NewsTrust - Social Networks - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

Twitter and Reddit as crowdsourced fact-checking engines

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

GigaOM - By Mathew Ingram - May. 17 (News) - New research about how news is verified through Twitter and a crowdsourced debunking of some fake Wikipedia entries reinforce the point that social networks and online communities can be powerful tools for the real-time verification of events, something that used to take place behind closed doors.

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How the five web literacies are becoming essential survival skills

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Nieman Journalism Lab - By Justin Ellis - May. 13 (News Report) - Howard Rheingold isn’t too concerned about whether Google is making us stupid or if Facebook is making us lonely. Those kind of criticisms, Rheingold says, miscalculate the ability humans have to change their behavior, particularly when it comes to how we use social media and the Internet more broadly. “If, like many others, you are concerned social media is making people and cultures shallow, I propose we teach more people how to swim and together explore the deeper end of the pool,” Rheingold said Thursday. Rheingold was visiting the MIT Media Lab to talk about his new book, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, which examines how people can use the Internet not just to better themselves, but also society as a whole. Rheingold has a longer online history than most, going back to The WELL, one of the first online forums back in the 1980s. Ever since writing about that experience, Rheingold has developed a habit for dropping the kind of book that not just probes what it means to be online, but charts what that means for all of us.

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Experimental Study of Informal Rewards in Peer Production

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Stony Brook University - By Michael Restivo, Arnout van de Rijt - Apr. 29 (Research) - We test the effects of informal rewards in online peer production. Using a randomized, experimental design, we assigned editing awards or “barnstars” to a subset of the 1% most productive Wikipedia contributors. Comparison with the control group shows that receiving a barnstar increases productivity by 60% and makes contributors six times more likely to receive additional barnstars from other community members, revealing that informal rewards significantly impact individual effort.

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Helping readers improve Wikipedia

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Wikimedia - By Fabrice Florin, Dario Taraborelli, Howie Fung, Arron Halfaker, Oliver Keyes - Mar. 25 (Special Report) - The Wikimedia Foundation, in collaboration with editors of the English Wikipedia, is developing a tool to enable readers to contribute productively to building the encyclopedia. To that end, we started development of a new version of the Article Feedback Tool (known as AFTv5) in October 2011. The original version of the tool, which allows readers to rate articles based on a star system, launched in 2010. The new version invites readers to write comments that might help editors improve Wikipedia articles. We hope that this tool will contribute to the Wikimedia movement’s strategic goals of increasing participation and improving quality.

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Hypothes.is Reputation Workshop

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Wikipedia - By Dario Taraborelli - Mar. 04 (Special Report) - Hypothes.is founder Dan Whaley invited us to participate in the workshop to contribute to the design of this service with input from Wikimedia and to help them make design decisions for a suitable reputation model to be used by the service. Other prominent Wikipedia researchers (GroupLens founder John Riedl, and WikiTrust creator Luca de Alfaro) were among the participants.

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Ads are out, sponsored posts are in for Twitter & Facebook | Poynter.

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Poynter Institute - Mar. 02 (News) - Facebook is pushing marketers to create Facebook native-content — a post on their brand page — and pay to promote that post to a wider audience. Today, for the first time, Facebook will begin placing those sponsored stories in the user’s main News Feed.

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Signs Your Pension Plan Is in Trouble

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

finance.yahoo.com - By Ellen Schultz - Feb. 13 (Special Report) - Your pension plan might be fat and happy, but if another company takes over your employer—and your pension—it can legally use the assets in your plan to top off an underfunded plan of its own. This strategy, though legal, is one of the quickest ways for your pension to go from healthy to distressed.

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2012: The Year of the Cooperative

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

nationofchange.org - By Jessica Reeder - Feb. 02 (Special Report) - What do coffee growers in Ethiopia, hardware store owners in America, and Basque entrepreneurs have in common? For one thing, many of them belong to cooperatives. By pooling their money and resources, and voting democratically on how those resources will be used, they can compete in business and reinvest the benefits in their communities.

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Four lessons from Flipboard’s reinvention for the iPhone

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Poynter Institute - By Jeff Sonderman - Dec. 07 (News Analysis) - The most popular news aggregation app for the iPad launches a new iPhone version Wednesday. Flipboard’s redesign for the smaller screen offers lessons in how publishers should tailor apps for the different needs of tablet and smartphone owners.

