Using Facebook for Breaking News

Effectively harnessing the power of social media, particularly facebook, has been a challenge for most large corporates. Media houses like Fox, the BBC and others have made some headway but that tight integration that's required to make it all hang together slickly still seems to be missing.

What is required, and indeed what is missing, in my opinion is a well-defined process that is consistently followed. Surprisingly, given the success of certain noteworthy reports, like the CNN integrated broadcast over the airwaves and the net during Obama's election, it seems media houses are unable to get it right with any sort of consistency.

So what are the challenges?

Firstly, it is impossible to predict how consumers of social media - be it via facebook, twitter or any equivalent platform will react, share and interact with the content they receive.

Secondly, facebook, whilst popular for personal use, has yet to establish itself as a brand and content promoting tool. Sure, the likes of Nike and the Times have facebook pages with thousands of fans - the question to ask though is, so what? You would be hard-pressed to find a powerful brand or media house that generates significant traction and regular interaction from it's user base. Newspapers, in South Africa at least have had more success with commentary on their blogs than on their facebook pages.

Thirdly, if there is a process in place, media and news consumers should be educated about the process and guided as to how they might best interact within that media house's facebook process. Having a tightly integrated news page will go a long way to addressing this challenge but bar the occassionally streaming of tweets, even the likes of BBC don't have this in hand.

CNN: Effective Facebook Case Study

For Obama's inauguration, CNN and facebook invited the world to experience the newsworthy moment online. Online visitors on CNN.com were able to use its video player to watch the live broadcast coverage of the event. The real-time web interaction was superb - embracing video streaming, twitter and a steady flow of Facebook status updates from viewers displayed in the sidebar.

Believe it or not, the integration of status updates on CNN.com Live was powered by a well-developed facebook facility named Facebook Connect. This new platform for porting media consumers online identity to anywhere on the web allows news site visitors to easily authenticate on that site using their Facebook login information - no need for a separate username and password (something that has proved to be a huge stumbling block in getting users to comment on blogs even). Besides the obvious convenience, Facebook Connect allows people to log on as themselves, a trend that probably speaks to the end of online anonymity and the opening of new doors for media houses to interact with their consumers.

Finally, not only did FB Connect provide an interactive view into the collective emotions of all those watching CNN's web coverage - it did so without crashing at all. Given the statistics - viz. over 200,000 status updates averaging out at 3,000 people per minute on the joint 'broadcast'. Immediately before Obama spoke, that number grew to 8,500 per minute! Additionally at that time it is worthy to note that Obama's Fan Page had over 4 million fans and 500,000+ posts on his wall. The technology is thus clearly ready for media houses to make the most of it - all that's needed is a defined process.

It will hopefully not take long for the likes of BBC to implement such tight integration - the modular implementation should make this quite easy so one can only imagine the hurdles relate to internal processes rather than the technological ability of the media house staff to deliver.

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In other news, as the American election fast approaches, I expect the use of social media - both independently by campaigners and by media houses will really step up this year. With the proliferation of easy to use devices like iPads, the interaction if it's managed properly by media houses will be nothing short of spectacular. Given the current costs of advertising on facebook though, best the candidates try their luck and buy lottery tickets online on this reputable website in India or more likely give one of the many in the comprehensive online casinos directory a try. Well, that is of course if the National Rifle Association doesn't give them enough funding ;)

Over the next few weeks I will be writing about the local political scene in South Africa, notably the impending constitutional changes Jacob Zuma is threatening to make. I will also cover some of the new gambling legislation, particularly around the online casino South Africa license issue that was recently presented at the High Court in Bloemfontein.

Fortunately for the South African government, facebook isn't quite as big in SA as it is in North Africa. Given the current level of service delivery and the increasing pressure to strike from trade unions, it's likely that South Africa would have it's equivalent of an Arab Spring sooner than they might expect!

