A reminder that I will be chairing a great panel this Wednesday, 5 December on how users acting as editors via social media platforms are creating excellent content and establishing the best practices that will be guiding user-guided publishing for years to come. We have a strong attendance list already as I am told by the SIIA, so sign up soon for in-person or online participation. Late-breaking news: Bruce Smith, Chief Strategic Officer at Answers.com, will be joining the panel to give insights as to how their contributors on WikiAnswers are creating excellent reference content. Join us at the McGraw-Hill building at noon on Wednesday for a great session with Wikipedia, Newsvine, Answers.com and Wikinvest!

Labels: brown bag, events, Newsvine, SIIA, Social Media, Wikianswers, wikinvest, Wikipedia

When Seattle-based Newsvine launched in Beta form last January we documented its promise enthusiastically and kept a close eye on it. Not surprisingly so did a number of hot prospects for financing a profitable exit, including MSNBC, which Newsvine has announced in its own story as its new owner. No details are available at this time about the size of the deal or how Newsvine will be integrated into MSNBC.com, but MSNBC News' estimate of USD 75 million seems about right given Newsvine's position in the social news marketplace and there are promises by MSNBC to keep Newsvine an independent entity for now.

It's a pretty good first acquisition for MSNBC.com, which is a humdrum online news portal that trails major outlets for cable news such as CNN.com and Foxnews.com by significant margins and seems to be caught in a major identity crisis. Unlike the online portals for CNN and Fox News, MSNBC.com is obliged to promote the broadcast NBC news properties more than the MSNBC cable unit, drawing away precious attention span to TV shows that have little to do with core online audience demographics. Add in an alliance with Newsweek magazine for feature content and the marketing muddle for the MSNBC.com brand gets no more clear.

Newsvine itself is not a traffic leader in overall visits amongst social news outlets and struggles to build momentum behind an intensely loyal core of news, opinion and bookmark contributors. But unlike other social news outlets Newsvine features a maturing mix of original content along with links to external news stories, a combination that will help MSNBC.com to build inventories of unique destination content and a network of popular online personalities that could be leveraged via MSNBC's cable outlet to build visibility for the community. Newsvine has had a few minor but noteworthy news scoops of its own - a member on the scene of the Virginia Tech shootings broke the initial details of the event - but the strength of the community tends to be a core of contributors who opine on and spin key topics in politics, religion, world events and popular culture. With a reasonable mix of views across the spectrum and the ability for talented writers to expand on their thoughts in their own pieces Newsvine offers a rich mix of content that's sure to complement any mainstream news outlet's offerings if managed effectively.

What Newsvine gets most out of this deal is a parent who's willing to put a little more muscle behind an organization that's been challenged to keep up with itself. With only a staff of six and an editorial policy that requires regular and timely monitoring and intervention by senior Newsvine staff to keep controversial content and comments from spinning out of control Newsvine suffers from the typical startup myopia that keeps it from looking at larger prizes at its disposal. Newsvine's features generally do a good job of promoting engaging content to the attention of its members and its social networking features were well ahead of other social news outlets but its up-only voting system tends to promote content that echoes much of the same controversy-for-controversy's-sake content that one finds in major media outlets. Ironically this may turn out to be a plus when you have a cable news outlet that focuses on much the same sort of stories.

Most major news outlets have been extremely hesitant to embrace social media too closely, a factor that has benefited portals such as Newsvine along the way: when The New York Times closed down its online comments features a few months back Newsvine picked up a good chunk of NYT commenters. With the acquisition of Newsvine established news media outlets may be beginning to recognize that this uneasy balance between social media and their own news is tipping away from their operations, creating loyalties tied to online communities creating and discussiong news that is likely in time to eclipse loyalties to news brands tied to established media channels. It's hardly a one-for-one swapout at this point in time, so the initial decision of MSNBC to keep the Newsvine brand alive as an independent unit is a wise move for now, especially given the typical sensitivities in online communities to being "sold out."

But as audiences empowered as newshounds create and discover a widening range of content their ability to build quality inventory and insights rapidly will eventually find more of today's journalists and commentators becoming professional members of online communities like Newsvine. Social news communities are accelerating in their ability to get their articles good placement in search engine results, a factor that certainly contributed to The New York Times' decision to open up its prime columnists' content to get our from behind their subscription firewall and into the mix of these communities. This transition is still fairly gradual and generational, but essential for ensuring future revenues amongst news audiences becoming used to having their peers help them select what's newsworthy - and worth their attention.

Labels: Deals Partnerships and Sales, Digg, MSNBC, New York Times, News, Newsvine, Social Media

Though its reach is relatively small in comparison to the leaders in social bookmarking, the Newsvine portal remains one of the more successful news-oriented social media sites on the Web. Unlike Digg and del.icio.us, which focus largely on social bookmarking for technology and entertainment, Newsviners provide both bookmarks to online content that draws discussion from members as well as original content authored by Newsvine members and smatterings of mainstream news sources such as AP and The New York Times. The mix of user-generated content and mainstream media makes for a lively mix of discussions on politics, religion and other hot-button issues that drive users to vie for top community rankings and their own modest ad revenues. But though the Newsvine community remains vibrant, it has not had a serious growth spurt in over a year. How does a social media property grow beyond a relatively small group of rowdy enthusiasts?

