News: For the Masses, By the Masses?

This is a repost of the latest article I wrote for my work blog on how digital tools are changing journalism. ___________________________________________________________ As social media gets more integrated into people’s lives, they’re demanding more control over the content they interact with. This behavior is happening organically in the digital space. In response, newspapers are changing the way they create content to include consumer participation – and consumers are changing how they interact with the news.

According to an eyetracking study by the Poyner Institute, the shift within newspapers towards focusing on more digital consumer participation makes a lot of sense:

• Online participants read an average 77% of an article versus the 62% within broadsheet and 57% within tabloids. 
• People consuming news digitally also read more regardless of the length of the article. 

This could directly relate to the fact that people have the option digitally to aggregate news in a way they rarely can offline.

And, people are taking advantage of this by personalizing the news for themselves:

• Digg Newswire and Redditt both allow consumers to act as an editor by voting news stories up and down depending on the topic and its relevancy to the individual.
• Trove creates personalized content based on individual user’s interests. It instantly builds a user’s personal home page by matching its channels to the user’s Facebook likes and interests. It then searches and analyzes articles and blog posts to find entities – people, places, things, or concepts – in text. Based on what it finds, Trove classifies the article into one or more of hundreds of topics.
• XYDO is a news-based social network. It focuses on the social endorsement, prioritization and engagement of news. XYDO provides users with a prioritized view of articles/features, editorials, blogs and other news being shared within their social graphs, together with the ability to observe and track broad global news trends and specialized domain-specific trends. Personalized news emails, the XYDO brief, are sent to the users regularly.

Newspapers are also adapting to find real time, socially curated content. For example, New York Daily News is now requiring that every editorial computer has tweetdeck installed on it. This was mandated by Scott Cohen, the New York Daily News’ digital executive editor. Even more interestingly, the Guardian just began an experiment in which consumers helped curate the news. Beginning Oct 11th, the newspaper began publishing a live account of its news diary online, allowing consumers to see the scheduled news of the day as well as any upcoming breaking news. Consumers were encouraged to tell editors what they thought about individual stories and suggested stories using Twitter by tweeting with the hashtag #opennews. They could also follow the editor’s opinions about stories in a Twitter feed and add their own opinions to the conversation by tweeting to the hashtag #opennews. Editors dropped stories in the queue that received a lukewarm response. The purpose of the experiment was to increase readership, online conversation and positive sentiment around the Guardian’s news.

And, tools are coming out that change the definition of what it means to be a journalist. For example, Public Laboratory is creating a number of tools that are available to allow anyone to cover the news. These tools can take aerial photos or video of an event or story. These tools are facilitating the means for anyone to tell their story from a different standpoint.

However, this evolution in the news begs a question. Does news that is created or influenced by the informed public elevate certain stories like celebrity gossip over others such as the protests in Syria? Or, does it allow for truly unbiased reporting or information gathering? There are examples that point to both options as possible and indicate that the answer will probably lie somewhere in between. It feels like time will tell.

The Emergence of Digital Secret Social Clubs

This is a repost of an article I wrote for my work blog in September on the rise of the secret social club in the digital space.
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The idea of the secret social club has been prevalent in the real world throughout much of history. However, until recently, this was not replicated in the digital space. In the last few years, status stories shared via social platforms and in real life have become increasingly more attractive and prevalent. Digital secret social clubs have begun to actively tap into these status stories. These clubs unify members not only through their exclusivity but also through shared passion points. They provide members a way to be on the inside, “in the know” about specific passions from food to art to travel. These clubs also give their members the outlet to be able to lead the way to the “unique,” the “cool,” and the avant-garde in their community.

The idea of the secret social club taps into some key emotional needs of consumers:

• The desire for unique stories to tell 
• The promise of “shared” experiences
• And, the feeling of increased social status.

As noted, in Trendwatching’s report, Statusphere: "When individuality is the new religion, owning or experiencing something no one else has is the ultimate status fix.” Secret social clubs are directly answering that need by providing participants stories that aren't common knowledge for the masses and helping consumers tell their own status-yielding stories to other consumers.

• Excursionist is a members-only travel site where travel is tailored to a consumer’s passions and around unique experiences. The trips are curated by world-renowned experts and guided by people in the local community.
• The Global Party is a worldwide extravaganza featuring luxury lifestyle brands and 80,000 of the world's elite inspired by the adventures of fictional character, Phileas Fogg. 80 exclusive parties will take place in venues across the globe all launching within 24 hours. This is based around an effort to raise funds and awareness for a collection of charities around the world.
• Diner en Blanc is an exclusive pop-up secret dining society. Members must dress in white to recognize each other and everyone brings his or her own food, tables, chairs and glassware to a secret but public location, which is revealed shortly before the start of event.

Secret social clubs allow brands to reward loyalty in a smart way. Brands can provide well thought out and unique incentives. For example, the Patron Social Club encourages consumer participation by promising the more a person participates the more likely he or she is to get an invite to one of the secret dining society events. This intrigues and engages consumers well beyond a simple offer or coupon.

