The NewsCloud Blog

A New Open Source Preview Release and Community Support Area

We've got a new open source PHP-based preview release on GitHub. There's a simpler installation process, a generic design skin for your application and some cool new features. The first four developers to successfully install it and post feedback on the installation process will receive a $25 iTunes Gift Card. Learn more.

We're also expanding our open source community support online:

• Use our new open source developer community at http://support.newscloud.com, hosted generously for free by the great folks at TenderApp.com. It's a great place to share questions about the code, request features and tap in to our developer community.
• We have a new blog exclusively for our open source developer community at http://opensource.newscloud.com. Be sure to follow it and follow us on Twitter for updates.

Stay tuned in 2010 for ongoing announcements related to our open source Facebook application work.

Evan Ratliff on Vanish Contest-Related Media and Upcoming Wired Article: "Gone"

As we've mentioned before, NewsCloud's Facebook application technology was used to help capture Evan Ratliff in Wired Magazine's summer Vanish contest. The application was built as part of a research project funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Evan's story, "Gone",  will appear soon (Nov 23) in December's Wired Magazine. He has an interesting media wrap up on his blog which highlights how widespread interest was in the contest. Apparently, he is now calling me his "nemesis".

He appeared last night on CNN to discuss the story with Campbell Brown and an NPR interview with Alex Cohen (which includes me and Jeff Leach from Naked Pizza who found Evan in New Orleans) is scheduled for Saturday's Weekend Edition:

The clip of the December Wired's cover on CNN looks striking and intriguing. So, pick up a copy of Gone at your local newsstand - from the little I've heard of Evan's travels, I expect it'll be a great read.

Dr. Christine Greenhow Discusses Facebook-based Research on Future Tense

Related to today's press release Could Facebook Make America Smarter?, listen to Dr. Christine Greenhow discuss her research on American Public Media's Future Tense (mp3).

Could Facebook Make America Smarter?

New University of Minnesota study finds social media 
engages young people in content better than traditional sites

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL — In an era in which 85 percent of American college students actively update Facebook profiles but more than one-third report paying no attention to current events on a daily basis, it’s natural that social networking sites could help educate young people on today’s most pressing issues. A new study from a University of Minnesota researcher found that a Facebook application focusing on social issues facilitated self-expression and critical conversation more than traditional news Web sites, suggesting new strategies for engaging young people in critical content.

"One key to engagement is finding young people where they already read, write and exchange views -- and piggy-backing on their existing routines," said Christine Greenhow, the U of M researcher behind the project. "Facebook is a place teenagers and young people already choose to frequent, are comfortable and willing to share opinions and eager to contribute to a discussion, which makes it a potentially ideal place to locate applications that create enthusiasm around education."

Greenhow, a research fellow at the U of M's Institute for Advanced Study surveyed, interviewed and observed 346 young people (ages 16-25) as they participated in a newly designed Facebook application called “Hot Dish.” The application, targeting environmental science issues and climate change, challenged members to engage with the issues by posting, sharing and discussing articles online, inviting peers to join and reaching out to take action in their own communities, in exchange for points redeemable for prizes.
 
Greenhow’s study found that users associated Facebook with a community, not simply a place to post thoughts. Hot Dish successfully facilitated substantive discussion that can be difficult to generate face-to-face, Greenhow said, while at the same time stimulating activism in the local community.

Nearly three-quarters (71 percent) of the group surveyed said they used the Hot Dish site to interact with like-minded people, compared to about a third who said they seek that interaction on a general news site. Users saw Hot Dish as more receptive to their views and contributions than they did other more general Web sites. Site statistics showed that the majority of articles on the site were actually read and users contributed more than two-thirds of the content. Users’ interest in the focal topic also increased.

Greenhow partnered with NewsCloud’s Jeff Reifman, developer of the Facebook application, on  a $249,529 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to study how young people engaged in a content-rich and topic-focused site designed within Facebook. Greenhow and her team studied young people’s engagement in the application by looking at their interest and knowledge development, community formation, online reading and writing practices and civic engagement/real-world impact.

"This experiment shows that you can inform and engage young people in the digital age by going where they are and using the tools they use," said Gary Kebbel, Knight Foundation journalism program director.

Read the full release here

Vote for Hot Dish in Mashable's Open Web Awards

Please consider voting for Hot Dish as Best Non-Profit Use of Social Media. Learn more about Hot Dish here.

