Overview: Online Strategy

The Decorah Eagles “nest cam” is the most watched live stream channel of all time, spawning a sliver under 300 million live views (298,652,320 at time of writing), mainstream media coverage and eagle-watching communities worldwide. The limbic system is a part of the brain that drives our emotions. When we’re around other people–especially crowds–…

“In fact, the very point was to get them, and these comments, off my pages,” - After deciding to charge for comments, Tablet’s conversation moves…to Facebook » Nieman Journalism Lab

It's easier than ever to create video—and headaches - 4 Legal Issues Brands Need to Understand Before Livestreaming on Periscope or Meerkat | Adweek

I’ve had the amazing pleasure of meeting with over a dozen of the largest companies on the planet over the last six months... [who] have hired journalists, producers, broadcasters, and editors to refine and tell their story on a consistent basis... but not one ... focused on subscriber growth... While larger enterprises are fighting silo battle…

I quite enjoyed the experience of reposting to Medium, and really like how Medium is evolving as a platform, particularly how they are… … re-imagining comments with Highlight, Comment & Respond… these three interactive features echo the ‘nibble, bite, meal’ content model, but in the other direction, from you back to the …

"...after this Spring’s most recent NewsFeed algorithm updates is that Facebook Pages—the ones used by businesses—are generating appalling user engagement rates... work-arounds ... mostly involve investing even more resources into Facebook ... more money devoted to advertising to fans brands have already paid to acquire in the first place." …

"Now we in journalism get to stand back and see technology titans jump over each other to bring benefits to news. But we’d best not stand back too far. We journalists and publishers must collaborate with the platforms as we demand that they collaborate with us. And as they teach us about technology, we must teach them about journalism." - Playi…

Finally kicked Medium’s tyres. Result: an unfair comparison between my post originally on BlogActiv with a new version on Medium. Unfair because Medium is all about the content [and] I reduced the historical blah-blah... Medium’s editor is as good as they say, import post function worked like a dream.

'add a bit of punch' to stories using data visualisation - Data visualisation tips from Information is Beautiful | Media news

the social network will share analytics, and Instant Articles is compatible with audience measurement and attribution tools... won't receive preferential treatment from Facebook's News Feed sorting algorithm... Facebook will parse HTML and RSS to display articles with fonts, layouts, and formats ... also providing vivid media options like embe…

Good analyses of where data visualisation is heading: "Today, a slew of new software has made it easier than ever to create data visualizations from scratch. The downside? It has led to more prescriptive design. Take D3. It's a JavaScript library that helps turn information into any number of visual frameworks...Beyond D3... Tableau is the crow…

"usually, researchers are at a pains to highlight their findings. This one buries them as deep as it could, using a mix of convoluted language and irrelevant comparisons... this study is not about all of Facebook users, despite language ... that’s quite misleading: “Finally, we conclusively establish that on average in the context of Facebook…”…

Great takedown of the flaws and bad framing of the Facebook filter bubble study in Science: "Alarm bells are ringing for me. The tobacco industry might once have funded a study that says that smoking is less dangerous than coal mining, but here we have a study about coal miners smoking... the article’s strange comparison between “individual…

FiltreBubble author on Facebook's study in Science: "Facebook’s data science team has put part of the “filter bubble” theory to the test ... Upshot: here is a real and scientifically significant “filter bubble effect” — the Facebook news feed algorithm in particular will tend to amplify news that your political compadres favor... For self-de…

Google, eight major publishers across Europe, and a couple of trade organizations are forming a partnership ... an alliance born out of desperation on the part of publishers and opportunity on the part of technology companies... the largest news and information companies in the world will be formed out of a hybrid of these current entities... …

"Imagining a future without lights and stop signs.... driverless cars will make intersections much more efficient. Right now, you may wind up sitting at a red light for 45 seconds even though no one is passing through the green light in the opposite direction. But you don’t have to do that in a world where traffic flows according to computer comm…

"Now Sandberg is skewing younger. On Friday, Facebook announced a partnership with LinkedIn, LeanIn.org and the Anita Borg Institute to form Circles aimed at women studying computer science or engineering."

" Top tasks are the small set of tasks ... that matter most to your customers. Make these tasks work well, and you’ll be on the right track. Get them wrong, and chances are you’ll lose the customer. Top Tasks Management is a model that says: “Focus on what really matters (the top tasks) and defocus on what matters less (the tiny tasks).” Tiny ta…

"the most crucial element of Facebook’s new power: the right to chose between the free expression of ideas or to instead impose censorship when it deems content unworthy... How will its algorithms handle stories posted directly to Facebook that question Facebook’s monopoly status? ... If the Washington Post posted its PRISM story about collusion …

"Min-Soek Pang of Temple University found that for every dollar governments invested in technology, spending decreased by $3.50. ... It’s not just investing in gadgets that shrinks government, but investing in tech talent that makes things run better." - How Government Shrinks Itself—By Investing In Technology - ReadWrite

"In an increasingly crowded news feed, Facebook’s algorithm updates can make it tough for brands to get much notice.... We’ve been scouring the web to find ... all the tactics, new additions and post types you need to know today."

The Journalist's Toolbox

"Facebook is ... aiming to be the Internet equivalent of a broadband provider — providing the means by which all media is published and accessed. Here’s what brands and publishers need to know ... - Facebook urging publishers to post their articles and videos directly to Facebook... - For publishers that use Facebook for their comments sections,…

"Skeptics are howling that this is a Faustian bargain—that the media are mortgaging their long-term futures for short-term gain... Facebook has presented the news media with a collective-action problem. News sites aren’t blind.... if they could all get together and decide, as a group, what to do about Facebook, no doubt they’d think long and hard…

"The problem is that Facebook controls what you see and when. If it becomes the primary way to consume news and watch videos, what happens when a news story is controversial about the company itself? Or isn’t within its content guidelines (like pornography)? You’ll be receiving a filtered version of the internet that’s controlled by one company."

"The New York Times is preparing to plant a taproot right inside the highly walled garden that is Facebook." - Memo To Publishers: Watch Where You Put That Taproot… — Medium

"the idea of distributed content argues that publishers should be more comfortable putting their content on platforms they don’t control. But Facebook isn’t just another platform. It’s dominant in a way no other platform is... the sort of decision that one might look back on in a few years as the moment you got swindled" - Facebook wants to be t…

"Dogfooding is the golden rule of platforms. And currently, open government portals are flagrantly violating this golden rule... I can’t find a single example of a government entity consuming the data they publish... For the most part, inter-agency data sharing doesn’t happen ...when it does, the agencies set up non-public back channels to push a…

"Google is now clearly marking websites in mobile search results that it considers mobile friendly and if that tag isn’t getting displayed around your content, your website may see a drop in mobile traffic. Responsive design is definitely the way to go but will that be enough. How do you confirm if your web pages are considered mobile friendly by…

Comment moderation and online community management strategies for news organisations, but relevant to government sites too: "Comments are a way for readers to connect with one another, and with the journalists and editors reporting the news. But ... can quickly turn uncivil, and news organizations often don’t have the resources or manpower to con…