Review: Chris Anderson of Wired on how to create a social network
I watched this 55-minute talk with Chris Anderson over at Media Bistro in hopes of figuring out if the video was worth your time and money.
Anderson is the editor in chief of Wired and the author of The Long Tail. It’s certainly worth your time to watch this video, but at $15 for 55 minutes (some of which is a Q&A), is it worth your money?
Anderson is a very good speaker who has thoughtful and provocative things to say. If your a media executive or editor and you need all the help you can get trying to figure out how to build an online community, it’s probably worth your money, especially if this video is for work. The content is there, and this $15 could help make your online projects a lot more successful.
An individual blogger would probably benefit from this video too, especially if that person is trying to build a strong community. If you’re a journalist or media employee who wants to learn more about using social networking for business purposes, this is probably a bit expensive for your needs. And if you’re a journalism student, it’s probably way out of your budget.
But you can read my full review below and decide for yourself if Anderson’s talk is worth the money. It’s certainly a very good talk. Anderson lays out a blueprint for what media companies can do to roll out successful social networks. The key for Anderson is to first have compelling, niche content.
“Social networking is a feature, not a destination,” he said. “It’s something every good site should have. It’s not something you go to.”
Without that compelling content people won’t come to your site. Social networking should be about building community, Anderson said. It doesn’t have to be about friending people, according to Anderson, but rather it can be as simple as tracking the comments and posts made by users of a community and allowing others to see their history — like Slashdot.
Blogs can be a simple way of forming a community. We have seen that at Beat Blogging with many of our beat bloggers, and Anderson has noticed the same trend to. With a few added features beyond a basic blog, a blog can become a social network.
Even with the right tools, however, it’s still about specialization. Anderson recommends figuring out a specificity for your site and then making it more specific. Maybe you want to make a blog about digital photography. Anderson suggests narrowing that down a bit.
“The world does not need another generic social network,” Anderson said. “The world needs an infinite number of hyper focused social networks that are about individual subjects.”
Anderson is not a fan of Facebook or MySpace, but he is a big fan of Ning, because it’s a social networking service that caters to the niche.
“It’s not about Ning, it’s about individual topics, whereas going to Facebook is always about Facebook,” he said.
Ning has hundreds of thousands of networks ranging from the very small to large, but all are focused around a niche. Wired Journalists is an example of a medium-sized Ning network (one that all of you should be members of). I should caution, however, that most of our beat bloggers who have tried using Ning have not found success.
Part of the problem is that Ning requires people to go to yet another site. If you run a Ning site like Wired Journalists that’s fine, but if you want to add a Ning site for your beat, it can be asking a lot of users to have to go to multiple sites. As a news organization, you could have your content and community in one place on a blog. Ning isn’t the best place for that concept.
But the biggest problem we have seen with Ning may have been a lack of desire from users, and not Ning itself. Some niches were too vague (geographically focused, instead of subject-matter focused) and others weren’t organic. People weren’t interested in the ways the niches were broken down.
Anderson has found niche success with Ning, and his site is probably a good blueprint for how to form a compelling Ning site. He runs a network for amateur unmanned aerial vehicles. Very niche. Yet, it generates about 5,000 page views a day and makes about $400 a month from Google Adsense.
That’s not bad at all for a side hobby. That’s not bad at all for placing only one ad per page.
The last major point I want to stress about Anderson talk is how he considers engaging the community to be important. We have noticed this as well over at Beat Blogging. Anderson is not afraid to admonish users for poor behavior or outright ban them. But he also interacts with users and actively engages the community.
The comments section of any site will be cleaner if the owner (or blogger or writer) takes responsibility for what happens there. Eric Berger says people are less willing to post acidic comments if they know original writer is there reading their comments and judging them.
Anderson goes over more topics then this, but these are the key ones I highlighted from his talk, especially for journalists. The best use of this video might be to get a bunch of people together to watch it and then discuss it once it is over. It’s certainly a conversation starter.
You can watch a preview of the video here.
The Listening Post just got more social with Twitter
The Listening Post, Wired’s multi-author music blog, joined Twitter a few days ago and promises to use Twitter to deliver micro-posts of information to music fans:
Hope you are having a hot holiday, party people. And since you probably are, and far too busy to get deep with Listening Post, we set up a Twitter feed to keep you abreast of music-related news and tech in bite-sized pieces.
