Session 7 - Social News, RSS, Wikis and Forums

Social News

So far in our social media tools, we have looked at Social Networks, Themed Social Networks and Media Sharing.

This week we will look at Social News.

Social News sites are a place where users can contribute News articles or links. The social side of it is that other people can vote on the articles and the most voted articles will usually get displayed more prominently. This is called "crowd sourcing".

You can also share what you find easily on your favourite social network such as Facebook and Twitter.



WARNING: You can really lose yourself in some of these sites and well and truly lose track of time!!!

BuzzFeed

Buzzfeed was founded in 2006 and calls itself a Social News and Entertainment website. You may have seen articles from BuzzFeed that have been shared on your Facebook feed.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/

 

BuzzFeed also has localised content, so in Australia, you can view things that are trending here. It covers general news as well as Entertainment and images and videos that are currently "trending" on the Internet.

Digg

Digg has been around for a number of years (founded on 2004), but was relaunched after a total rebuild. It was acquired by another company in July 2012 and is now considered a "startup" again. Time will tell whether it will get back to its former glory. This is how Digg describes itself in its About page:

If you like a story you see, you Digg it. The more Diggs that a story gets, the higher up its ranking goes.

http://digg.com/

Reddit

Reddit is also a user driven news website. As with Digg, users vote on stories to raise them up or down, with the view to them making the "front page". It is made up of sub committees that focus on specific topics. To access stories, you can use the Reddit search feature or choose from the topics at the top of the screen.

http://www.reddit.com/

 

Newsvine

Another user driven news site. "Updated continuously by citizens like you, Newsvine is an instant reflection of what the world is talking about at any given moment." In Newsvine, if you like an article you see on the web somewhere, you can "seed it". Add the "Seed Newsvine" button to your bookmarks bar.

http://www.newsvine.com/

Fark

Fark.com, the Web site, is a news aggregator and an edited social networking news site. Every day Fark receives 2,000 or so news submissions from its readership, from which we hand-pick the funny and weird notable news -- and not-news -- of the day.

http://www.fark.com/

I Am Bored

Here are some other sites that kind of fall into this category.....


http://www.i-am-bored.com/

Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

This is how Wikipedia describes The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post was launched on May 10, 2005, as a liberal/left commentary outlet and alternative to news aggregators such as the Drudge Report. On February 7, 2011, AOL acquired the mass market Huffington Post for US$315 million, making Arianna Huffington editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group. In 2012, The Huffington Post became the first commercially run United States digital media enterprise to win a Pulitzer Prize.

 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/australia/

Huffpost Australia 

http://mumbrella.com.au/huffington-post-continues-hiring-blitz-with-australian-site-set-to-launch-next-month-307675

http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/why-arianna-huffington-is-bringing-huffington-post-to-australia-20150208-139agb.html

http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/huffington-post-australia-to-launch-august-19-20150729-ginet2.html

CLASS ACTIVITY

Using one of the above News aggregrators or one of your choice, find an article that interests you and share with the group.

You may work together, individually or small groups, but each student must come up with an article.

Share:

• Where you got the article from (which news site)
• What the article is about
• Why you found it interesting

Niche Social News

As well as the new sites mentioned above, there are also what could be called Niche Social News sites. These are sites that are specific to a particular area of interest. There is a range of different topics including Art, Entertainment, Automotive, and Technology.

http://au.eonline.com/

http://www.tmz.com/

http://www.autonews.com/

http://www.technewsworld.com/

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/

http://mashable.com/

Regular Newspapers/News organisations/Online News

Most large news organizations also have added social news sharing sections to their websites. Some implement their own sharing and voting technologies as well as having Facebook and Twitter pages. You can share news direct from the websites using the social media icons available.

Herald Sun

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/heraldsun?fref=ts



Website  http://www.heraldsun.com.au/

The Age

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/theageAustralia

Website http://www.theage.com.au

News.com.au

Website:  http://www.news.com.au/

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/news.com.au?fref=ts

The following is an interesting article on how News is changing.
https://welink.com/blog/2014/11/19/social-news-discovery/

Assessed Blog/Facebook post

This activity will be worth 10 marks for this subject.

1. Over the next week, find some News Sites that have a Facebook page and choose at least one to subscribe to (follow/Like).  Choose two posts, on different days, to share with the group using Facebook Share or share the article from their website (you can copy and paste the link).

2. Write a review of the News site in your Blog.

Wikis

Wikipedia defines a Wiki as:

"A wiki is usually a web application which allows people to add, modify, or delete content in collaboration with others. Text is usually written using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor. While a wiki is a type of content management system, it differs from a blog or most other such systems in that the content is created without any defined owner or leader, and wikis have little implicit structure, allowing structure to emerge according to the needs of the users."

Wiki Sites

Wikispaces https://www.wikispaces.com/

Shout Wiki   http://www.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page

Wikidot  http://www.wikidot.com/


WikiFoundry  http://main.wikifoundry.com/

Wikia  http://www.wikia.com/Wikia

Or create your own Wikipedia page   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Your_first_article

RSS Feeds

What is RSS?

RSS (Rich Site Summary/Really Simple Syndication) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.

What do I need to do to read an RSS Feed? 

RSS Feed Readers and News Aggregators
Feed Reader or News Aggregator software allow you to grab the RSS feeds from various sites and display them for you to read and use.

see http://www.whatisrss.com/ for more information

Many website have the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds - just look for the RSS symbol!

Readers

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-rss-reader-aggregator.htm

http://sixrevisions.com/tools/free-rss-readers/

http://www.ghacks.net/2014/09/17/the-best-free-rss-readers-for-windows/

Feedly is one example of a RSS reader and has the advantage of being available across a number of platforms.

Forums

Wikipedia defines a forum as

"An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible.

Forums have a specific set of jargon associated with them; e.g. a single conversation is called a "thread", or topic.

A discussion forum is hierarchical or tree-like in structure: a forum can contain a number of subforums, each of which may have several topics. Within a forum's topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as so wish."

Forums are topic related - Any topic or question you would like to ask, and I am pretty sure you will be able to find a forum where other people are discussing the same subject.

Here are some examples of forums:

http://www.backyardchickens.com/
http://www.backyardpoultry.com/
http://baustralianxtrail.runboard.com/
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/

http://www.mrexcel.com/

CLASS ACTIVITY

Discover some forums on a topic that interests you and share with the class.

Have you use a forum before to get solutions to problems or to ask a question? How was the experience - did you get the answers you needed?