It really surprises me that more political figures and celebrities have not taken Obama's lead and created functional social networking sites that engage users and allow for not only greater transparency, but also general likeability of its moderator.  Leave it to a standup comedian to design a site capable of doing both of those things.

Aaron Karo began writing his monthly column over a decade ago, when he emailed his comedic musings (which he called ‘ruminations') to 20 or so of his closest friends.  Now, the comedian has become quite a success, boasting appearances on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, two books, and subscribers to his column from all over the world.

In August 2008, he launched a new website which aims to unite his fans (and new fans) by allowing them to submit their own ruminations.  The site is awesome in its simplicity.  After signing up for a user account and doing the generic social networking tasks (i.e. uploading a profile picture, typing in some data about yourself), you are allowed to ruminate on any topic of your choosing, trying your best to emulate the genius of the comedian. (more…)

Ok, maybe I'm a bad person who relies upon stereotypes too much, but one would think a site for geeks would actually have great features since geeks are so tech savvy.  Wrong.

While browsing through the magazine rack at Borders Books earlier this summer, I came across Geek Monthly with its cover girl, Tina Fey.  Either way, I read the article about her since I like her show 30 Rock and went home to check out the magazine's site.  I was expecting a great site that was graphically designed well with bells and whistles like easy to search sections, forums, great blogs, social media features, and great content.  I expected something like the beautiful site for Backpacker Magazine (since when did backpackers know so much about designing great websites?). However, as you can see in this image, like how the current cover boy (Rainn Wilson from NBC's The Office) is dressed, the site does not look pretty.

Either way, the Geek site has a rather distracting design, no clear navigation, seemingly no access to articles from past issues or from the current issue, no community features, etc.  It does have a blog, but not a great one.  You can also see an article from the current issue, but it pops up as a jpg…  What? 

So, I'm disappointed.  Were my expectations wrong in the first place?

Via her Twitter account, Katie Harbath recently pointed to a great list of U.S. newspapers with Twitter accounts. The list is being maintained by Erica Smith, who works for the St. Louis Post Dispatch.   She has updates for January, February/March, April, May, June and July. Erica is currently tracking 303 newspaper Twitter accounts, and the average account has 132 followers.

Below is a list of the accounts that have more than 800 followers.  Interestingly, six of the top eight newspaper Twitter accounts belong to the New York Times, which, if memory serves, has been using Twitter for quite awhile.

I wonder how many of these accounts are RSS bots vs. real people?  I’d guess 90% are RSS bots posting newspapers headlines automatically to Twitter accounts.

Check out Erica’s full post.

Update: In the comments, Nick Anstead points out that the Guardian Twitter account has 886 followers.  I updated the post to reflect that my numbers are for U.S. papers only.

About two weeks ago, National Public Radio canceled one of its newest programs — The Bryant Park Project, which ended its run last Friday.  I've been following this show since its piloting stage.

The BPP, as it was commonly known as, had a strong social media component with an active staff blog, Twitter feeds (one staffer even tweeted every mile during a marathon he ran), and an active Facebook presence.  According to the New York Times, the BPP met NPR's online expectations but a lack of station carriage coupled with a $2 million a year budget led to the cancellation as NPR faces rough economic waters.

Due to the fact that a large number of people found the show through NPR's website or through its podcast, they were sad to see the show go since the show's site and podcast were doing well.  However, this web audience has helped the show continue through a new niche social networking site for the show's community named The BPP Diner.  It was started a day or so before the the show's final episode; social media consultant Rob Paterson, who has advised NPR and followed the BPP, set it up using Ning-powered software.

A few days into its creation, the network is growing, and its members are interacting with each as they mourn the ending of the show.  In fact, Tricia Mckinney, who was an editor on the show, has remained active on the site and has even posted web videos of her continuing the show's daily segment "The Most," which discussed the most popular news stories on the Internet.  Other former staff members are also actively participating on the site.