The SurfShare Inbox Finds the News Headlines in Your Twitter Stream

Is finding the news within the clutter of your Twitter stream harder each day?

Since many tweets don't include any news - and the ones that do don't include clear headlines or easily discernible URLs which might indicate its source, the SurfShare inbox sorts through your Twitter stream and displays the actual headlines of news stories in an easily readable form.

 

You can sort them by date or popularity. If multiple friends have tweeted the same story, they appear together. 

As you read stories in your inbox, SurfShare tags ands them to your history so you can easily find them later.

You can also add your SurfShare Inbox RSS feed to your favorite feed reader e.g. Google Reader:

 

Please give it a try - but be patient with us as SurfShare remains in early alpha testing. Please share any bugs or feedback with jeff at newscloud dot com. Try the SurfShare Inbox. Bloggers, add SurfShare activity badges to your web site.

Will the next great media company need a website?

NewsCloud friend @lavrusik sends along this from Steve Rubel's blog: 

"Conceivably the next great media company will be all spokes and no hub. It will exist as a constellation of connected apps and widgets that live inside other sites and offer a full experience plus access to your social graph and robust community features. Each of these may interconnect too so that a media company's community on Facebook can talk to the same on Twitter.

Facebook might be the first venue where this starts. It could become a mini news reader for millions who don't care about RSS or Twitter. Over time this may obviate the need to create large news sites. It's easier to create a rich interactive experience there than start a new news site and hope that people come to you. They won't have time to find or visit."

Lavrusik says this reminded him of his post on our Facebook applications from last summer:

"The question is no longer just a hypothetical one. With increasing convergence between social media and traditional content, what is known as a traditional news website might not exist in the coming years.

Perhaps a revealing example is the creation of Facebook applications by a Seattle-based aggregator, NewsCloud, which received a grant from the Knight Foundation to study how young people receive their news through social networks."

Research Findings Released: Engaging Youth in Social Media - Is Facebook the New Media Frontier?

In December 2008, with generous funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (New Facebook Applications to Engage Youth in News), NewsCloud and University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development researcher Dr. Christine Greenhow launched a study to investigate how online social network sites such as Facebook can engage youth in world events, build community, and generate real world impact.

As part of the study, we launched two news sites inside of Facebook: "Hot Dish," a Facebook application for sharing articles about the environment and climate change, was launched in March 2009 in partnership with Grist.org and included an "Action Team" feature, which inspired 16‐ to 25‐year‐old users to take actions within the Hot Dish community in return for points redeemable for prizes. A second application, "The Daily," was launched in April 2009 for the student‐run newspaper at the University of Minnesota.

Today, we are releasing the summary of findings from Dr. Greenhow and her team which resulted from the Hot Dish community. Findings for The Daily will be released later in September 2009.

Here is an excerpt, full download below:

Introduction

Counter to the decline in young people’s (print‐based) reading for pleasure and traditional media consumption is a noted increase in out‐of‐school online reading and writing through online fan fiction and social network sites. Yet, according to the Pew research institute, over one third of people under 25 get no news on a daily basis. However, teens spend many hours a week online (a recent British study said 31), particularly on Facebook ‐‐ the most‐trafficked social media site in the world. Facebook has more than 250 million active members. 

Can youth be persuaded to critically engage in news and conversation ‐‐ on Facebook? Can they feel a sense of community? Furthermore, can their involvement translate into real‐world actions, or will it consist solely of virtual activism? And, if we understood how young people prefer to manipulate, produce and talk through information online, would that move us closer to understanding how to develop successful media‐rich and educational environments? 

Answering such questions is critical. If we hope to inform, educate and mobilize an engaged citizenry — as the vision for not only the future of news industries but also for full participation in a 21st century democracy says we should — we need to make sharing news and experiences fit easily into teens' lives and be easily tracked and observed to ensure success.

Key Findings

1. The design of the Hot Dish Facebook application seemed very effective at strengthening news consumption and online interaction habits.

2. Interest in Hot Dish’s focal topic increased, especially among low users. Anecdotal evidence also suggested growth in environmental knowledge, another top goal. 

3. The Hot Dish Action Team competition seemed EXTREMELY effective at creating a highly engaged segment of active participants online and especially offline activism.

