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89% of Journalists Source Stories From Social Media, Yet Only 15% Admit Its Importance

posted on February 16, 2010

Now this looks familiar.

A new survey by Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University, suggests that 89% of journalists source their stories from blogs, 65% from social networks such as Facebook, and 52% from Twitter.

That’s no surprise.

Yet despite this admission, journalists continue to downplay the importance of social media to their reporting efforts, with just 15% citing it as “important.”

Hmm, does that seem to you like a profession not wanting to admit that citizen-journalists and content creators are making their job obsolete?

Breaking down the data, we see that those journalists writing for web publications are more likely (69%) to use social media for news sources, than those writing for magazines (48%).

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Google Kills Blogs Legally Posting Copyrighted Content

posted on February 11, 2010

I know it all sounds crazy, but there are legal ways to post copyrighted content on the Internet—id est when you have permission from the copyright owner. But apparently that wasn’t enough for at least one of several blogspot-hosted music blogs pulled from Google’s Blogger for allegedly violating copyright. paidContent reports:

“We’d like to inform you that we’ve received another complaint regarding your blog,” begins the cheerful letter received by each of the owners of Pop Tarts, Masala, I Rock Cleveland, To Die By Your Side, It’s a Rap and Living Ears. All of these are music blogs – sites that write about music and post MP3s of what they are discussing. “Upon review of your account, we’ve noted that your blog has repeatedly violated Blogger’s Terms of Service … [and] we’ve been forced to remove your blog. Thank you for your understanding.”

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Please Email This Article; Researchers Say You’ll Feel Better

posted on February 9, 2010

If fear, scandal, sex, and humor sell newspapers, it stands to reason that those topics would make for the most popular articles on news sites and blogs. Right?

Wrong!

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have intensively studied the New York Times list of most-e-mailed articles and discovered that it was an entirely unexpected emotion that caused the average reader to share an article.

“Emotion in general leads to transmission, and awe is quite a strong emotion,” [Dr. Berger] said. “If I’ve just read this story that changes the way I understand the world and myself, I want to talk to others about what it means. I want to proselytize and share the feeling of awe. If you read the article and feel the same emotion, it will bring us closer together.”

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Holy Blogosphere, Batman! Pope Urges Priests to Blog

posted on January 25, 2010

Pope Benedict XVI has been the Holy See for almost five years, and during that time, he (and the Catholic church along with him) has become more and more involved in social media. Last year, he launched a YouTube channel, social media outreach initiative, and apps for Facebook and the iPhone. And now he’s urging parish priests to follow his lead into the Internet.

And just to show how with-it he really is, this message is from . . . the future. (No, really—it’s dated 16 May 2010.) For the 44th World Communications Day, the Supreme Pontiff noted the advancements in communications thanks to the Internet, and said (will say?):

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32 Essential WordPress Plugins I Use…And You Don’t!

posted on January 18, 2010

It’s been little over a year since I shared my super-secret list of WordPress plugins used on Marketing Pilgrim.

You loved it!

So, I’m back with an updated list–simply because I’ve made a lot of changes over the past year–and your blog needs to be just as awesome as ours, right? :-)

I’m sharing this list on one condition. By reading the list below, you agree to click the little green “retweet” button at the top right of this post.

Deal?

Then read on, good sir/madam! :-)

(New) After the Deadline – make me sounds smarter

I added this plugin, when WordPress announced it was acquiring it. Unfortunately, I’m either extremely arrogant, too darn busy, or too nonchalant to care, because I rarely actually use it. Any grammatical errors in this post are hereby considered as intentional for comedic purposes! ;-)

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Hoo Gives a Hoot About AOL’s Owl?

posted on January 18, 2010

Do you like peep shows?

How about a sly peek at what could be part of AOL’s broader strategy to flood the web with contributor-generated content and monetize it?

Well, AOL built Owl as a testing ground for its SEED platform–or, as some people are calling it, its “craptent” platform. The site, according to an AOL insider, “is not currently being used,” but it gives us a sneak peek at how AOL plans to distribute content across the web.

What’s interesting is that SEED gives AOL the ability to create and syndicate content to sites such as Owl, with very little set-up costs. After all, Owl looks like a pretty slick site, but clearly AOL didn’t have too much invested in it–if it could so easily afford to let it lie fallow. I suspect we’ll see AOL build dozens of these sites–Hawk, Pigeon, Chicken, Yellow-nosed Albatross–the possibilities are endless! ;-)

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FTC Unsure How to Enforce Blogging Guidelines; May Target Twitter

posted on January 15, 2010

In case you’ve forgotten, 2009 was the year the FTC decided to go after mom bloggers (and other bloggers) with $11,000 fines for not disclosing reviewed freebies, sponsored posts or other relationships with companies—or not.

Despite the fervor over the FTC’s new guidelines, the fact is that they were designed to target a specific group of bloggers—ones making a living (or just a killing) off free products which they automatically gave glowing reviews. (And let’s face it, who’s going to be sorry to see them go?) But the guidelines were written widely enough to apply to mom bloggers who use coupons to book reviewers who receive advance review copies, even though neither of those situations guarantees a good review or even coverage.