As promised, I’m reporting back on TBD’s election day experiments.
The Voting Issues Crowdmap seemed to be successful. We had a lot fewer reports than in the primaries, but considering D.C. turnout was lower and there were fewer issues reported overall, I’d say that’s accurate. We got 20 accepted reports in and some were very intriguing. Take this one:
My husband & I were told that we could not vote unless we left the children (11 month old & 3 year old) in the hallway. Then the security guard…told us we could take the 11 month old, but had to leave my 3 year old unattended in the lobby & if we didn’t want to do that, then we were unable to vote!
The Foursquare experiment was interesting, though it didn’t yield overwhelming participation. This was kind of expected, considering we didn’t have a lot of lead time and, it turns out, the venues were not easily found on the Foursquare mobile app. Next time, we’ll have to try enlisting Foursquare’s help instead of going out on our own. Here’s how it went down:
At the Virginia venue, 21 people checked in after voting and two left tips about their votes. D.C. had 66 people check in, Maryland had 51 check-ins and six tips about who they voted for in the governor’s race. Those who checked in at both the Maryland and D.C. election venues ended up earning a Swarm badge (if they didn’t have one already). All who checked in and said they were voting got Foursquare’s custom “I Voted” badge. If you missed it, Foursquare also set up a special site to track these voter check-ins as a measure of turnout.
Last news first. Facebook announced today that it will be doing more with its location feature, including offering deals tied to location. This could spell trouble for other geolocation providers like Foursquare and Gowalla, group buying sites like Groupon and, sadly, news sites looking for revenue streams. Facebook is offering these deals for free right now – and who’ll buy the proverbial cow through the likes of us when they can get the milk for free from Facebook?
Also today, GigaOm declares It’s Official: News Corp.’s Paywalls Are a Bust. NewsCorp’s Times (in London) lost 90% of its online traffic after putting up a paywall earlier this year. Somehow, they paint this as success, as they see a smaller online audience that is paying for their service as better than a large one getting it for free. Advertisers, it seems, disagree.
Election Experiments
I blogged here about what TBD was doing for elections (will update today with how that all turned out).The Nieman Lab and Lost Remote documented what news organizations around the country were doing to cover the 2010 election using news media and social media tools. Some great ideas in these posts from the likes of the Huffington Post, NPR and Washington Post.
More Adventures in Storify
Speaking of newsroom experiments, we at TBD are still in love with the tool. Burt Herman, who created the tool, was in the office Monday to tell us a few tips and tricks as well as take suggestions for improvements. Burt is awesome. We’ve been trying it in lots of different instances and news situations. Here’s a few of them:
Sports: TBD tried a crowdsourced fan game story follows the ups and downs of fan reactions during the Oct. 31 Redskins-Lions game. Great idea for use in sports coverage from my coworker Dan Victor.
This was my first ONA conference and I was lucky to have it be in D.C. I volunteered, so I didn’t see many panels, but I was on the Friday keynote panel about TBD’s launch. Since I don’t have great notes, here’s some posts that summed up a lot of the conference’s highlights.
MediaShift outlined notable moments from the events in quotes and notes from the panels. It includes great insights from NPR, AOL – and some familiar names at TBD.
Ryan Thornburg had my favorite post about ONA, for admittedly self-centered reasons (he calls me the “Mike Allen of TBD”).
On Jobs (also ONA)
I sat for an interview Friday at ONA with Kent State student Nicole Stempak about journalism jobs for college grads. She asked me to explain how I’ve been fortunate enough to create my own positions in social media and online news since I left college. A few people asked me to share it, so I’m posting it here.
With the midterm elections coming tomorrow, lots of news outlets will likely be launching their fanciest new toys and social media ideas to best pull in that coveted election night audience on the web. TBD’s no exception, though our election day experiments are based in off-site crowdsourcing to better inform our on-site coverage.
As we did with the Washington D.C. primary elections, we’re launching a Crowdmap to track voting problems across the District, Northern Virginia and parts of Maryland. We’re asking readers to report long lines, broken machines, ballot refusals, electioneering and such at the polls using email, Twitter hashtags or on-site reports. It worked pretty well in September, though this time I’m a bit worried about Crowdmap’s servers holding up. Right now as I post this, they’re struggling to load any of our maps.
