It’s a little embarrassing for a media/journalism junkie to admit, but I just discovered Storify this morning. I’m hoping to use it for future blog posts, but my first story will be an investigation of Storify’s impact on media and journalistic potential.
From what I can tell so far, Storify is an interactive tool for people to easily create stories using tweets, Facebook statuses and links. From their FAQ:
Storify is a way to tell stories using social media such as Tweets, photos and videos. You search multiple social networks from one place, and then drag individual elements into your story. You can re-order the elements and also add text to give context to your readers.
Storify launched its private beta in September 2010, according to Mashable.com. Media outlets and bloggers were first to utilize Storify, developing real-time stories on the 2010 midterm election and other topics. Unlike following Twitter trending topics, Storify allows story writers to pick and choose the most relevant tweets, videos and pictures about a certain thing. The search bar also allows users to filter out RTs and search for pictures.
Storify became available to the public in April and has since been used to document the #londonriots as well as bad dates.
What’s great about Storify is that users can search tweets, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube–everything, really–all from the same window. Unlike posting a regular WordPress or Tumblr post, bloggers don’t have to keep opening up Google to look for a specific reference.
After writing this post, I’m convinced Storify is an excellent new tool for journalists with a focus on multi-media and social networking sources. I have a feeling that articles will gradually become more like this as people move away from face-to-face and even phone content. As people stop using the phone the best way to get direct quotes will be through Twitter and Facebook. But hopefully in-person interviews won’t completely die.
A lot of journalists are stubborn and unwilling to accept change, but I think as more discover how easy Storify makes organizing content, they’ll become converts.
My only concern is that Storify makes it easy to organize existing content on the web, but there’s no option I can see for uploading your own videos unless they’re already available in a tweet or through Flickr. I’ll do a bit more exploring to see if there’s a better method for sharing photos.
So after obsessing over getting it for a week, I finally got an invite and was able to accept that invite to Google+. Unfortunately, Google has been really secretive about how to get on the site during the field test. Normally, in these types of tests, everyone initially invited gets a certain number of people they can invite and then those people can also invite a certain number of people–and so on. But for Google+, in order to participate in the field test, you must be invited and accept the invite during a completely random and totally unpredictable invite window. As a result, if someone invites you to Google+ during this invite window but you don’t accept until later, you miss out.
In laymen’s terms, getting on the site during the field test takes a certain level of vigilance. For me, this meant harassing my sister’s friends who got invites. I did that until I realized getting an invite from a random person on Twitter would be better.
Now, two days after creating my profile, I’ve decided I think I like Google+ more than I liked Facebook when I started that social networking site. Don’t get me wrong–it will take Google+ several months to surpass Facebook in usability. Some of the features still have kinks, but I still believe that Google+ is superior than Facebook was in it’s beginning stages. I also understand many of the Twitter features users have come to know and love–@ mentions, #hashtags–were developed by users after the site got popular. Similarly, I think, once more people get involved, the features on Google+ will become more useful and will develop without the help of Google. Like any social network, Google+’s value will ultimately be determined by what people make of it.
That being said, here’s what I think (if you care at all) about Google+’s features:
Circles
For me, this is what makes Google+. Yes, users on Facebook and Twitter can sort their friends and followers by lists, but, on Google+, you can add people’s’ emails to circles even if they aren’t part of the social networking site. When I first got both Facebook and Twitter, my parents both wanted to snoop on my pictures, statuses and tweets. Because of the nature of Facebook, my mom always complained about not being able to look at the pictures I had of me and my friends. My dad, being a little confused about how it worked, created his own Twitter to see my tweets (though you can see anyone’s unprotected tweets as long as you know their username).
Google+ resolves both of these issues with circles. I created a circle for my family and can send specific status updates and share photos and such with my mom and dad to their emails. They don’t have to join anything.
This also makes it easier to hide certain things from parents, if you’re so inclined. However, Facebook is probably still going to be the best place to do that–at least for now. While Google+ is working out problems, I don’t recommend sending anything too sensitive to any circles because it might go to all your circles.
Before I really understood how this feature worked, I sent a status update to everyone in my Google+ circles. Basically, this means I sent an email to everyone. I sent a frantic second status apologizing, but I’m still a little embarrassed by it.
So no one else makes the same mistake, Google+ users should take note of the screenshot to the right. This album is of a family trip me and my parents took last summer. As you can see, users can choose to “share” the album with certain circles. For the people in your circles that don’t have Google+, they will get an email with a link to the pictures. You can also choose to not email people without Google+.
Hangouts
Hangouts is like Skype with a lot of people–or at least it seems that way. Personally, I haven’t tried this feature out. I don’t know enough people on Google+ to actually use it (though I think my boyfriend and I will try it this week, so I’ll write about my personal experience then).
To use the feature, you have to first install Google Voice and Video (which is kinda annoying, but it only takes a second). Then you can let people in certain circles know you’re open to video chatting. I’m excited to try this feature with my friends from back home in Evanston, IL, as well as those I’ve met in NYC. Whenever we actually get around to Skyping, it takes some time to plan and that can be pretty annoying, especially when the only way to communicate is via Facebook (if they’re in Europe or whatever).
Sparks
So far I haven’t delved too deep into Sparks–Google+’s response to the interest side of Twitter. However, I don’t think I like it too much. On Twitter users can #hashtag certain interests or topics in their tweets. This is pretty useful for both finding followers and discussions as well as having other users follow you.
On the other hand, Sparks is sort of silly at this point. I added some Sparks, but it looks like the feed of sites and information is nothing but a Google search of that word. For instance, I sparked “news” and the only thing that seems to be coming up is news about News of the World.
