Overview: Online Strategy

"It seems like Facebook’s favorite pastime is messing with its algorithm, to the terror of brands, media, and consumers everywhere. ... Today’s change is all about timing. The company wants to make the posts that appear in your feed more relevant based on the context of “when.” That way, you’re not seeing your friends statuses about the Emmys day…

"Just because Twitter wants to be more like Facebook doesn't mean Facebook doesn't want to be more like Twitter. " - Facebook Takes Another Tip From Twitter And Pushes Trendy Topics - ReadWrite

"It doesn’t refer to Ferguson, Ice Bucket Challenge videos or a solemn responsibility to bring you news that really matters, but Facebook does seem to be addressing concerns about the service’s ability to surface timely, important news stories." - Facebook: More timely News Feed on the way | Poynter.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the past couple of years have seen a lot of innovation in online content strategy, coupled with growing disenchantment with "Big Internet".

On #icebucketchallenge, obviously. - I Scream, You Scream, We all Scream ‘Look at Me’ | LinkedIn

"The process of placing an ad on News Feed is a complicated dance. Facebook has to decide not only which ad to show to its users, but when to show it to them... any given user has around 1,500 stories they could see each day. ... a rather complex algorithm that weights how engaging each post is ... and a wide range of other signals ... For examp…

"... the surveillance society or the transparent society, the rise of camera surveillance seems unstoppable. The parallel I’d like to draw is to the rise of equality, as observed by Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1835 classic Democracy in America. " Really excellent, useful post. - The surveillance society is a step forward. But one that harkens b…

"Facebook seems to be trying to get more transparent about how the algorithms ... function, with a statement on Monday about cracking down on “clickbait.” ... But despite the attempts at openness, the bottom line remains the same: Facebook is a black box. No one really has any clue why the site chooses to show or hide certain content... what com…

"Since it launched in March 2012, I F*cking Love Science has attracted more than 17.9 million Facebook followers—more than Popular Science (2.7 million), Discover (2.7 million), Scientific American (1.9 million), and The New York Times (8 million) combined. ... Her empire has since expanded to include a website, IFLscience.com, which has a staff a…

While possibly a bit naive regarding Facebook's motivation for crucifying organic reach, some good points here: "- Talking doesn’t equal connecting: It seems that many brands take their audience for granted. Liking a page doesn’t always imply interest. ... - Paid reach won’t substitute for great storytelling: While paid reach might get more visib…

A new angle on the filter bubble: Facebook's ""Report Abuse" button, which is used to flag content that's hostile or inappropriate ... can also be used as a tool for stifling dissent... If you swarm a page or a person with enough abuse reports, you can kick them off Facebook. Pro-government forces in Vietnam have learned how to do it, and they’re…

"Buying traffic isn’t so much a taboo as it is a poor business decision for most publishers in most instances ... It’s expensive, and the money could usually be better invested in editors who reach an organic audience.... There are times when paid promotion makes sense. Some do paid promotion on posts that have particularly high engagement alread…

Interesting & contested view of that Facebook study, by its co-author: ""If you say, 'I don't want to be experimented on,' ... what does that mean?"[Google is ] constantly needing to tweak their algorithm. If I say, 'I want to opt out of that,' does that put me back to Google search 2004? " Others beg to differ: "It's not A/B testing. It's just b…

Unsurprising that LinkedIn promoted this post.... the comments rapidly turned into an interesting conversation on Linkedin v. Facebook... people seem to comment more on LinkedIn posts than elsewhere. Perhaps the return of blogging that people are starting to talk about is next.

Thoughtful longread on the past (and future?) of longreads - i.e., blogging. Plus a hint that Vox's Chorus CMS may be getting wider use in the future... "Today everyone in the media world is launching email newsletters... Great. But what I miss from emails is the sense of community, the shared experience... Obviously Twitter replaced parts of t…

Seems that, 3+ years after "The Filter Bubble" was pubished, it takes an event like #Ferguson to make people realise what it is. "if there was no Twitter to catch on nationally, would #Ferguson ever make it through the algorithmic filtering on Facebook? ... or be buried in algorithmic censorship?... Facebook has become like a digital version of…

"relying too heavily on Facebook’s algorithmic content streams can result in de facto censorship. Readers are deprived a say in what they get to see, whereas anything goes on Twitter." Puts some numbers to the opacity of the filter bubble experienced by Facebook users in comparison with Twitter users, by comparing coverage of #Ferguson and 'Ice B…

Kepler’s Tally of Planets is a wonderful NYTimes.com interactive feature: "NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered more than 950 confirmed planets orbiting distant stars. Planets with a known size and orbit are shown below" - Kepler’s Tally of Planets - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

Tracking #Ferguson on Twitter. Via @Mathewi, GigaOm

"Continuing its tradition of airing its internal discussions outside the office, the staff at Jezebel today called out the higher-ups at parent Gawker Media today over some pretty disgusting trolling at the site." I wonder how much more loyalty Jezebel's community feel for the site because they air their internal problems so publicly? I wonder ho…

"I wanted to see if I could trick Facebook into believing I'd had one of those big life updates that always hang out at the top of the feed. ... Let's see if I can fabricate some social love. I posted: "Hey everyone, big news!! I've accepted a position trying to make Facebook believe this is an important post about my life! I'm so excited to beg…

These figures need to be compared with other research shows that people seem happy to consume long articles on their mobiles. "Ad Age looked at ... Tumblr, WordPress, Blogger to see how their traffic has changed over the last year and what effect [mobile] has had on the time people spend with each service...." On the one hand we read about the …

"Canadian researchers have confirmed what most people suspected all along: that internet trolls are archetypal Machiavellian sadists.... via Heather-Anne MacLean's post: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140730175026-5723090-don-t-feed-the-trolls-research-reveals-psychopathy - Online trolls are psychopaths and sadists, psychologists …

"Two of the biggest trends in news today: the rise of mobile and the rise of data visualization. The unfortunate reality is that they’re often in conflict. ... If you want to do better, check out MobileVis ... Ros also pulls out a set of best practices for doing visualizations for mobile. Data visualization is good. Data visualization that works …

Truly excellent, insightful piece. "if Facebook did make the content that users see more positive, should we simply be happy? ... If Alice is happier when she is oblivious to Bob’s pain because Facebook chooses to keep that from her, are we willing to sacrifice Bob’s need for support and validation? This is a hard ethical choice ... Facebook is…

"Whether we regard the Facebook study as one in the field of psychology or market research, there are ethical standards that each requires of its members. Let's take an in-depth look at each" Guess what? It doesn't do that well. Surprise, surprise. - Facebook's Trust Problem | Scott Monty

More coverage of the non-scoop of the century ... "companies are desperate to reach consumers, and with hundreds off millions of them visiting social media sites every day, marketers feel like they simply have to be there too, so they are-to the tune of more than $5 billion last year in the U.S. alone... Evidently, they're wasting their money…

Good example of CMS innovations emerging from newsrooms - wish I'd added to my recent weekly LinkedIn tour: "a multi-faceted piece of newsroom infrastructure, a set of building blocks that will allow organizations to turn on or turn off various engagement features with relative ease ... a bunch of parts that you can assemble and reassemble ... …

Part 2 of my second weekly roundup, where the overriding theme is innovation.

"it appears that the FT is adopting a model similar to that of a wire service in its mobile approach, with mobile news being complemented by context, comment, and analysis in the print product, as well as to a certain degree on the web." - “From a news business to a networked business”: The FT pushes its workflows to digital » Nieman Journalism L…