While these check-ins and tips won’t be any kind of real measurement, it will give an interesting look at how many people on Foursquare are voting in local races and how those votes are leaning – if people use it. If enough people check in, they could earn a Swarm badge, at least.
Aside from all the fun marketing options, Foursquare can be very valuable for reporters, bloggers and other news organizations. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Find a source with ties to a specific location
When you go to a venue’s page on Foursquare, you can see who has recently checked in there and who is there the most often (aka The Mayor). Say a popular local eatery recently closed – find a frequent customer to interview for the story.
2. Find a source on the scene – fast
In addition to the venue page, you can use Twitter’s search to see publicly posted Foursquare check-ins in near real-time. Go to search.twitter.com and enter 4.sq AND your keyword to see who’s there right now.
3. See where your contacts are –and where they regularly go
Follow your beat contacts and sources on Foursquare and be opened up to their every move. When a Foursquare contact checks in, you can see where they are or have been under Friends.
4. Alert people as to news at a location
Check in where news is happening and leave a shout message as to what’s happening. You may also want to add a link to a story or your Twitter feed for those wanting more info. If you aren’t at the location, but want people there to see the news item, you can cheat (just this once!) and use m.foursquare.com to leave your shout. Note: People have to be friends with you to see this info.
5. Use your expertise (and drive traffic to your stuff) with tips
Leave a tip based on your knowledge of a venue, neighborhood, landmark or intersection. If you have it, leave a link to a blog post or story you’ve written about it for more info. (Note: Don’t just use any old post, try to make it actually useful).
The tips left behind at venues can be very useful for us as both patrons and profilers. They tell you what to order, what to avoid and what to expect when going there. It may or may not be great for reporting, but it helps when living (trust me).
7. See where the people are
On your Foursquare mobile app, you can see what locations near you have the most check-ins right now. Visiting a site like Social Great can also help you see these trends.
8. Show Where You Go
You can use a Foursquare account to show where you are or where you’ve been in your area, something that could really be of use to neighborhood reporters or bloggers in particular. You can display these on your blog or Facebook page using a variety of available apps.
Recommended Links
21 Geolocation Case Studies: Great examples of how brands, media outlets and other sites have used Foursquare, Gowalla and other geolocation applications
Foursquare and other location-based services hold tremendous opportunity for media companies willing to get on board with an unconventional approach to interaction while it is still in its infancy. Following is a very basic overview of these services, including a glossary and tips for those who may not be familiar with these tools.
What are location-based services?
These are any programs or applications that take advantage of the mobile web and GPS capabilities of certain mobile phones to create an interaction based on a user’s location.
An Overview of What’s Out There
Foursquare is a popular location-based app that combines elements of Twitter, city guides and computer games. Users “check-in” to locations via a mobile app, alerting their friends as to their whereabouts and earning points, badges and special offers from local businesses.
Gowalla is the next closest competitor, though it operates on a slightly different system. Here’s an excellent comparison. Gowalla’s best asset is its “trips” features, which lay out a group of destinations in a particular city for someone to trace the path. This has huge potential for media and the travel industry.
Twitteradded geolocation to its tremendously popular service earlier this year – and in mid-June they unveiled Twitter Places, which has venues targeted by geolocation that users can append to tweets. One leg up on the others is a feature where users can explore recent tweets and other venues in their Places location.
Keep an eye on Twitter in this space – they have a lot more users than all the others combined, which could really push geolocation services further into the mainstream.
You can also never leave Facebookout of the equation. They are constantly developing new features to take on other social media – and word is they’ll be launching their own location-based features this summer.
There’s also MyTown, which isn’t as widely used, but has a unique focus on the gaming aspect of these apps. MyTown has a touch of Sim City and Monopoly in its gameplay, allowing users to accumulate and spend virtual cash to buy and rent property.
Early forerunners to these apps are Loopt and Brightkite, which were mobile apps/sites for early adopters of smartphones to find one another. Problem was – there weren’t all that many of us to make it very interesting. Loopt has recently added new features to become more focused on recommendations. Brightkite has, for the most part, remained without a focus on gaming, existing for more of a bare-bones check-in to alert friends as to your location.
