Session 4 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/

About BuzzFeed

This is from their website:

BuzzFeed is the leading independent digital media company delivering news and entertainment to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

BuzzFeed is the world’s leading independent digital media company, which leverages data and innovation to reach hundreds of millions of people globally.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/about

Some Buzzfeed statistics https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/buzzfeed-statistics/

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:

Digg delivers the most interesting and talked about stories on the Internet right now.

Digg does curation: building products that make life smoother, simpler, and smarter. Founded in 2004 Re-founded in 2012 Re-re-founded in 2019, Digg provides the most relevant and compelling content to millions of users a month.

http://digg.com/about

http://digg.com/

If you like a story you see, you Digg it (click on the +Digg button). The more Diggs that a story gets, the higher up its ranking goes.

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.

https://www.reddit.com/

On the right hand side of the screen you will see the Top News Communities, trending communities and popular communities.

https://about.reddit.com/

Huffington Post

The Huffington Post is a politically liberal American online news aggregator and blog that has both localised and international editions founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, Andrew Breitbart, and Jonah Peretti, featuring columnists. Wikipedia

Founded: May 2005

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/

Class Activity 1

Can you find any other News Aggregators. News Aggregators are sites that have a variety of news articles that are grouped together.

Share your findings with the class.

Class Activity 2

Using one of the above News aggregators 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.

https://www.eonline.com/au/news

http://www.tmz.com/

http://www.autonews.com/

http://www.technewsworld.com/

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

http://mashable.com/

https://www.socialmedianews.com.au/

Regular Newspapers/News organisations/Online News

Most large news organisations 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.

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

ShoutWiki is a free, ad-supported wiki hosting service. We offer wiki hosting to individuals, companies, school, universities and communities.

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

A Wiki ([ˈwiː.kiː] <wee-kee> or [ˈwɪ.kiː] <wick-ey>) is a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change most content very quickly and easily via website.

And that is it! At the Wikidot.com publishing network we offer everyone a Site (your-site-name.wikidot.com) — a customizable place in the Internet where Users can edit content, upload files, communicate and collaborate.

Wikidot http://www.wikidot.com/

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 https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-is-an-rss-feed/ for detailed information

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

Readers

https://www.lifewire.com/top-free-online-rss-readers-3486649

https://feedly.com/i/welcome

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 4

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?

Teams

Every team has to have clear objectives and agreed goals.

The objective defines the team's primary function - What are you forming the team for and what do you hope to achieve. It is important that every member of the team has the same objectives and goals.

Objectives and goals will be established at the beginning, but must be constantly reviewed. It is important in any team to recognise the needs of the individual members as well as the needs of the entire organisation.

It is necessary to recognise:
• each individual's need to feel that their participation is fulfilling on a personal level
• the need for people to feel that their contribution to the group is recognised and appreciated
• the team's need to feel that goals are being achieved and that the team is not a waste of time.

Team Objectives need to be agreed between all or most of the team members. They need to be democratically reached.

Clear lines and levels of responsibility need to be established. Every member of the team needs to know what the team can or can't do and what the limit to their power is.

Teams are put together to achieve results and so need to have clear objectives so that they can work out how and what they need to do to be successful.

Everyone must have clearly communicated agreements on every aspect of the team's activities. They must establish what results are to be achieved, how the results will be measured, and a timeline for progress and review.

Watch the following video on setting goals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6o5PyJM3bY

Read about S M A R T goals here:

https://www.yourcoach.be/en/coaching-tools/smart-goal-setting.php

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/smart-goals.htm

TEAM MEETING 2

Here is a reminder of what you need to achieve in today's meeting

O2. Second Team Meeting – Week 4 Set Goals and Objectives Create Work plan for all team members and allocate tasks for the week Allocate tasks relevant to the social media policy	Chairperson selected for this meeting
	Each team member was able to contribute to the team goals and objectives
	Each team member encouraged and supported the other members
	Goals and Objectives agreed upon by ALL team members
	Any issues were addressed cordially and professionally
	Feedback was provided for all team member contributions
	Effective Communication was used by all team members
	Each team member was allocated tasks/roles for the week for their workplan
	Notes /minutes were taken by at least one (1) team member and copy provided to the assessor

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Certificate IV LIS Communications ICTWEB201 BSBLDR403