Women use social media more than men

Women make up the majority of users on most social media sites, according to Information is Beautiful.

Here are some popular social networks with a majority of users being female:

• Flickr is 55 percent female.
• Twitter is 57 percent female.
• Facebook is 57 percent female.
• Ning is 59 percent female.
• MySpace is 64 percent female.

YouTube and LinkedIn have an equal ratio of males to female. Digg is the only major social network that is heavily skewed towards males, with 64 percent of users being male.

I have a lot of theories as to why there are more females on social media than men but nothing concrete. It’s clearly important, however, to understand the demographics of each social network, and news organizations — especially newspapers — have struggled for years to attract as many female readers/users as they do with males. Creating more social products can only help attract more females to news products.

Monday Dose of social media: Facebook most popular way to share links

Sharing on Facebook Now More Popular than Sharing by Email — Facebook tops all other Web sites and even e-mail when it comes to sharing content via the AddToAny widget. Yes, this is just one widget, but it is one of the most popular. 24 percent of shares were via Facebook, while e-mail had 11.1 percent and 10.8 percent via Twitter.

Personally, I’m much more likely to share links via Facebook or Twitter than via e-mail, and I suspect this is increasingly becoming the case for many people. Now, we have some data to back up this point.

For content producers, this means getting content onto Facebook. People are using Facebook more and more and sharing is a big part of that.

Confirmed: Digg Just Hijacked Your Twitter Links — “Earlier today we mentioned that Digg.com appears to have changed the behavior of its short URLs so they no longer go to the source of the story for logged-out users: instead they direct visitors to a landing page on Digg ().com.

The change has many negative implications for publishers, including the fact that readers who think they are creating a link to your content are actually just pushing traffic to Digg.”

Content creators, there are plenty of better short url services out there like tr.im, bit.ly and the original, tinyurl.com.

Love it or hate it, spymaster is invading Facebook — Spymaster is now on Facebook, but that’s not the real news here for content creators. The real news is how a viral game like Spymaster has exploded all over Twitter and now Facebook. It’s an innovative concept, and it’s one content creators should study closely.

Twitter’s 1,928 Percent Growth and Other Notable Social Media Stats –This is a great collection of stats. Here is my favorite

• MySpace () leads all social media sites (presumably excluding YouTube ()) in unique video viewers, with 12.9 million.

MySpace is still relevant in the entertainment sector, it’s just stagnant elsewhere. I think we’ll see MySpace drastically change within the next year or two into more of an entertainment portal and less of a traditional social network.

IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On — Amen.

Monday Dose of social media: White House 2.0

White House Joins Facebook, MySpace, Twitter — Even the White House is on social media. Are you?

The official White House blog called the move White House 2.0:

In the President’s last Weekly Address, he called on government to “recognize that we cannot meet the challenges of today with old habits and stale thinking.” He added that “we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative,” and pledged to “reach beyond the halls of government” to engage the public. Today the White House is taking steps to expand how the Administration is communicating with the public, including the latest information and guidance about the H1N1 virus. In addition to WhiteHouse.gov, you can now find us in a number of other spots on the web:

• Facebook.com/WhiteHouse
• MySpace.com/WhiteHouse
• Twitter.com/WhiteHouse

If the government can embrace social media to be more open, anyone can.

Five terrific Twitter research tools — Twitter makes such a strong reporting tool preciously because it is such a strong research tool. It’s a great way to find news, see what people are saying and judge popular opinion. This article lists five Twitter research tools — outside of Twitter itself — that take the service to a new level.

The tools should take your tweeting to a new level.

Seven Totally Unique Flickr Search Tools — Not only is Flickr a great place to store photos, but it is also a great place to search for photos. Flickr also has a treasure trove of Creative Commons licensed photos that you can place on your blog or Web site. There is a problem, however. Flickr has billions of photos to sort through.

These seven search tools can make it a lot easier to find the photo you want. These search engines display photos differently, can search by colors in photos, can translate captions for you and more.

Daily Dose of social media: MySpace launching social business directory

MySpace Teams with CitySearch to Launch Local Business Portal – This is exactly the kind of product that newspapers should be developing. It combines social media, a large user base and a business directory. Imagine if newspapers did this for their local communities. It seems like common sense and something that would both serve users well and make money.

Unfortunately, if newspapers and news organizations don’t act fast, partnerships like this could further erode online revenue potential for news organizations. Check out what this partnership could bring to the table:

Citysearch is bringing its database to the table, while MySpace is going to be “socializing” the whole affair. In doing so, businesses will be able to connect with each other, and users will be able to connect with businesses. MySpace Local will over listing pages for small businesses, which will cover three categories at launch: Restaurants, Bars and Nightife. On each listing page, users will be able to rate, review and share media for each business. Users will also be able to add the business to their profile, share a business listing with friends, and add it to their bookmarks.

