If Ashton Kutcher’s 4.5 million Twitter followers make you feel inadequate, I’ve got good news: scientists investigating social networks have punked the “influentials” theory that drives celebrities to the top of the charts. Aplusk, who boasts that he’s bigger than CNN, is apparently overrated. A new study finds that the importance of most influential spreaders […]
Amra Tareen, the savvy and ebullient founder of AllVoices, has just closed a $3 million funding round for the innovative, citizen journalism site. That brings funding to $9 million for the two-year-old start-up. Not bad. TechCrunch has a good take on the AllVoices funding. How does she do it? Amra returns to We Media Miami […]
The biggest surprise from yesterday’s unveiling of Apple’s iPad was that print publishers and journos weren’t terribly excited. “Waiting to be surprised. That hasn’t happened yet,” said Jim Roberts, the only New York Times wonk who didn’t confuse Steve Jobs with Moses. Valleywag has a good take on Print Media’s Big Tablet Letdown. Our enthusiasm […]
A few months after three, young software architects launched an obscure social networking and microblogging service, students at a rural Virginia university sent short messages to their friends from their PCs and cell phones as they hid from a gunman who opened fire in classrooms and a dorm. “Everything you thought you knew about media […]
I love this, and my day is now a little less sucky, thanks to an invitation from Blogads founder Henry Copeland (aka @HC): SUXORZ: the worst social media campaigns of ’09.
Two projects featured at We Media ‘09 are leading the use of digital media and technology in Haiti’s rescue efforts. Ushahidi, which was named a “Game Changer” at last year’s conference, is utilizing digital mapmaking technology and social media to map and verify vital information in Haiti. Ushahidi plots key information on a Google map […]
Among the many extraordinary efforts to provide aid and relief for the people of Haiti comes this one from The Extraordinaries, winner of last year’s We Media Pitch It! competition: the Haiti Earthquake Support Center utilizes crowdsourcing and facial-recognition to help locate the missing. Anyone can post photos of a missing person or loved one, […]
Magazine and newspaper publishers have fantasized, for more than a decade, about the day when portable digital display technologies render paper, ink, printing, trucks, postage and home delivery obsolete. The flaw, of course, is expecting too much from technology – the next big thing.
We couldn’t get to Hyderabad for this year’s group hug of the world’s newspaper publishers, but it sounds like the old boys are getting feisty in their dotage. Forced once to postpone because of bad economics and waning interest, the reconvened World Newspaper Congress, organized by the merged World Association of Newspapers and IFRA, launched […]
Dear Mr. Murdoch: We’re so fortunate that we can entrust you with the future of the news business in the U.S. Such a shrewd business leader, too. Can you help a confused citizen understand your plan to save the news? 1. You’re going to charge people to read a story online that they won’t read, […]