It'll be interesting to see how long the BPP community continues to thrive on this niche social network.  Further, it would be even more interesting if the top brass at NPR follow it as well.  Perhaps they'll better understand the power of social media.

As someone who was born in the generation that lives, breathes, writes, eats, sleeps, and drinks the Internet, I have become jaded with how many useless and uninteresting websites that I have found over the years.  It seems like every time that I sign online, I am bombarded with a flood of websites that I could easily do without.  There are certain sites, however, that are so useful and innovative in their clean design and functionality that I would be at a loss on the Internet without them.  As an Independence Day present to the readers, I decided to share these with you. (more…)

Yesterday, the New York Times launched a beta version of Times People, a lightweight social networking feature that allows readers to connect around NYT content.  Currently, Times People can only be used as a plugin in Firefox (this will change soon) and functions as a social bookmarking tool similar to del.icio.us or Mento.  CNET’s The Social has a good overview of Times People, complete with a video interview with the folks at the Times that created the tool.  Mathew Ingram, Mashable Silicon Valley Insider and DigiDave all have good reviews up as well.

When I try out tools like this, my first instinct is to figure out if it is something I will be using on a regular basis.  With Times People, the answer is clearly no.  Although I visit nytimes.com a few times a week, I am not really actively engaged with the site.  I’ve never left a comment.  I’ve never explored the restaurant and theater reviews.  I don’t live in New York.  I basically drop in on the Times site to get the paper’s take on the “story of the day” or when someone links to the site.  In summary, I’m not the target audience for Times People.  The tool is clearly aimed at people who have a stronger relationship with the Times brand than I do.

I think Times People has the ability to grow into a very useful for people who do have that relationship.

Some have criticized the tool for being too limited in focus.  I think its modesty is actually its greatest strength.  Times People is trying to complement the way readers are already using the site, not change the behavior.  That’s smart.

Let me explain.

Sites for newspapers like USA Today have full bore social networks built right in.  Users can set up full profiles, upload pictures, maintain a blog, friend other users, etc.  They function like a mini version of MySpace or Facebook. It just feels like too much. There are many, many better platforms for maintaining blogs, sharing photos, etc.  Why would anyone want to do all of this stuff on the USA Today website?  I’m left thinking about the old cliche that the decision about what to leave out is just as important as what you leave in.

Times People recognizes that the New York Times brand is its content.  Instead of trying to shift activities like blogging and photo sharing to its website, the Times is adding social features that complement activities readers are already performing - leaving comments, reading stories and writing reviews.  The focused nature of the tool also allows it to evolve organically as the Times reviews how people are actually using it.  This is how the best websites always approach thing.

I have no idea whether Times People will be a success or not. But for experimental features like these, I think starting small and taking an iterative approach is always a good thing.

The Las Vegas Sun is known for having one of the best websites of any newspaper in the country. The reputation is warranted.

In my experience as a web developer, I’ve found many sites that do a few things well. A site might have a nice homepage and a few cool features, as an example. However, it is a very unusual to find sites that deliver consistent excellence through the whole experience. To take care of the details that are so important in delivering a great experience. The Las Vegas Sun website does that.

Following is a list of some of those details that make me really appreciate the Sun website, as a web developer.

(more…)

The Newseum website has an awesome feature that shows the up-to-date front pages of the print editions of 630 newspapers in 63 countries.  Check it out and kill an hour.

The Wall Street Journal published a great piece yesterday about the struggles of LoudounExtra.com, the Washington Post’s bold attempt to provide hyperlocal news coverage for the DC suburb Loudon County (I’m sure the Post really appreciated the free press here). A year in, the site has yet to build a significant audience. The article interviews key players such as the well-respected Rob Curley, who led the effort, and Post executives Jim Brady and Don Graham, about the reasons for the site’s struggles.