Newsvine is hoping that the answer may lie in nailing some hot scoops dug out by its citizen journalists. In the wake of so-called "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey's release of telephone records leading Newsvine denizens are hoping to score a big news story of their own by combing through the phone records to see if they can identify well-known political figures who may have been caught up in affairs via Palfrey's escort service. To facilitate this effort Newsvine and some of its most active members have set up some software to enable Newsvine members to do their own sleuthing through Palfrey's phone records in cooperation with their peers. While there are no tangible results yet from this crowdsourced research, the energy level is running high amongst these budding investigative journalists.

Although turning up some high-profile names may gain Newsvine some temporary traction, it's far from clear that this is the type of exercise that will put citizen journalism on the map in any significant way. Leading webloggers have been uncovering major stories for years - stories which are ignored oftentimes by mainstream media outlets or co-opted later on as their own "scoops." The focus of this effort - a Washington sex scandal - tends to play into this trend, as it's the type of work already being done no doubt at a feverish rate by every major news organization in the world in search of a hyped and hot story. Crowdsourcing and some quick coding have enabled some "boots on the ground" via Newsvine and a very interesting precedent for future user-keyed research efforts, but those hoping to gain fame and fortune from uncovering the next "Deep Throat" are likely to find asterisks next to their scoops rather than Pulitzer Prizes on their bookshelves.

The key rub in this push towards citizen journalism is that in trying to go after mass media-scaled stories with a mass media journalism techniques Newsvine is in large part just echoing the existing strengths and weaknesses of today's journalism. While there may be some hypocrisy exposed through these efforts that people should know about it's ultimately the same sort of focus on least-common-denominator interests - who's having sex with whom - that drive many of today's journalists obsessed more with fame, fortune and elbow-rubbing than with reporting on the truth regardless of its sensational value. Where citizen journalism seems to shine most brightly is when self-motivated content producers remain true to their values as individuals and to the important relationships that they want to maintain outside of the context of journalism. Quality citizen journalism seems to grow out of the quality of relationships that generate interesting content as much as out of any inherent journalistic skills used by a content producer.

I think that this is one reason why social media portals such as Facebook are growing steadily - they provide first and foremost a place where people can be themselves in all their personal dimensions. This tends to build relationships based on real-world trust more than the ginned-up popularity of of online relationships with people who hide behind pseudonyms. In turn this is likely to assist in developing more in-depth content close to individuals' interests and expertise that will reinforce relationships in their online community more effectively. Portals that focus more on media before relationships do not seem to have as much growth these days. No surprise there, really - there are already far too many mainstream media outlets chasing the tall end of the interest curve.

Relationships are the truly unique experiences around which content gains its greatest value, content which may look dull in its "long tail" focus but which in sum is far more valuable than the fleeting bits of fluff that pass themselves off as serious journalism these days far too often. This is the real direction towards which citizen journalism is most likely to head - people with substantial "real world" relationships sharing important information with one another which becomes contextualized to broader audiences when it's valuable to do so but in ways that are less exploitative than the typical journalist-source relationships. The need for serious and professional journalism will continue for many years, with citizen journalists providing many capable recruits, but the real future of citizen journalism is one in which people sharing content are more concerned about being citizens than journalists.

Labels: citizen journalism, crowdsourcing, DC Madam, facebook, Newsvine, Social Media

Bumping into Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson at the pre-event EconSM mixer tonight was a real pleasure - especially since Newsvine has just launched its new "Evergreen" release, which includes a smorgasbord of new features and sources. Mike was pumped up about the modular design of the new Newsvine front page that allows a user to add and content modules in a drag-and-drop design - including modules that allow one to aggregate headline RSS feeds from major news suppliers such as The New York Times, the Washington Post. Local news and weather get their fair exposure as well. But to me the best things about this redesign are the simple and obvious ones that help to highlight the increasingly powerful contributions from Newsviners themselves. The listing of AP headlines in the upper right corner of the home page are now replaced by an enhanced display of the top news story seeds (bookmarks) from Newsvine contributors, followed by a real-time feed of stories with new seeds and comments. The top AP story is still featured in the middle column but with robust contributions from its members Newsvine can afford to highlight their efforts as a default mode.

There are merits in each of the the social media news services available today but Newsvine seems to be excelling in developing a community of contributors who are more than just bookmarkers and commenters. Newsvine creates a good share of its own original content, including breaking news from contributor "Killfile" on the recent Virginia Tech shootings. As highlighted in our new research paper on social media best practices Newsvine maintains a "Code of Honor" for its members that its lead contributors are intent on using to encourage quality content. The contributions may vary quite a bit in quality nevertheless but an environment that encourages quality more than specific outlooks is a crucial factor in attracting contributors who can find and create content worth reading and discussing. With the Evergreen features Newsvine is allowing its leaders to be seen as leaders more emphatically - and increasingly they're up to the task. Add in Evergreen's ability to blend in mainstream news and information from popular and local sources and it gets that much easier to stick around and catch the real-time news buzz that Newsvine is perfecting one post at a time.

It's a highly competitive field out there for social media news services, especially as major portals such as Yahoo and MySpace become more proficient in blending in news contributions from users, so Newsvine's future is hardly guaranteed any more than any other emerging service. But if you're looking for an example of a social media news portal that gets an awful lot of things right you could do far worse than to use Newsvine as your template for success.

Labels: Newsvine, Social Media, Trends