Social Media and Future Newsrooms

Over the last couple of years, there has been much debate about the role of social media and citizen journalism in newsrooms. The topics of debate range from the broadcasting unverified content to use of twitter photos and video feeds by large media corporations without permission. One thing is for certain, given the power and impact social media has on the general public, it is not a question of whether it should be integrated in newsroom, but rather how best to do it.

Recently, the BBC has been experimenting with some new formats for live coverage. Their trials are showing an interesting balance of traditional correspondent copy complemented with social media feeds from twitter, video clips, images and links across to related topics on the web. As is largely standard there is also an area for visitors to comment on the topic at hand. In all, the approach is definitely in the right direction and there is plenty of positive feedback given that this model in some form or other has been running for quite a while.

Given my experience with political blogging, the one area that appears to be still rather underdeveloped is that of interactivity. By this I mean not just publishing popular tweets or related facebook updates, but rather somehow allowing that social network to engage directly with both correspondents and other users through the news site. Very few readers actually wind up commenting and interacting on the news site and this is unlikely to change unless newsrooms integrate themselves more tightly with social media applications.

To prevent this getting too theoretical, here are some examples of what I believe with take newsrooms to the next level in terms of their service offering:

1. Introduce interactive polls - these have been proven to be popular as even lazy users seem compelled to voice their opinion with a couple of clicks on blog posts (rather thank writing a full comment which is too much work)


2. Creating mini-sites on breaking news - not just a news live coverage page, but rather a structured site of 10 or so pages including correspondent and public blogposts on the subject.


3. Ranking of social media content - lots in the social media space is junk. It is largely impractical for broadcasters to screen all of it before publishing. So why not publish the stream and allow users to rank individual contributions. This will ensure the cream of articles on the topic rises to the top.


4. Possibly more difficult to manage in terms of quality and appropriateness, one idea might be to allow users to upload their content - photos and video clips to the breaking news page more easily. These would then be screened for appropriateness and published by the moderator team.


5. Encourage feed subscriptions to that news topic/ mini-site - this will make the mini-site/ breaking news pages more sticky. Suddenly this makes the broadcaster become a one stop shop for professional journalism, citizen journalism and a meter of public sentiment.. a valuable offering since news junkies have to likely go to quite a few different sites in order to build themselves a more complete picture.


6. Develop an online journal that can be referenced - In my opinion, broadcasters have a unique opportunity to create an invaluable public resource - almost like a Wiki on a topical news subject. Most broadcasters do this already but it's published in a disjointed way - a blog post on history, a news article about the potential consequences, a public opinion page (like BBC's World Have Your Say, for example), etc. - and each of these are typically in different parts of the site that make it practically impossible to navigate to with just a a click.

So imagine if the events of this year around Libya we to be reported with the above ideas implemented. Readers would access a Libyan Uprising mini-site linked to from news pages etc. There would be tabs on that mini-site like: History; Latest news (accompanied by social feeds); Public opinion/ articles; Going Forward.

If structured properly, the mini-site would become an online journal on that breaking news subject - one that will be referenced long after the next news flavour of the month takes hold.

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In other news, South Africa seems to have been taken by surprise by the Julius Malema suspension decision this week. For once, it looks like his gamble on civil disobedience, has not paid off although it is still early days according to many political analysts in South Africa. The appeal process for the suspension decision may well extend into next year through to the ANC conference (in which Jacob Zuma would be under threat this time, just as Mbeki was a few years ago).

Given the South African political environment right now as well as Malema's backers (notably Tokyo Sexwale and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela), I would be more inclined to try my luck at a South African online casino, an international one over here, or simply even buy lottery ticket online than to bet on Julius Malema disappearing from the South African political landscape. He is just far too valuable a media resource in so many different ways.

Julius is probably single-handedly responsible for boosting newspaper sales, prime time advertising cost on TV and a proliferation of blog posts covering the impending doom of South Africa. This is one area where citizen journalism would need to be heavily screened before publication! I do wonder if the SABC would publish a mini-site on Malema - no doubt it would be a seriously popular destination!