MySpace Local could also offer up useful channels for direct content distribution to users, sending them coupons, special discounts, exclusive content, and more. This would be especially powerful as there will likely be added integration with MySpace’s own platform, which adds to the viral potential of a business utilizing the Local portal.

Building on MySpace Local will be a slew of commercial opportunities for the businesses as well as for MySpace. It sets the stage for integrated payment options from which users can benefit, as well as extended revenue generation for MySpace, from ads or premium features.

Twitter replies morph into mentions — For those of you who regularly use search.twitter.com or a an app like TweetDeck, this may not seem that revolutionary, but, for everyone else, the Twitter Web interface just got a whole lot more useful. Now instead of just showing tweets @ your username that start with your username, Twitter’s Web interface also shows every time your user name is mentioned.

For Twitter newbies, you may have been missing a lot of times when you were mentioned on Twitter. Now, with the new system, you can see every time you are mentioned (people often @reply to more than one person at once) or when one of your tweets is retweeted (RT).

This simple update also makes the Web interface a lot more useful. This will be especially helpful for journalists who work at organizations that won’t allow them to install an app like TweetDeck.

Tweecious turns Twittered links into Delicious bookmarks — If you’re like me (or worse, @MsBeat) you share a lot of links on Twitter. A big part of what I do is curation. The problem is that while Twitter is great for sharing links, it’s not a great place to store links, unlike sites like Delicious.

Problem solved.

Tweecious is a simple Firefox add-on that turns links you share in Twitter into Delicious bookmarks. It even adds tags. This add-on is still “experimental” but its worth checking out for all those Twitter curators out there.

Send in social media and Web app related tips via our Publish2 group.

Leaderdboard for week of 3-23-2009: the complete journalism package

What makes a good, modern journalist?

It’s no longer about just writing and reporting. Journalism has gone multimedia, and two-way communication is a big part of Web journalism. Defining what a good journalist is today is a lot harder than it was 10 years ago.

Now being a journalist requires a lot more skills. But it’s not just skills and buzzwords that make a good, modern journalist — it’s about putting it all together and making sense of it all.

Stephanie De Pasquale | Quad-City Times

• De Pasquale is one of the most innovative entertainment reporters we have seen. She combines her writing and video backgrounds to make an outstanding blog. Our favorite video feature of hers is Live Sessions, where she brings in local bands to record their music. Local musicians love the chance to get recorded on video and get promotion. This is a feature that causes bands to seek Stephanie out and update her on their latest releases or upcoming performances.
• De Pasquale is an excellent example of running with the opportunities that were presented to her. When she was 19 she couldn’t find a newspaper willing to offer her an internship because she had no experience. But her local NPR station was willing to take her on. From there she had an internship at a TV station. Eventually she was able to land writing internships as well. What at one point must have been frustrating for De Pasquale has turned into a big asset for her. She understands how to shoot and edit video and audio better than most journalists.
• Combine De Pasquale’s writing, video and audio skills together with her social media and blogging skills and you have one modern journalist. And all of her skills work together to form a total package.
• De Pasquale is also a shinning example of how to use MySpace for beatblogging. Having her music player on her MySpace page filled with local musicians and their music is a really nice touch. It’s a very thoughtful way to acknowledge people who help her with her beat.
• For entertainment reporters, MySpace is an absolute must. Virtually every aspiring artist is on MySpace. Plus, many bars and clubs have MySpace pages, but not Web sites. De Pasquale also engages her readers in the comments on her blog and on MySpace.

Nina Simon | Museum 2.0

• Nina has both a strong beatblog and presence on social networks. Specifically, she was nominated for her focused use of Twitter. Many people use Twitter for work, but Simon’s Twitter account never strays far from her beat or purpose of discussing museum exhibits and ways to create more interactive spaces at museums. She can often be found engaging in link journalism and offering up commentary about the links she provides.
• Museum 2.0 differs from most beatblogs in that Simon is not a journalist, nor is she directly practicing journalism. “Museum 2.0 is a design consultancy focused on creating participatory, dynamic, audience-centered museum spaces.I work with museums to design exhibitions, programs, and online experiences that engage visitors as co-creators and community members, not just consumers.”
• Simon does a fantastic job of writing about what she helps create and writing about exhibits that others create and what works or doesn’t work with those exhibits. She posts about research into how people interact with social media, innovative exhibits and the lessons that can be learned from them and the business models of museums.
• Her advice to museums is also good advice for journalists, “I believe that every museum can grow its audience as long as it is willing to grow with that audience by taking risks, trying new things, and communicating openly.”