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How news orgs are reaching millions through Facebook’s new apps

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Poynter Institute - By Jeff Sonderman - Nov. 30 (News Analysis) - It has been over two months since Facebook announced a new class of social news applications — ones that automatically share links to everything a person reads. Now we are learning more about the readership, strategies and effects of these “open graph” or “frictionless sharing” apps. Here are the six big lessons so far.

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DHS seeks intelligence on "domestic threats" from Twitter traffic

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Boing Boing - By Xeni Jardin - Nov. 01 (News) - Popular uprisings in the Mideast and North Africa, and now, Occupy Wall street: all examples of popular unrest powered in part by Twitter and other online social networks. In response, the U.S. government is reported to now be developing guidelines for culling intel from social media, according to a Homeland Security official.

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First Details About Lift, the Next Social Network From the Founders of Twitter

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ReadWriteWeb - By Marshall Kirkpatrick - Aug. 24 (News Report) - The recently-departed co-founders of Twitter who are now working together again under the old Obvious Corp. name (Ev Williams, Biz Stone and Jason Goldman) announced their first official partnership today, with a stealth alpha app called Lift. It's described as simple app for achieving goals through positive reinforcement. It sounds like Twitter and from what I've seen (which is more than I've seen reported about elsewhere yet) it looks a lot like Twitter too - but with more structure. What's called Lift today was apparently called Mibbles just weeks ago and was described then as "a very simple tracking and...

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Google+: The Complete Guide

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Mashable - By Ben Parr - Jul. 16 (Special Report) - This guide has everything you'll ever want to know about Google+. Updated regularly. Google+: It’s the hot social network on the block. In just three weeks, Google’s competitor to Facebook and Twitter has amassed more than 10 million users, and its users are sharing more than 1 billion pieces of content daily. It’s become a hotbed for early adopters, tech luminaries, marketers and businesses around the world. Google+ isn’t the easiest thing to understand, though. It has a lot of features that can confuse beginners. Even advanced users can miss a lot of the little gems and nuances that define Google+. That’s why we decided to dig into every aspect of Google+, from Hangouts to Circles, from Google+ for businesses to what’s next for Google’s social network. The result is an extensive guide on all of Google+’s key features, as well as an introduction to the service and the important things you need to know about it. We’ve included commentary, videos, photos and more in our in-depth guide. In addition, we will update this guide regularly with the newest information on Google’s Facebook competitor. So, without further ado, here is Mashable‘s complete guide to Google+

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Syria: Bloggers Rally for Anas Maarawi

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Yazan Badran - Jul. 09 (News Report) - Anas Maarawi is the latest Syrian blogger imprisoned. He was detained on Friday, July 1st, in his neighborhood of Kafarsouseh in Damascus. And nothing has been heard of him since. Bloggers rally for his release. Anas is a well known blogger in Syria and beyond. Apart from his personal blog, Anas Online, he ran a number of tech-blogs and projects, most prominently, Ardroid, which was the first Arabic-language blog to focus on Google's Android OS.

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Zynga Files For $1 Bilion IPO

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Business Insider - By Jay Yarow - Jul. 02 (News Report) - Zynga has just filed with the SEC to go public. The company is on pace to generate well over $1 billion in revenue this year, and earn over $36 million. It's a pretty slim profit margin considering reports were circulating that Zynga was earning $400 million on $800 million in revenue earlier this year. It wants to raise $1 billion from the IPO, and it already has $1 billion in cash on hand.

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Future of Media: Curation, Verification and News as a Process

Sat, 21 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

GigaOM - By Mathew Ingram - May. 21 (News Analysis) - As part of a “social media summit” this week, the BBC posted an overview of how its user-generated content desk handles reports from the field — verifying and curating them in much the same way that Andy Carvin of NPR has been doing for the past few months during the upheaval in the Middle East. As I’ve written before, there is a growing need for this kind of curation, but there is also the need to start looking at news as a process and not as a pristine, finished product. While many media outlets have web editors who track reports on Twitter and other social media, the BBC is unique (as far as I know) in having a special desk that sits in the middle of the newsroom and pulls in reports from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and anywhere else it can find information. The desk staffers then try to verify these reports, and some of the ways they do that are fascinating.

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Apple: 'It Gets Better'... Again

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Advocate - By Advocate.com Editors - Apr. 16 (News Report) - An “It Gets Better” video made by LGBT employees at Apple has returned to YouTube after it was mysteriously pulled for violating the website’s “policy on depiction of harmful activities.”