The Listening Post’s Twitter account was launched just three days ago and already it has more than 100 followers. That’s a good start. If they want to see more growth — and drive more traffic –, they’ll have to make their Twitter account into a destination for music fans.
A few suggestions for the Listening Post and all news organizations using Twitter:
- Make sure this Twitter account isn’t just a glorified RSS feed. So far, the majority of the posts fall into this category.
- Make more tweets like this one: "putting together a contest for Weezer fans. Anyone have ideas for that?" It’s great to get users involved, and Twitter is a great social app for two-way communication.
- Making tweets for the latest blog posts are fine, but give people a reason to click. A headline is not enough. Give us the best quotes or info in separate tweets. Make us want to click that link.
- Better yet, get people excited for upcoming posts before they happen. Use Twitter as a way to discuss upcoming stories and news. Maybe the lede is already written, but the details are being fleshed out. Share with us that tidbit of information. In other instances, Twitter can be a great crowd-sourcing tool. Need feedback from users for a story? Twitter is a great place to start.
- And, of course, have conversations with people. That’s where Twitter really excels. It’s a fantastic tool for public conversations. And that two-way communication can build user loyalty.
Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch account is a great example of how to use Twitter to drive traffic. Arrington regularly teases upcoming stories, especially really big ones. He also converses frequently with people about tech topics and in general is a very strong Twitter member. That’s why he has more than 20,000 followers.
20,000 followers is a great way to drive traffic.
Live Events: Which Scientist(s) Do You Want to Grill?
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Applying Beat Blogging Principles Elswhere – Wired and Patriot News
From Eliot Van Buskirk:
One beatbloggingish thing I’ve done recently though is ask the sf_indie email list what is so wrong with Pitchfork’s reviews. It didn’t come from my beatblogging network, but it utilized some of the same principles.
Related from Daniel Victor:
From my network I’ve made contact with people who have contacted me outside of the network to give me information.
ie: The network Daniel set up introduced him to new sources – the subsequent sourcing happened in a traditional one-to-one manner, but Daniel never would have met the new sources if it hadn’t been for his network.
Digital Music’s Beat Blog: It’s All About the Work Flow
One thing I repeatedly hear from the Beat Bloggers that have networks up and running is that, right now, tending to their network doesn’t jive with their current work flow. This is, of course, an issue – what are the daily duties of a beat blogger? How can this be incorporated into their already busy schedule?
I can see in the long term how having all your sources in one spot to contact could ease a reporters life, just as the Roladex must have in its time. Right now, however, online management doesn’t come naturally to beat reporting – or beat blogging.
I checked in with Wired’s beat blogger Eliot Van Buskirk to see how things are going. Below is part of that thread.
From Eliot
I’m behind the eight ball as usual today (why will this digital music news not stop happening for five seconds?), but wanted to get back to you before too long.
1. Overall.
I’m liking it, but it’s still not a natural part of my workflow. I think I might also need to invite some more people to increase the chance of discussions. Is there a way to alert all members whenever there’s a new discussion? I could do that manually, but it adds another step to the process.
ME: How does Ning feel (also – from what I can tell – you haven’t used the broadcast message tool, any reason?).
I like it so far — setting things up was easy, and I love how simple it is to rearrange the home page (put the discussions at the top, rather than the stale welcome message). Do you think it would be appropriate to use the broadcast message tool whenever there’s a new discussion?
Nothing fits into my work schedule. I have thousands of dollars worth of project deadlines stacked up, a disaster area of a home office, and six blog posts per day to research and write before I can start on
anything else, not to mention the over 20,000 (literally) unread emails sitting in my inbox. That said, I am getting some good feedback from the Ning group and I can see getting to the point where it’s a natural part of the day, becoming something that saves me time.
Affiliate Beat Bloggers: These People Are Beat Blogging Too
Through Wired Journalist I was introduced to Brian Newsome, a beat reporter in Coloroda Springs who writes for the Gazette.
He informed me that the Gazette has blogs, including one from a reporter in Iraq. But the paper hasn’t employed beat blogging – the act of creating a network around a beat, letting sources chat asynchronously.
Brian has the health beat and contacted me to find out how the other Beat Bloggers are going about starting their networks and what exactly we mean by "beat blogging." He hopes to do the same in Colorado. We spent a lot of time talking about the difference between Google Groups, Ning and Facebook – and what the right platform might be for him – covering health in Colorado.
