12 Aralık 2012 Çarşamba
Social media winners: Small websites!
Bigger news companies invested money in order to be effective in social media. Every major newspaper, blog and TV news channel have own Twitter and Facebook team. The New York Times proudly gives twitter addresses of its reporters and editors in its national section. CNN, MSNBC and Fox News have special feed for the breaking news. Day by day, more journalists open new Twitter and Facebook accounts and try to reach wider audience. But statistics shows that using social media doesn't get every time good feedback and increasing audiences.
According to the data from The ninth edition of Pew Research’s State of the News Media 2012 report, “News sites now get 9% of their traffic from social media, up about 57% in two years. “ But real beneficiary of the social media is not the major news sources. Yes, the winner is small ones.
Last September a study on news websites working within Chicago was published. Study was conducted Northwestern professor Rich Gordon and paid for by The Chicago Community Trust. Prof. Gordon and his team examined all the links between 301 news websites for two-week period and obtained analytics data about referral sources for about 100 of those sites. The study showed that the social media traffic is particularly important for smaller sites. It is pointed out that small size of sites gets 48.1% visits from Facebook, medium size of them attracts 25.6% visits and large ones get in 14.5% visits.
The other interesting information about social media sites is regarding advertising and other type of revenues. Pew Research warned that, “ Social media – particularly Facebook, with its huge audience and domineering lead – have become a partner no news organization can afford to ignore.”
Dependency to the social media is increasing and citizen journalism became primary source of online journalism. I can give an example about my own experience. When super storm has been happening, I was looking at the Instagram photos. I currently live in London, and only sources from New York and Eastern part of the USA were news agencies and twitter feeds. But I’m considering myself as a social media addict and figured out a new way of editing. I have entered #Newyork and #Sandy hashtags on my Instagram account and found various photos from flooded areas. I wasted my whole night to find these pictures and retweet them from USASABAH’s official Twitter account. I was very good at this job because I could obtain and republish very good photos even before Time and the other major news sources. USASABAH is rather small news website, and we have gained more than five hundred followers in a night. And the number of followers topped over two thousand. (Due to disagreement between Twitter and Instagram, It can’t be reach those photos on Twitter anymore. )
I’m wondering, whether Twitter will have some problems with the major news sources such as Wall Street Journal and the MSNBC about their services on this site. Especially when you think about Guy Adams’ Twitter suspension and recent censorship policy, there might be some problem in the future at least between Twitter and local journalists.
5 Aralık 2012 Çarşamba
Marx in Soho
Did you know that long bearded, serious and really clever communist Marx wrote his masterpiece, Das Capital in a two-room flat in London’s Soho? Yes, the gay hub of the city was a real home for Marx. But sure, he didn’t live his best moments in this place…
When I came to London, I found it very boring and not impressing. I was accustomed to general view of London by watching British TV shows, reading British novels and newspapers and learning about British political system in undergrad education. I’m now aware that I made a big mistake as I try to judge this city just by its looking. Because, a city can be only meaningful through learning its late residents, briefly its living history. More you read about an important person for this city, more you can feel its soul. Marx, apart from his reputation as a great mind, lived very hard life and found rather more comfort in London. Reading Marx’s history makes you understand better this city’s central role in the 19th century. Marx had to come to this city it is because France, Belgium and his home country Prussia didn’t want to host him. But London was welcoming every political refugee from every part of the world without real hardships. He sailed to Britain on 27 August 1849 and remained there until his death in 1883. He definitely impressed by the social classes and technical achievements of Britain. But he found his theoretical way by reading every economy book in British Museum and British Library.
A few months after his arrival in London, Karl Marx noticed a working model of an electric railway engine in the window of a Regent Street shop. (Yes! Regent Street: bars, cafes, and Marx… It is still interesting to see all kind of entertainment over there and feeling Marx’s soul. He was on this street, the thing is going to make me happy for a while.) Then he said, “The problem is solved- the consequences are indefinable… In the wake of the economic revolution the political must necessarily follow, for the latter is only expression of the former” Yeah, the consequences… He tried to study every day without getting bored and losing his attention. He had no money for his large family, and had to find a way out of his financial problem. His home was really a bad one, and starving made things very hard for the family. The Marxes’ youngest son, Guido, died suddenly from a fit of convulsions in November 1850; their one-year old daughter Franziska died at Easter 1852 after a severe attack of bronchitis. Another son died of consumption in March 1855. According to the witnesses, during the funeral of the son “Marx stepped forward as the coffin was lowered into the earth and convinced most of the mourners that he intended to hurl himself in after it.”