4. The design of Hot Dish provided avenues of participation that facilitated various engagement levels for different groups of users.

5. The topical focus of Hot Dish, and its emphasis on linkages between people within a social network, motivated participants to express ideas and interact with others in ways different from traditional online news sites.

6. The Hot Dish social media site within Facebook provided the occasion and impetus for young people’s reading and writing practices. For educators and others who care about promoting the literacy and public engagement of youth today, results suggest there may be advantages to locating niche media‐sharing communities within existing online social networks.

For complete details, please download Summary of Findings for Hot Dish Research (pdf)

Note: Some links in the PDF may not appear clickable. Please check back here for an updated version soon.

Additional links:

• NewsCloud & University of Minnesota Project Research Background
• Media coverage of Hot Dish, MnDaily and our research
• Background on NewsCloud's Facebook application technology services
• Download the open source code used to power Hot Dish and MnDaily

The Evolution of Community Newspapers in the Age of Twitter and Facebook

Thanks for linking to this post Poynter, Media Info Center, et al: 

Time to Evolve

As community news organizations grow more vulnerable to financial pressures, current approaches to Web publishing seem increasingly inadequate. To succeed now, news organizations must be willing to think more broadly about their identity and the role of their efforts online. Simply republishing the news on a Web site or a Facebook page will not sufficiently address the revenue needs of most organizations in this climate.

The traditional print publishing model provided a monopoly of sorts that forced advertisers to pay a premium to reach readers who were conditioned to a one way/consumption model for journalism. The evolution of the Internet has changed all this. Advertisers have a variety of options and readers want to consume and participate in the media in new ways.

The rise of social networks and the frequency of link sharing among friends on services such as Twitter and Facebook has not only eroded the editorial role but also contributed to the preexisting general information overload. Improvements in mobile technology are changing the way that readers consume news and the time and space in which publishers have to reach them with content and more importantly, ads. Competing for the "information bandwidth" of overwhelmed readers has never been more competitive while their attention span has never been shorter - and Twitter hasn't even yet saturated the mainstream.

Among oft-mentioned culprits, many publishers blame CraigsList (see September issue of Wired magazine, pictured right) for harming their financials; yet, few tried to leverage their trusted relationship within their communities to offer a competitive product and experience. Instead, most clung to a paid classifieds model online inside cluttered advertising portals. Readers clearly favored the simpler, free CraigsList. CraigsList has a lot of shortcomings but found niches in which to support itself, whereas community news sites simple ceded (and continue to cede) the valuable community service which is classified listings. There are other examples as well, e.g. auctions, city guides, referral services, knowledge bases, dating services, et al. While mindset was the prohibitive factor preventing news organizations from seizing these opportunities, limitations in technology expertise and capacity also remained a complicating factor.

Using Reputation to Build Robust Town Centers Online

In most communities, news organizations still have one key advantage: a valuable brand and familiar trust with readers. 

It's past time for community news publishers to expand their brands from reporters of news to hosting online town centers that attract and retain the trust and loyalty of their communities. The decline of the newspaper revenue model, the Internet and the evolution of social media are figuratively calling out for publishers to step into this role.

As Dorian Benkoil wrote at Poynter last week, [Why] News Organizations Need a Facebook Strategy, but simply using Facebook's generic Pages as he suggests will not be sufficient. 

This summer, I've been slowly evolving the Facebook application framework we used for our Knight Foundation research study from community action team and news publication to a burgeoning, feature-rich town center application. News organizations that adapt this kind of application can leverage their brand within social networks in new ways and expand the ways in which they reach readers on regular basis. Note: our core open source framework was featured as a Poynter Big Idea last month.

Here are some of the new features (keep in mind, the sites we've been working have not yet been widely promoted and are still considered by us to be experimental):

• Things - a way for users to share, give away or borrow real world items such as music, DVDs, books, household tools or even trucks among Facebook friends, groups or communities.

• Ideas - a crowdsourced brainstorming and consensus building feature for online communities. Readers can suggest ideas and the community at large rates and comments on them, identifying the best solutions.

• Answers - a crowdsourced, knowledge base application that lets community members ask questions or find existing answers to local questions. e.g. "Where's the best place for Thai food?"