We had a nice conversation, which included practical questions: How much time does this require, what is the measurement of success, will this work locally, do I NEED a blog, and more. Eventually we moved towards the grander scheme of things – anyone can do this!
Beat blogging is not scientifically tested and we don’t own the concept. There is no way to know if your beat is right to build a social network around it. There is only one way to find out – TRY IT.
Anyone can do it: And it is far cheaper and easier to just jump in head first than it is to have countless meetings and debates about whether or not to try it.
Anyone can do this. If enough people do – we can learn together.
I’m following the 13 organizations listed to the right here closely – but I’m keeping my eye on as many reporters as possible. If you think you are or want to be a "beat blogger" – let me know.
I will keep in touch with Brian – as he is (whether he likes it or not) an affiliate beat blogger now.
The other two I have kept in touch with are:
Alexis Madrigal
(who I am due to contact again to discuss his progress)
and
Matt King
I recently had another email exchange with Matt who continues his personal blog and a Ning site. The next post will be a quick recap of that conversation.
Quick Pitch Deployed – Join a Music Beat Blog
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Lewis Wallace: Wired Editor – A Directive From the Top For Radical Transparency
Lewis Wallace is the editor for Eliot, our Wired beat blogger. At the same, however, Eliot has full control of his blog. This flexiblity means he might be one of the few beat bloggers that tries to build the social network around his blog, not on a third party site.
I had a brief chat with Lewis about the beat blogging project and it seems the inspiration for joining this project is the news organizations goal to find more ways to be radically transparent.
Below is an edited version of the conversation with Lewis.
Popping the Hood on Science Journalism: How Wired’s Science Team is Pushing Transparency
In late December we reported on a Wired science writer who , partly inspired by our project, decided to take
radical transparency in his reporting to a new level.
Alexis Madrigal, joined by Brandon Keim, are "popping the hood on Wired science" – or more appropriately, retrofitting the way they report science for web 2.0.
The cliffsnote version: The two built a Wired Science page on Facebook, began sharing what they read via Google Reader (Alexis) or Del.icio.us (Brandon) and Twitter what they are reporting about. The hope is that they will "create a more interactive experience for readers, so they aren’t just reading what we are writing but feel that they are shaping the news," said Alexis
One month into it I wanted to catch up with Alexis to see how things are going and add it to our ongoing "Lessons from Reporters" list. If you are thinking about getting into this – read this interview! Alexis has good advice and ideas for you to pick from (some of which I highlighted in red for easy browsing).
David: So tell me again exactly how you are retrofitting what you do.
Alexis: We set up a Twitter feed that people could subscribe to know what we know and find out what we are reporting on. This way if a reader knows anything they can chip in. We built a Facebook page and started sharing documents and also started sharing articles that I found interesting from my RSS reader. [Editor's Note: Alexis should check out ReportingOn.com].
Since I did that, several other people at wired have put similar information online.
One thing that is important to know: We have great support from our editor Kristin P. and Evan Hansen,
It has been difficult because we have to find the time to do this and that is the hardest part, to continue developing the ideas, building the infrastructure and finding the right tools.
His Outboard Brain: Is Your Chance to Shape News
Alexis Madrigal at Wired News, an honorary beat blogger (not an empty title, we really are thinking about starting an affiliate program and Alexis has always been at the top of that list if we do), is starting his own network today.
Using three simple tools: Twitter, a shared Google Reader and Facebook.
"The idea is that if you can see what blog posts I’m sharing or
Twitters I’m twittering, you’ll be able to chime in with suggestions,
new ideas, and story angles that will help deliver the kind of news
you’re interested in reading.
- My Twitter Account:
I’m making a good faith attempt to twitter each story and blog post
when I start working on it. Follow me to receive 140 characters or less
on the moment’s business.- My Google Reader Shared Items:
Here’s where you can see what blogs I’m drawing from. Let me know if
you want to get added to my blogroll. If you see a shared item that you
like, don’t hesitate to write or Twitter. There’s an RSS feed too.Fledgling Wired Science Facebook Page:
We haven’t really launched our page yet, but we’ve got a little
something up. Come become a collaborator and fan, or at least befriend
us."
It sounds like he is going about it in the right way – starting small and simple. His call for sources allows people to join whatever means of communication suits them best. They are already there, so it’s not a hassle for them (go where the people are). In the end, it doesn’t matter what technology you use – it’s about how you use it to motivate and engage people. Good luck to Alexis!!!!!
We will be following Alexis and learning from/with him.
