New Frontiers In Blogging
The BBC website gives me hours of pleasure. Today I found an article entitled, “New frontiers in journalism” which was about using social media. I’m not certain that my rather cynical comment will be appearing any time soon though:
“YouTube, Flickr, Del.icio.us and Twitter.” Why stop there? And, why choose these four? Why not, Digg (which is much more directly related to news – although people might not vote you to the front page), Facebook, MySpace and Slashdot, to name but four more ?
These “social media” sites attract (and are the venue for) many different, only slightly overlapping groups; by choosing the few you mention, and not using others, you are weighting your internet content towards certain constituencies and away from others equally valid.
Admit it: your choice of networks is not made just on popularity, is it? You’ve gone for YouTube fair enough because the BBC have a deal with them, but the others all tend to be favoured by the new media “Twitterati” currently in broadcast jobs.
Until news media actually engages with the great internet unwashed on their own terms, it’s just playing at internet for the sake of appearing relevant, IMHO.