Amber Smith | The Syracuse Post-Standard

• Smith made the Leaderboard this week for crowdsourcing on her blog and on Twitter. Need to write a piece that requires feedback from people? Blogs and social media are an excellent way to do that.
• Smith has a simple question she needs help answering, “So, what’s your reward? How do you treat yourself after a good run? Do you have a special feast? Do you reward yourself with new running gear when you hit a milestone?”
• Before blogs and social media, this would have been a much more time consuming task. Smith would have probably had to go out to an area where there were lots of runners and tried to get their attention. She would have had to go the runners and try to bug them to answer her question. Instead, she can now use her blog and Twitter accounts to get runners to come to her.  While she waits for the responses to come in, she can work on other stories.
• This is a simple instance of where beatblogging makes a journalist much more efficient. When people come to you with information, it makes your job a lot easier.

Podcast: De Pasquale discusses using MySpace for entertainment beats

Many people think of MySpace as a very similar social network to Facebook, but their uses — especially for beat reporters — are vastly different.

Facebook is a great tool for education reporters. MySpace, on the other hand, has a large contingent of artists and entertainers on it, especially musicians. Just about any popular artist has a MySpace page that allows fans to sample music.

But MySpace isn’t just for popular acts. It’s a fantastic tool for bands looking to get noticed. It allows bands to post songs, blog posts and connect with fans. For these reasons, any music or entertainment reporter should be on MySpace forming connections.

MySpace has allowed Stephanie De Pasquale of The Quad-City Times to cover her beat much more in-depth and much easier. MySpace has allowed her to discover new musicians, sample their music and easily get in touch with them.

“It’s just so a haven for bands,” she said. “When I first got the beat, I just signed up for an account and started friending the bands that we put in our weekly calendar.”

She has about 350 contacts on MySpace and those contacts have been invaluable for allowing her to cover her beat better. De Pasquale doesn’t even need to be personally contacted by bands anymore to keep up on what they are doing, because bands post bulletins on MySpace when they release new music or announce new shows. In the past, this information was hard to find out about this information because bands and other artists don’t understand the best way to get press.

“They don’t think, ‘oh I should contact someone about this,’” she said. “It’s not like anyone ever takes them aside and says, ‘this is what you need to do to get media coverage.’”

Now that De Pasquale has become a social part of the local entertainment scene, she has musicians, bars and other people people contacting her to update her with what’s going on. Several beat bloggers have said that people often feel more comfortable contacting a reporting via a social network rather than going through a news organization.

“A lot of people are now getting to the point to where if they have news they message me,” she said. “They don’t even use my e-mail or phone.”

MySpace is also a great way to preview musicians. Artists usually post several songs available for streaming (some maybe available for download as well). MySpace makes it easier for reporters like De Pasquale to sample a lot of local music.

“If a band does call you and say ‘hey we’re doing this set, what about a story,’ you can easily go on [MySpace] and see if they are any good and something that you want to put your name on,” she said.

In the past, artists would have to mail her CDs. That usually didn’t happen unless it was a national band working with a promotional company.

De Pasquale and the QC Times have  an innovative online feature they call Live Sessions, where they bring in bands to their studios and record them performing. The Web and blogs make this concept possible. The live sessions have become a huge hit and cachet builder with local artists. De Pasquale is booked through May with artists for live sessions.

Some other topics discussed:

• How has her blog allowed her to cover her beat better?
• What is her daily reporting like with her work appearing on a blog, in the paper and a few different Web sites?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

Leaderboard for week of 1-12-2009: Pharmalot memorial edition

It’s a new year, and it’s time for a new Leaderboard.

Remember, you can join our Publish2 group and submit nominees whenever you want. You can also DM us nominees @beatblogging. You can also e-mail us nominations as well.

The first Leaderboard of the new year is a mix of the old with the new. We’re sad to see a departing beat blogger, but we’re excited for the new beat bloggers popping up all the time. 2009 should be the year that beat blogging really takes off as a mainstream practice.

Ed Silverman | Pharmalot

• Silverman will be sorely missed. He is moving on from Pharmalot and The Star-Ledger. He was one of the original and best beat bloggers.
• Pharmalot was one of those sites were the individual posts didn’t wow you but the whole package did. Each individual part and post worked together to cover an industry with incrediblw depth. The conversations and link sharing that took place after each post by users was also impressive. Silverman was amazed at how long discussions would last after posts.
• The strong community that formed around Pharmalot became a major selling point for the site. Those people helped Silverman cover the industry and exchanged information with each other.
• Pharmalot and Silverman eventually became synonymous. It’s hard to imagine the site continuing on without him, and if it does, it won’t be the same site. It might be a pharma blog, but it won’t be the Pharmalot that helped bring the practice of beat blogging to the world.
• There are far too many lessons to list here that Silverman gave us, but this podcast is a fantastic place to start. We hope to do a follow-up interview with Silverman. Listen to that podcast and let us know any additional questions you’d like us to ask.