Glossary of Common Terms
Check-in: This is where you tell the app where you are. You can check-in from just about any kind of venue – hotels, restaurants, stores, attractions, intersections, etc.
Shout: A tweet-esque message accompanying a check-in on Foursquare (though Gowalla offers something similar). This can be sent out to Facebook and Twitter if you have it set up that way.
Tip: User-added advice that pops up when you check in to a venue on Foursquare. This is what makes Foursquare useful, so tip often!
To-do: Like a tip, but more of a note to oneself.
Badges or Pins: Certain patterns of check-ins can lead to a user earning these virtual rewards.
Trips: Gowalla offers a collection of venues one can check into on an organized tour of a city. You can create these yourself or take public trips.
Mayorships: Some businesses offer exclusive offers for the user who has checked in to their location the most on Foursquare – aka The Mayor.
Do’s and Don’ts of Location-Based Services
Don’t check in at home – not only is it cheating, but it can be dangerous. Don’t check it at someone else’s house without permission and really, don’t check in anywhere you think it might not be wise to share (like where your kids go to school, for instance).
Don’t broadcast your location to Twitter or Facebook unless it’s actually interesting. At least include a shout or message if you intend to share your location beyond the service.
Don’t cheat. Foursquare is a game people take seriously, so don’t check in as you’re walking/driving by a place or otherwise stack your stats.
Note: That said, you can go to m.foursquare.com to leave shouts if you aren’t on the scene but want to update users as to what’s happening at a location. This is good for breaking news when you aren’t on location.
Do know that it isn’t for everyone. If you don’t like people knowing where you are, don’t use it. If the only places you regularly go are your home and workplace, Foursquare isn’t made for you (and that’s OK).
Every industry blog that’s into social media, including this one, loves to tell newsies about the latest and greatest social media craze and How Your Newspaper is Getting Left Behind (!!).
For weeks I’ve been thinking of writing one of these posts on Four Square, aseveryone else has, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it.
While I have been dreaming up some ways my paper can use geolocation services in regards to marketing, branding, advertising and repurposing news content, I simply cannot bring myself to suggest that newsroom personnel omgjusthavetobedoingthisrightnow. No, just no.
Sure, it’d be great to have reporters go out and leave tips, links and trivia all over town on FourSquare, but I have to consider how much I’m willing to give up for that. I don’t know what it is like at everyone else’s newsroom, but I don’t have extra people waiting around for work to do – and frankly, I’d much rather have an online update from the courthouse by 10 am than a bunch of tips on where to find great public art on Four Square or Gowalla.
We in the social media cheerleader camp need a reality check sometimes. I’m frequently the one saying “We’ll find time, just don’t say no yet”, but as I’ve found myself stretched to run the news site and tweet and send email alerts and monitor traffic and and and – I know we can’t say yes to everything anymore. More importantly, we new media snobs shouldn’t feel as if we’re dinosaurs because we aren’t here, there and everywhere on every social network.
Case in point: Right after Google Buzz launched, Old Media New Tricks (who I love, by the way) was on the case, telling us how papers should get their Buzz profiles set up and hop to the status updates. While I don’t blame them for suggesting it (they do need to get blog readers after all) I had to question it. Not every newsroom can afford to have a staffer who can send status updates to a myriad of services all day. With the still-limited spread of Buzz and widespread popularity of Twitter, why divert our already-stretched resources there? It simply fueled the notion we social media types tend to have that says, “Well, this is out there and someday you’re going to look dumb if you weren’t doing it a long time ago.”
I recently attended a presentation by some incredibly talented social media gurus in my local network and one part of their message especially rang out loud and clear to this harried soul: Pick a few social media practices that work for you and do them well.
We as an industry should take that to heart.
Every newsroom should have a goal in mind for their social media use – and then should pick and choose the right tools to best go after that goal without sacrificing what’s important. Consider how seamlessly a social media practice will fit into the newsroom’s workload – and consider if a new idea is worth taking a staff member away from this task or that task (if that’s the case).
It isn’t always a good investment of your limited resources to chase every social media rainbow that comes along – picking just a few is more than OK.