• Twitter Room - an aggregated view of hyperlocal community twitterers in one place with integrated retweeting and Facebook sharing (so you don't have to follow all these accounts yourself).

• Talk - a Facebook wall for discussions on any number of community topics.

• Neighborhood news - The Needle aggregates neighborhood blogs to provide a broader aggregation solution for the city.

• Photo sharing and profile customization - to allow users to share and comment their favorite crowdsourced pictures. Special images can be overlaid or placed as watermarks on the user's profile photo.

The Answer Under Our Nose?

Perhaps part of the answer to the challenges of the local community journalism business model is a migration to a more complete online town hall, rather than some undiscovered shift in the core approach to reporting the news (although I applaud innovative new approaches to storytelling online). 

Facebook is an ideal application platform for these types of online communities. With more than 250 million users, most of the people we know as as friends and acquaintances already have an account. Facebook's application platform and authentication allow our framework to provide a consistent look and feel, a seamless unified login and some connection to the people we already know. e.g. Want to give away a crib to your Facebook mom's group or offer a truck to your Facebook friends - you can. 

In contrast, the recently revamped online only Seattle Post Intelligencer on the Web offers many of these same services but trying to use each service is a complex mishmash, each feature is on an entirely different website with a distinct login and no connection to your Facebook network.

Examples in Facebook

While most of the sites running our framework haven't seen much promotion or exposure yet, we've been using them to put the new features through their paces and to experiment. You can see examples of some below:

• The Needle, a community site for Seattle

• ObamaVision, a topical site covering the Obama Agenda

• Parent Buzz, a topical Facebook community for parents

• Hot Dish, a climate change news site which earlier included an action team contest related to building climate awareness for our research study

• MnDaily, a community news site in Facebook for student newspaper covering the University of Minnesota, also used in our research study

• GenOmics News, an educational site on genome research powered by Canadian nonprofit Genome Alberta

• In:Site, an arts & culture community published as part of a University of Washington journalism class in Spring 2009 which NewsCloud participated in (currently on summer hiatus)

• NewsCloud, the generic example application running at NewsCloud.com

Our application framework is integrated with Google Ad Manager to provide a variety of revenue opportunities including direct sales. And, we're going to keep on improving and expanding this platform, polishing these services and adding new features. We even recently migrated the NewsCloud codebase to Facebook exclusively so we could focus on only one platform.

As community publishers know, the business challenges they face are distinct from national startups such as the Huffington Post.  Succeeding in smaller markets is harder, just ask the Seattle Post Globe, founded in the wake of the downsizing of the Seattle Post Intelligencer, now possibly in its last week of operation. If new approaches aren't taken, it's quite possible most local news sites will be primarily consumed on mobile feed readers or through 140 character briefs written by friends on Twitter. 

While our platform is clearly not the only answer, it may provide one way to build loyalty, expand relationships with readers and create new revenue opportunities.

About Us and Related Links

Jeff Reifman is the founder of NewsCloud. He is formerly a Group Program Manager at Microsoft, having helped launch MSNBC.com, and has written three freelance features for the Seattle Weekly. He has been involved in nonprofit technology development for six years and lives in Seattle. Read more. You can email him at jeff at newscloud dot com.

Here are a few other related links:

• Information about our Facebook application framework for your community or publication
• Our research page related to the Knight Foundation grant
• Press coverage of our research and Facebook efforts

Community Sharing: There's an App for That

Our Seattle community site, The Needle and its lending library feature, Things, included in our Facebook framework, has been featured in World Changing Seattle today: 

Thanks to a Facebook application called The Needle, sharing just became a whole lot easier. Working with the Knight Foundation, Jeff Reifman ofNewsCloud.com created The Needle as an open-source application to help encourage young people to become more involved and connected to their local communities. The app allows users to do this by sharing both items and ideas with their local networks. Users can borrow items instead of buying them, find new homes for unwanted items instead of trashing them, and post and discuss issues that affect them and their local communities. By connecting with other community members online, you can find out quickly who needs what, and who has stuff to share. 

But what differentiates The Needle from other free recycling sites like Freecycle or even Craigslist, is that you have the opton of privacy, because you can elect to share only with people who are part of your Facebook community or a specific Facebook group. Though it's not always necessary to restrict sharing to a certain population, the option lends a level of trust that could facilitate sharing of certain objects that users prefer to keep inside of a known community.