Stephanie De Pasquale | Quadsville

• De Pasquale is an excellent example of synergy. Her best content from her blog goes in the newspaper once a week. That’s a smart way to get more mileage out of existing content.
• She is an entertainment reporter and mostly deals with the under-30 crowd. Social networking has become a key part to covering her beat.
• MySpace in particular has allowed her to cover the local music scene better. She has about 300 friends on MySpace and almost all are local musicians. MySpace is a great social network to join for those looking to tap into the local music and arts scene. De Pasquale says that she wouldn’t have discovered most of these musicians without MySpace. Social networking simply allows her to cover her beat in ways never before possible.
• She uses her blog to find stories and develop sources. She also gives the community a chance to submit questions for the people she interviews. Here is an example of her using user submitted questions to interview a subject.
• She has also organized monthly recording sessions with local bands. Now that’s utilizing the medium well.

Tannette Johnson-Elie | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

• Business columnist Elie uses Twitter to help her report. She asks questions and taps into the collective intelligence of her community. She also asks her Twitter users if there are any questions they would like her to ask when she interviews experts. That’s a great way to get people involved and also help you do your job better.
  
• She focuses on how small businesses and start-ups are using networking to grow. A big part of modern day networking is utilizing social media. Elie has simply gone where her readers are going — to social networks.
  
• She engages in social media to help understand a phenomena that is impacting many of the people she covers. The lessons she and other people learn could be very helpful for small businesses and startups.
• Elie is part of an emerging breed of reporters where it just makes sense for them to jump onto social networks. Many of the people she covers use social media, and the only way for her to truly understand social media is for her to utilize in her daily work too.
  

Facebook and other social networks can help speed up reporting

Khristopher Brooks has been using Facebook and MySpace longer than he has been a professional reporter, so it naturally made sense for him to use social networks for his job when he became a full-time reporter two years ago.

Brooks is an education reporter for the Omaha World-Herald. He is often writing about higher education institutions like the University of Nebraska. Colleges and universities are home to many students who regularly use social networks for communication. It made sense for Brooks to utilize the same social networks that students were using.

Facebook in particular has allowed Brooks to report certain stories faster and find more students to interview. Using Facebook, he can find students, down to individual majors, for instance. If he needs to talk to a student who is a business administration major, he can go on Facebook and find one, instead of spending hours on campus trying to find students.

“If I had a particular story that really needed student comments, it might take a whole day of walking around Lincoln, Nebraska — perhaps finding someone, perhaps not,” Brooks said. “You would hope so, but if you don’t, that’s a whole wasted day.”

With Facebook, he can sit at his desk, and search for students by major, hometown, sports, activities and other fields. Brooks asked Nebraska for a student e-mail account so he could join the universities network on Facebook. This has allowed him to search through thousands of students profiles.

Without the Nebraska e-mail address, Brooks would be much more limited in the amount of data he could see and search through. For certain stories, this access has been invaluable.

“If I just need a random student quote from anybody who goes to school there, I can just walk on campus and get that face-to-face quote, which is always better,” he said. “But if I need a specific type of student — specific major, specific class, specific interest, specific age — that’s been an amazing resource for me. Unprecedented.”

He said social networking allows him to write more authoritatively and get more students into the paper. He can get a lot more students into his stories now because it’s much easier to find the students he needs, which he thinks is really important.

In his current newsroom, it’s a bit unclear how editors feel about using social networks in the reporting process. At his old paper, a lot of his coworkers used social networks to help improve their reporting, but social networking is a new frontier for newspapers. Most papers are still forming policies about appropriate use of social networks for work proposes. 

“We still have this situation where all the top editors are the old people,” he said. “And they just haven’t fully embraced how online can help our jobs.”

He tries to stress to his editors that he uses Facebook as a starting point. He uses it as a way to contact students via e-mail, the phone or in person. He does not quote people’s profiles.

Brooks believes part of the problem is that many editors just haven’t used Facebook or MySpace, and so they have misconceptions about what they are about. There is a large fear of the unknown. He thinks they just need to be exposed to social networks and use them.

“Everybody who has a Facebook profile are younger reporters,” he said about his paper. “That just goes to show that [the people who are wary about social networks] don’t know what this is about.”

At Beat Blogging, we have found different social networks work better for different beats. Facebook was originally a college-only social network. It is well suited for education beats.

Twitter is a poor social network for local beats because it does not have a lot of users, but it can be very helpful for national beats. It has been very helpful in helping me report for Beat Blogging.

I have yet to find anyone who really finds MySpace helpful for beat reporting and beat blogging, but Brooks does occasionally use it. Others have found value in using Delicious to find and share content.