributions.  Recent assignment themes ranged from “How fast is your pet?” and “Your pressure cooker recipes” to more serious “Turkey demonstrations” and “student feminism.”  Each assignment has a defined life-span.  One of the more popular recent “closed” assignments was Top pets: naughty kittens and cheeky cats which had 869 contributions.

Other media have established formal sharing platforms, such as CNN’s iReport.   The value to news organizations is deeper community connections and increased engagement (particularly if shared content is featured on the core media sites), not to mention the possibility of enhancing hard news stories.   The platform could also be used to help advertisers, e.g.  sharing “fashion” photos of recently purchased outfits from Macy’s.

More:

The Next Web: The Guardian’s new GuardianWitness app opens up reporting to the masses

Phillip Trippenbach: Six reasons GuardianWitness will sink or swim

06.04.13
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Roundup: Tools for Writers and Journalists

Following are links to several columns with recommendations for various apps and tools to help journalists and writers navigate digital content creation, curation and sharing.

Five types of content curation tools for journalists

A list of 10 curation tools which journalists can use to collect multimedia content from across the web, organized by type.

“For those of us with a tight budget, little tech know-how, and even less time, there is still hope for adding multimedia into your communications plans. In not much time at all, you can produce a powerful photo slideshow or video with some fairly simple tools.”

Top 5 Apps for Authors

“Authors these days are more than authors. We must not only write, but edit, organize, blog, friend, tweet, connect, converse, advise, reciprocate, share and share again. These five apps (and I mean “apps” beyond the mobile-only kind) help me streamline these tasks so that I can spend more time actually writing and sell more books.”

10 digital tools journalists can use to improve their reporting, storytelling

“Digital tools help produce quality content online, but it can be tough figuring out where to start. Here are 10 online tools that can help improve journalists’ reporting and storytelling, and engage readers in multimedia.”

New Digital Tools for Journalists: 10 to Learn

“I asked Knight’s Michael Maness and the Journalism and Media Innovation team what tools journalists should be learning. In time, the tool tutorials will get to all of them. Here’s Maness’ list.”
06.03.13
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Content Aggregation: Spun (2.0)

Use:   Increase user engagement by surfacing content that is being shared frequently in a specific community

Spun is a news reader app/discovery engine that curates content that is being shared frequently in a specific community.  Spun, originally, focused on content in 12 cities.  But unable to scale, the new version of Spun now aggregates (algorithmically and with editorial staff) popular content regardless of location.

Media companies should consider partnering with Spun to leverage their platform in their community, using the media company’s local staff/resources to help uncover frequently shared content.

More:

Mashable: Spun 2.0 Upgrades Local News by Ditching Location

Mediabistro: News Aggregator App Spun Partners With Thrillist & Expands Categories

AppsLooking: SPUN: City News Review – A news app