Marx wrote in February 1852, to his best friend Friedrich Engels, “for the past eight to ten days I have been feeding the family solely on bread and potatoes, but whether I shall be able to get hold of any today is doubtful... “ He wrote again to Engels in April 1858, “I don’t suppose anyone has ever written about “money” when so short of the stuff”
Yeah, I have to accept, I’m fascinated by reading tragedy of Marx, it is because this tragedy happened in these streets, in this city. I can even imagine Marx’s behaviors when he going to library and sleeping on the couch in the afternoons.
I read all of these things from a very good book, Marx’s Das Kapital by Francis Wheen. I bought it for nearly 3 pounds from Watersones. Begin to love this city now!
PS: Leftist history professor, Howard Zinn has a play, same name in the title. I have known the title before but assumed that he was trying to put Soho's cultural environment and Marx's materialistic point of view in a pot. (Latest academical fashion trying to put irrelevant things all together to impress people) I have never heard of Marx has lived in Soho before. I love Zinn because I had the chance reading his great book, A People's History of the United States.
When I came to London, I found it very boring and not impressing. I was accustomed to general view of London by watching British TV shows, reading British novels and newspapers and learning about British political system in undergrad education. I’m now aware that I made a big mistake as I try to judge this city just by its looking. Because, a city can be only meaningful through learning its late residents, briefly its living history. More you read about an important person for this city, more you can feel its soul. Marx, apart from his reputation as a great mind, lived very hard life and found rather more comfort in London. Reading Marx’s history makes you understand better this city’s central role in the 19th century. Marx had to come to this city it is because France, Belgium and his home country Prussia didn’t want to host him. But London was welcoming every political refugee from every part of the world without real hardships. He sailed to Britain on 27 August 1849 and remained there until his death in 1883. He definitely impressed by the social classes and technical achievements of Britain. But he found his theoretical way by reading every economy book in British Museum and British Library.
A few months after his arrival in London, Karl Marx noticed a working model of an electric railway engine in the window of a Regent Street shop. (Yes! Regent Street: bars, cafes, and Marx… It is still interesting to see all kind of entertainment over there and feeling Marx’s soul. He was on this street, the thing is going to make me happy for a while.) Then he said, “The problem is solved- the consequences are indefinable… In the wake of the economic revolution the political must necessarily follow, for the latter is only expression of the former” Yeah, the consequences… He tried to study every day without getting bored and losing his attention. He had no money for his large family, and had to find a way out of his financial problem. His home was really a bad one, and starving made things very hard for the family. The Marxes’ youngest son, Guido, died suddenly from a fit of convulsions in November 1850; their one-year old daughter Franziska died at Easter 1852 after a severe attack of bronchitis. Another son died of consumption in March 1855. According to the witnesses, during the funeral of the son “Marx stepped forward as the coffin was lowered into the earth and convinced most of the mourners that he intended to hurl himself in after it.”
Marx wrote in February 1852, to his best friend Friedrich Engels, “for the past eight to ten days I have been feeding the family solely on bread and potatoes, but whether I shall be able to get hold of any today is doubtful... “ He wrote again to Engels in April 1858, “I don’t suppose anyone has ever written about “money” when so short of the stuff”
Yeah, I have to accept, I’m fascinated by reading tragedy of Marx, it is because this tragedy happened in these streets, in this city. I can even imagine Marx’s behaviors when he going to library and sleeping on the couch in the afternoons.
I read all of these things from a very good book, Marx’s Das Kapital by Francis Wheen. I bought it for nearly 3 pounds from Watersones. Begin to love this city now!
PS: Leftist history professor, Howard Zinn has a play, same name in the title. I have known the title before but assumed that he was trying to put Soho's cultural environment and Marx's materialistic point of view in a pot. (Latest academical fashion trying to put irrelevant things all together to impress people) I have never heard of Marx has lived in Soho before. I love Zinn because I had the chance reading his great book, A People's History of the United States.
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