There’s pervasive concept that things that happen online deserve a whole different set of words to describe them. We contend daily with new words that there really don’t need new words for, such as hyperlocal, content, and that gossipy reduction of a complex social trend, meme. In the beginning of our collective online existence, techies invented… Read more »
Do you even know what’s happening to your news? Media companies are tracking the hot terms that people are searching for from minute to minute, and when those terms come up on their computers, there’s a little button. Hit that button and a new rough draft is created with those search terms as the topic…. Read more »
I can’t be the only one who hates when sites only show me stuff based on what I like. “Personalization,” they call it. Choice. Customization. “Navel-gazing,” I do. Far too many sites and apps are doing this. Based on the ads it shows me, Facebook has me boiled down to a neat consumerist stereotype of… Read more »
Two weeks ago, a knucklehead muckety-muck at Forbes announced to TechCrunch that it was going to cut back paying journalists. It no longer wants to engage seasoned professionals to research and craft expensive articles. Instead, it planned to get its stories from a thousand unpaid bloggers. It’s going crowdsourced, the empty suit said, and “Forbes… Read more »
On Saturday, I pretended to go to Portland, Oregon. There was a conference of travel editors going on, and because they were all using the Twitter tag #satwpdx, I was able to follow what the various speakers were saying. (Go to a professional conference from a diner table at the Star on 18th!) That was… Read more »