The whole piece is worth reading, but if I had to distill the article down these would be the takeaways: (more…)

Photos on news site are often made deliberately small and/or buried in annoying Flash slide show software. Good photography ends up getting marginalized. Boston.com recently launched a dead simple photo blog called Big Picture that shows how powerful online news photography can be if you out of the way and let the pictures tell a story. Big Picture’s formula is simple: present high resolution versions of outstanding photography in a blog style, with a minimal amount of accompanying text. The results are compelling, as this post on an uncontacted Amazon Basin tribe shows.

Alan Taylor, who came up with the idea for the Big Picture, explains the thinking behind the piece in a blog post:

When I see quality photography consigned to the archives, or when I see bandwidth readily given up to video streams of dubious quality, or when I see photo galleries that act as ad farms, punishing viewers into a click-click-click experience just to drive page views - those times are the times I’m glad I was able to get this project off the ground (many thanks to my friends within boston.com).

Check out the Big Picture.

<via Jason Kottke>

Recently, I was considering trading in my broken iPod for another type of MP3 player…that is; until I ran across an article from Wired stating that I'd better hold on to at least one Apple product.

According to InStat, by 2012, 40% of all music purchased is going to come from digital music downloads.  Most impressively, the vast majority of those downloads come from Apple iTunes.  Almost 30% of the computers in the world have the download software, according to Digital Music News.

I personally buy nearly all of my music through iTunes.  For me, it seems easy, safe, and quick.  I like the fact that I can purchase a single song from an album, and the fact that an entire album on iTunes is typically less expensive than a CD.  Do I hate the fact that Apple controls yet another aspect of the computer market? Yes.  Will that hatred stop me from downloading the latest free single of the week? No.

It will be interesting to see if these predictions from InStat and Wired are correct.  I would like to also predict that by 2012, Apple will have released another five ‘upgrades' to the design of the iPod.

[This is cross-posted at The ImpactWatch blog.]

J.W.'s American Idol Twitter prediction about which contestant would end their run last night was wrong.  Brooke White did not go home despite having a disastrous restart during her song while Carly Smithson performed well this week — even garnering praise from Simon Cowell.

I think that J.W. had a novel idea, but why was his prediction wrong? 

There's an excellent chance that those who use Twitter aren't representative of the ardent American Idol voter.  While I don't know the demographics of the voting population, Twitter is new and geeky enough that it wouldn't surprise me if this was the case.

Here's an anecdote about why I know Twitter isn't that widespread yet. Twitter inputs my tweets into Facebook and lists them in my status updates.  My friends see: "Steve Petersen is twitter: …"  Although my friends do show social media tendencies by using the site, some of them have no idea of what Twitter is.  One asked me, "What's with all this twittering?''  While another wondered if I was constantly nervous.

Now, I'm not saying that my friends accurately represent the American Idol voter, but they probably are more like the voter than a group of people who use a geeky (I use that with pride) site.  If some of my friends understand and enjoy social media enough to use a social network but are not aware of Twitter, then tweeters are in a smaller subset of the population than my friends who use social networks.  Needless to say, I have many friends who either don't want a Facebook account or lack the desire to social media (let alone Twitter) on-line.

Further, I doubt that everyone who positively tweets about a contestant votes for that person.  Also, I know people who vote multiple times for the same person each week, and even if a Twitter user voted for the contestant whom they wrote about, how are we sure that they voted once, twice, or nine times?

My predictions were absolute rubbish, it seems.  Apparently, tweets cannot be used to accurately predict who is going home from American Idol.  In fact, two of the top three positive tweet-getters were the ones that were unceremoniously in the Bottom Two.  Syesha Mercado and Carly Smithson had the least votes after their performances on Tuesday night, despite having the most positive tweets found during my Tweet Scan.

Interestingly, Mercado and Smithson were the two contestants with the fewest positive tweets BEFORE their performances of this week.  This may indicate that overall twittering can predict the voting habits of America better than spur of the moment written notions.

Will we ever find a way to predict American Idol?  I researched some of the other methods previously mentioned in this post, and none of them predicted a Carly elimination.  With that, Fox Television continues to remain a mystery.