The one of the strengths of these branded social clubs is that they share credible and original content that’s engaging and relevant to their target audience. They create compelling content their consumers actually want to consume. Moreover, these secret social clubs provide a holistic experience for their members by taking digital experience off-line into real life social engagements and then bringing the real life engagements back into the online experience. The branded secret social clubs have found clever ways to engage the social media audience to amplify an experience that already works well in the physical world.

The Convergence of Fitness and Digital

Wow! It's been a while since I've had a chance to write anything. It's been a busy summer between moving from Minneapolis to Manhattan and starting a new job. Anyway, fall is finally here in New York and with it, I want to repurpose some blog posts I've been writing for my current employer. I hope you enjoy them! Here's the first one from August:
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Keeping fit while traveling has always been a bit of a challenge. While a lot of hotels have gyms and a person can always throw on sneakers and go for a run, it’s easy to lose focus on the road. Workouts get off track. And, it’s easy to get out of shape.

As noted in trendwatching’s 11 Crucial Trends to Watch for 2011 report, the convergence of wellness and health is an emerging consumer trend. Health has become as important as traditional status symbols and consumers expect health-related tools to “improve their quality of life, rather than merely treating illnesses and ailments.”

The convergence of fitness and digital platforms not only addresses consumers’ interest in improving their quality of life through wellness but taps into two seemingly opposed consumer trends: the increased interest in ultra-personalization and the emergence of inclusive, global communities of shared interests. Despite the obvious tensions between these two trends, fitness platforms appear to be capitalizing on the intersection of needs between the two.

Mobile apps are allowing for even more personalization and customization, giving customers added control of the information they receive, when, where and how they receive it. The ultra personalization trend has been instrumental in the creation of a number of fitness platforms:

• Nike+ is one of the most well-known running platforms. Using a tracking device within your shoe or another GPS-enabled device, it tracks each of your runs and provides an endless about of information about each run including maps, calories burnt, stride, etc.
• YogaTailor creates custom personalized yoga video workouts for you, maximizing the benefits within your available time and level of experience.
• Jog.fm helps you create a playlist to match whatever pace you want to run, walk or cycle at based on beats per minute (BPM). It takes the existing music in your library and mixes it according to your requested pace. While options exist for listening to others’ playlists, it still revolves mainly around your music, your playlist, and mostly your desired pace.

While people want to personalize their options for working out, they also want to share their experiences and get support from a community with shared interests. Brands are tapping into people’s need to have a community of support around them as they reach for their goals. This need is especially strong in the fitness category and can be the missing link in terms of exercise for a person who has to travel regularly. Fitness platforms are focusing on creating inclusive communities that can be accessed anytime, everywhere and are based on similar fitness interests and goals:

• Two weeks ago, Speedo rolled out their new platform, “Pace Club. Speedo’s Pace Club includes a mobile app that allows swimmers to sign up for training programs, log workouts, view professional athletes demonstrating proper technique and share their progress with friends through Pace Club’s virtual “Swim Team,” as well as on Facebook or Twitter.  Additionally, “Splash Tags” allow consumers to search for and review pools – as of launch, 3,500 pools had already been entered into the system, the most comprehensive directory in the country. There’s also a blog featuring content by Speedo athletes and a product widget showcasing relevant Speedo products.
• Endomondo is a social network for runners. At its core, it is a cross-platform running app with a huge network of fellow runners built in. It has apps across most mobile platforms and GPS-enabled devices including Garmin. With Endomondo installed on your mobile device, you can track where you run, how long you run, check your personal best times, and share them with friends. From the Endomondo site, you can view exercise summaries, issue invites and challenges to get your friends involved in your fitness push, and participate in site-wide challenges.
• Track-a-thon is an app developed by mcgarrybowen labs to support a runner’s fans. The runner downloads the app onto his or her iphone and then carries it with him or her throughout the race. The spectator can then visually track a person’s race progress along the course including runners’ distance, speed elevation and the music they are listening to (assuming the race allows music).

According to trendwatching, “the ‘consumerization’ of health means that more consumers will choose products with embedded health benefits that are actually well designed, desirable, accessible, fun, tasty, interesting or storied.” So, the next time you are going on a trip, consider checking out a few of these tools and see if you find it easier to stay in shape while on the road.

Happy New Year

I know it's a few days late, but I wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year by posting a reel by one of my favorite digital agencies, North Kingdom. I find their work inspiring (I already wrote about their awesome advergame, Teamgeist, for Adidas). I hope you enjoy this reel as much as I do. I can't wait to see what comes next from these guys!

North Kingdom Showreel 2009 from Designchapel on Vimeo.

Social Media and Human Rights

Here's the presentation I gave at the Unsummit in Minneapolis this October. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Social Media and Human Rights

View more documents from judyabel.

And here's the video from the presentation in case you are interested in learning more about the New Tactics in Human Rights program.