That being said, I think Sparks will get better with time. On the sparks home page, there’s several featured Sparks feeds and these seem to be more comprehensive than searching and creating your own Spark streams, which seem like Google searches now.
___
As you can see, Google+ isn’t perfect. But, like they warned in the “field test” box, it’s only a week old. Social networks, because they’re meant to be userfriendly, only get better as more and more people join.
If you’d like an invite to Google+, comment below and I’ll add you during the next invite window I see (but, like I said, you’re responsible for accepting that invite during the same window).
Despite having one of those so-called "coveted" invites, I am unable to use Google's attempt at social networking. Bastards.
When I first read about Google+, the company’s long-awaited attempt at social networking, I wasn’t exactly interested. The basic concept behind Google+ is summarized in several thousand articles online, which I won’t link to from here. But here are the main things that Google+ has to offer, directly quoted from Google themselves [cause there's already a million places where you can find re-wording]:
Circles
You share different things with different people. But sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn’t be a hassle. Circles makes it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself, just like real life.
Sparks
Remember when your Grandpa used to cut articles out of the paper and send them to you? That was nice. That’s kind of what Sparks does: looks for videos and articles it thinks you’ll like, so when you’re free, there’s always something to watch, read, and share. Grandpa would approve.
Hangout
Bumping into friends while you’re out and about is one of the best parts of going out and about. With Hangouts, the unplanned meet-up comes to the web for the first time. Let buddies know you’re hanging out and see who drops by for a face-to-face-to-face chat. Until we perfect teleportation, it’s the next best thing.
So, in summary, Google took the best aspects of Facebook (what people are doing, sharing=Circles), Twitter (looking at stuff you find interesting and following it=Sparks) and Skype (video chatting with people=Hangout) and combined them into one happy little social media platform.
It sounded sort of redundant when I first heard about it. I decided I would sign up, but only because, as a journalism student, you have to be interested and open to new things in social media. So I didn’t care too much about getting an invite.
Until my sister told me she knew someone who could invite me.
Now, a week later, I’m obsessively checking Google+ because they have this annoying little thing saying:
It’s embarrassing, but I didn’t care about signing up until I found out that I couldn’t sign up. It’s sort of like that crap they blog about on Betches Love This Site: This betch really loves things that she can’t have. Right now, I can’t access Google+, and it’s driving me completely insane.
After obsessively checking Twitter #googleplus today, there was finally hope, it seemed:
False. If you type in “plus.google.com” the first time on a web browser, you get a–hallelujah–sign in page. Then, after signing in with your account, you get redirected.
While some people are tweeting that their invites are getting accepted, I still have yet to get mine, and I’m annoyed. But, at the same time, I’m extremely intrigued.
Twitter doesn't have a telephone number, so a computer handles all their customer service.
I have a bone to pick with Twitter. For the past four days, I have unsuccessfully attempted to get in touch with someone–anyone, really–from their “support” team. Why, you might ask, would a journalism student, well-versed in the art of search engine manipulation/optimization, have such a hard time reaching a huge corporation’s help services? Because this corporation doesn’t have a phone number.
While I understand that Twitter is a company founded on the principle that the Internet is far superior to anything else, sometimes conversing with a computer screen doesn’t cut it. Especially when you have a complicated problem.
For my new job, a newspaper called The Chief-Leader, they wanted me to re-vamp and use their Twitter account, @TheChiefLeader, to gain more web visitors. This is completely understandable, as it is the Internet/cyber age and Twitter has become an important part of the news industry, however awkward it might be.
Unfortunately, the account was created over a year ago and hasn’t been used for over a year. So nobody in the office knew the password or the email that was linked to the account. I sent in a request form last Thursday and told my boss if they didn’t get back to us by today I would call them. Because I assumed that an international corporation has to have a telephone number. My bad.
One Twitter's "support" pages (obtained with screenshot).
After discovering that Twitter wouldn’t be any help because they only let you submit forms online (and even then you can tell they don’t like it), we had to try and track down the person who created the account. When that didn’t work, I sent in another request to Twitter and tweeted a direct message to @support explaining the issue.
I know that Twitter must get hundereds if not thousands of support requests a day, but my boss had a point when he expressed his concern over giving up and changing the username to @ChiefLeader or @TheChief_Leader: it’s a copyrighted name and we should be able to use it…it’s our name.
Through this whole process I tried to use those handy websites where they give you corporate numbers, but, alas, Twitter was completely unlisted. It makes me wonder if the employees only contact each other with email, otherwise I’m sure the main number would have been leaked by now.
In a lot of these websites, like contacthelp.com, I saw I wasn’t the only one frustrated with Twitter’s lack of a phone number. One person commented:
I am a small business owner and the people at twitter are incredibly arrogant. The fact that they feel they do not need to have a phone number to reach customer service people is the apex of arrogance. Their online support borders on insanity and just plan stupid.
Hear hear.
I can only hope that Twitter will read this and get back to me. Otherwise, I may be staring at my email, hoping for a response, the rest of my life.
UPDATE:
I really cannot believe how incredibly lazy the Twitter support team (or computer, if a human isn’t even responsible for the @support account) is. I sent them the following message:
I am an intern for @TheChiefLeader and we are unable to access the Twitter account b/c we don’t have the password or email. How to log in?
To which they responded:
Hi. For information on changing or recovering your password, take a look here: http://t.co/HedaSO5
Basically they didn’t read the message. So I said:
Ok. You really didnt read my message. We don’t have the password or email.
It’s a little embarrassing for a media/journalism junkie to admit, but I just discovered Storify this morning. I’m hoping to use it for future blog posts, but my first story will be an investigation of Storify’s impact on media and journalistic potential.