For the second part of my study concerning whether tweets from Twitter could be used to predict the losing contestants of American Idol, I decided to wait until noon to make sure that there were enough new tweets to equal the amount used in the analysis last week.  Fortunately, there were more than enough fresh, unique tweets discussing last night's episode.

(more…)

Once again, the Internet is abuzz with predictions and theories about who is going to win American Idol.  In the early days of the competition (back when Kelly Clarkson was still a nobody singing karaoke and we only hypothesized that we hated the British without actually knowing it through Simon Cowell), there was much less web traffic about the show.  This season and the previous one, however, it's all the Internet can talk about.

This leads people in finding numerous ways to predict who of the now-6 remaining contestants will be voted off each week.  After all, this is a show that purports that the American public gets to decide who is going to stay and who is going to go.  Polls, blogs, and fansites may all play an important role in deciding the overall victor, much like a modern day political campaign. 

TV Squad, a popular television site, uses polls from various sources as well as their own intuition to predict the next bootee.  Most of the polls incorrectly predicted Syesha Mercado's demise, while the real loser was Kristy Lee Cook.  Obviously, this is not an accurate way to predict the contestant with the lowest votes.  The polls are simply too specific in the sense that only those Internet snoopers that come across them will actually get a chance to vote in the poll.  This does not represent an accurate view of the American public.

DialIdol.com has found a more inventive way to predict the successful contestants.  Their software measures the busy signal of each phone line to determine who is getting the most votes.  They started the program during the previous season, but achieved only moderate success in the predictions.  The company also sells software to enable one person to vote many times for a contestant.  Many sites have reported that the software is now known by the American Idol producers and rarely works anymore.

Tivo also found a creative way to measure the votes.  The company claims that they can predict who is going to be voted off by which minutes of the recorded programs are re-watched.  The theory is that Idol favorites will have their performances re-watched by their adoring public, while soon-to-be eliminees will have fewer views.  Unfortunately, the system seems to not be altogether accurate, since Tivo has incorrectly predicted Mercado two weeks in a row.

Another social media company, BuzzLogic, uses their "influencer blog" ratings to follow the entire competition via their blog.  I was impressed by the fledgling company's efforts at first glance, but upon closer inspection realized that few, if any, of their predictions have been true.  In addition, BuzzLogic gives very little explanation when they are incorrect.  This does, however, bolster my recent opinion that Katie Paine's connection between online activity and offline activity is flawed.  Many ‘influential' bloggers may be writing about certain candidates for American Idol, but that does not necessarily mean that they are voting for them, or voting at all.

I decided to tackle the task of predicting American Idol, ImpactWatch style.  Instead of using news articles, I used Tweet Scan to analyze 90 tweets per remaining contestant, using two separate searches for each.  I searched for each contestant's full name as well as their first name and the phrase "American Idol".  I read and ranked each tweet post as positive, negative, or neutral.

There are two reasons why I believe this method to be more valid than the other ways that were described above.  First, tweets represent impulses and first impressions, which I assume mirrors the mindset of actual voters.  Secondly, this is the only method that ascribes a positive or negative take on the information.  Polls just rank the favorite, while the Tivo system lacks any real information about why certain parts of the show are re-watched.  BuzzLogic's system has merit, but suffers from the need of personal input by its bloggers to explain anomalies in the amounts of influencer blogs.

Using my ImpactWatch inspired protocol, I found that David Cook and Jason Castro have the highest amount of positive tweets.  Sure enough, after doing some extended research, I found that the two received much praise for their performances last week.  All three females had an identical number of negative tweets (45), but Mercado has the lowest amount of positive tweets at a scant 30.  This is preliminary, but on Wednesday morning, I will post an updated tweet analysis (since Tuesday is when the contestants will perform their new songs).  Voters will most likely be tweeting away while they are waiting to vote.  Let's see if I can accurately predict which Idol will fall.

My current results are summarized below, using a graph created using ImpactWatch.