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Transfer Helps Protect Some of Earth's Tallest 10 Trees

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

savetheredwoods.org - Apr. 12 (News Report) - The Tall Trees Grove (pictured) in Redwood National Park gained more protection after Save the Redwoods League recently facilitated the donation of a 120-acre buffer property from private landowners to the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

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10 Unsung Nonprofits That Should be Household Words

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ecosalon.com - By Luanne Bradley - Apr. 06 (Special Report) - They may not be household names but they are going the distance to make a difference in how we govern, grow, eat and thrive. Here are some nonprofits you should know about.

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Military Launches Spy Operation Using Fake Online Identities

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By The Huffington Post, Amy Lee - Mar. 17 (News Report) - The U.S. Military has purchased software designed to create and control false online personas in an attempt to use social media and other websites to...

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Mother Jones web traffic up 400+ percent, partly thanks to explainers

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Nieman Journalism Lab - By Megan Garber - Mar. 04 (News Report) - February was a record-breaking traffic month for Mother Jones. Three million unique users visited the site — a 420 percent increase from February 2010’s numbers. And MotherJones.com posted 6.6 million pageviews overall — a 275 percent increase. The magazine credits the traffic burst partly to a month of exceptional work in investigations, essays, and exposes, its editorial bread and butter: real-time coverage of the Wisconsin protests, a Kevin Drum essay on the consequences of wealth inequality in America, the first national media coverage of that infamous prank call to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. The also mag credits the traffic, though, to its extended presence on social media: Mother Jones’ Twitter followers increased 28 percent in February, to more than 43,000; its Facebook fan base grew 20 percent, to nearly 40,000; and its Tumblr fan base grew 200 percent, to nearly 3,000 followers. In all, the mag estimates, a cumulative 29 percent of traffic to MotherJones.com came from social media sites.

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Obama at Zeitgeist Rumors Dominate San Francsico Twittersphere

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

thefeast.com - By Kevin Meenan - Feb. 18 (News Report) - President Barack Obama enjoying a #SFbeerweek brew with at the newly reopened Zeitgeist, and pics to prove it?! Rumors swirled late night Thursday that the Commander in Chief - in town for a quick meal with the Silicon Valley elite -- had made a post-dinner detour to the famed hipster hang, presumably to celebrate the bar's grand reopening. San Francisco tweeters please, are we really that gullible? Sigh. Our morning net sleuthin' skills traced the origin of the rumor back to Techmeme's Gabe Rivera, who first tweeted a fake Zeitgeist Foursquare check-in with "@barackobama @dickc @ericschmidt @scobleizer" and later linked to a apparently believable Instagram pic of Obama boozing it up at a similarly divey haunt.

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Obama’s $3.7 Trillion Budget Calls for Military Spending Increases and Deep Cuts to Social Service Programs

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Feb. 15 (News Analysis) - President Obama has unveiled a budget plan seeking to trim the federal deficit by cutting or eliminating some 200 federal programs, many dedicated to social services and education, while increasing military spending and funding for the construction of nuclear power plants. Announcing his $3.7 trillion proposal, Obama touted his previously stated pledge to freeze funding for domestic programs outside of the military for five years. Obama’s plan includes two modest tax hikes for banks and oil companies. It also calls for ending the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans in 2013 and returning the estate tax to its higher 2009 levels. For analysis of Obama’s proposed budget, we are joined by John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine.

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Has Andy Carvin found the future of fundraising by using his personal brand to generate donations for NPR?

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Poynter Institute - By Mallary Jean Tenore - Feb. 11 (News) - Andy Carvin has spent much of the past 18 days curating news and information about the protests in Egypt, at times sending more than 400 tweets a day. Now he’s using his personal brand to generate donations to local NPR stations....Carvin said he “had no idea” people would take him up on the offer to donate to their local stations, but would like to think that they see what he’s been doing as a serious form of storytelling and journalism.

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UberMedia, Indeed. Bill Gross’ Twitter Ecosystem Empire Just Acquired TweetDeck

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TechCrunch - Feb. 11 (News Report) - The number of companies in the Twitter ecosystem keeps contracting. But not for a necessarily bad reason, but because they keep getting purchased. And what's crazy is that it's largely one person who has been buying them up: Bill Gross. We've just learned this his company, now called UberMedia, has just acquired TweetDeck. We're hearing that the deal, which happened recently, was in the $25 - $30 million range. And this is clearly the largest deal they've done yet as TweetDeck is the largest Twitter client outside of Twitter's own properties.

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