Social Media & Journalism

1. Social Media& Journalism

5. What are social media? • Internet sites where people: • Interact freely • Share and discuss information about each other and their lives • Use a multimedia mix of personal words, pictures, videos and audio

7. Brief history of social media • 1978 – The first Bulletin Board System (BBS) was invented • 1985 – America Online began service • 1992 – Tripod opened as an online community for college students • 1993 --- WWW technology donated to the world by Tim Berners-Lee and CERN • 1997 – AOL instant messenger allowed members to chat • 1998 – Google opened as a major Internet search engine • 2001 – Wikipedia began • 2002 – Friendster started up as a social networking site • 2003 – MySpace was launched as a clone of Friendster

8. Brief history of social media • 2004 – Facebook began as a social networking site for Harvard students • 2005 – YouTube began storing and retrieving videos • 2006 – Twitter launched as a social networking, microblogging site • 2012 – Social media was everywhere on smart phones and tablets • Top ten social networks were Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, Wordpress, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr, MySpace and Wikia • Facebook reached a billion users

9. Brief history of social media • 2013 -- YouTube topped one billion monthly users with 4 billion views per day • Facebook user total climbed to 1.11 billion • Twitter had 500 million registered users, with more than 200 million active • Flickr had 87 million users and stored 8 billion photos • Instagram had 100 million users storing 4 billion photos • LinkedIn had 225 million users • Pinterest had 48.7 million users • WordPress hosted 74 million blogs • Reddit had 69.9 million monthly users • Google+ had 343 million users

12. Social media and journalism • Blogs • Live event coverage • Answering readers’ questions • Preview events • Wikis • Wikinews

13. Social media and journalism • Twitter & Facebook • Push headlines • Cover events in real time • For sourcing • For reaching out to readers • Getting reactions

14. Social media issues • Social media can become the story • Focus can be skewed toward a viral story • Must verify information • Real-time tweets can be inaccurate • Tweets can’t be taken back • What does “off the record” mean? • Ethics apply to social media too

15. Tips for using Twitter • Old news is no news • Twitter emphasizes real-time information • Followers get bored of links seen multiple times • Contribute to the story • Add an opinionorpertinent fact before hitting "send" on a retweet • Keep it short • Twitter limits tweets to 140 characters • Using fewer characters leaves room for comments on retweets • Limit Twitter-specific syntax • Overuse makes tweets hard to read • Some syntax is helpful; adding a hashtag helps everyone follow along

16. Tips for using twitter • Keep it to yourself • Clichéd "sandwich" tweets • Foursquare location check-ins • Provide context • Readers can’t follow Tweets that are too short • Don’t link to a blog or photo without giving readers a reason to click on it • Don't whine • Negative sentiments and complaints are disliked • Be a tease • Hook the reader • Don’tgive away all of the news in the tweet itself

19. Practice tweeting • CNN’s Jarrett Belliniwrites a weekly column about trends and topics in social media – review a recent column about a ghost ship • Your job: Write a tweet promoting the column • Be a tease • Remember you only have 140 characters • Next: Share your tweet with two or three people around you • Now: Let’s hear your tweets