Jeff Sonderman

Jeff Sonderman (jsonderman@poynter.org) is the Digital Media Fellow at The Poynter Institute. He focuses on innovations and strategies for mobile platforms and social media in online news. He previously has worked as the senior community host and managing editor of TBD.com, a local news website in Washington, D.C., and WJLA.com, the website of D.C.-area news station ABC7. Prior to that he was the internet content director and metro editor of The Times-Tribune in Scranton, Pa., and also spent years reporting on health care, business and transportation. Find ways to follow him at jeffsonderman.com/connect


How will we reinvent news for Google’s new augmented-reality eyeglasses?

The New York Times | 9to5 Google
Nick Bilton reports Google will be selling eyeglasses with an embedded digital display by the end of the year. What kinds of new news products and sources will emerge to fit this new class of devices?

Bilton's sources say the Android-powered headsets will cost "around the price of current smartphones." They'll have a small screen on the side of the viewing area, wireless Internet access, and sensors like GPS, an accelerometer and a front-facing camera to "monitor the world in real time and overlay information about locations, surrounding buildings and friends who might be nearby." This description sounds similar to the glasses envisioned by Matt Thompson and Robin Sloan in "The Storm Collection," their vision of a future when digital information overlays every part of the real world. (more...)
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Storify iPad app should draw more users and live coverage

StorifyiTunes Store | The Next Web
Storify's brand-new iPad app unveiled this morning should extend the curation tool to new, more-casual users and increase the live-blogging of conferences and events.
The new Storify iPad app enables easy, intuitive story building.
In general, the app offers the same service the Web version of Storify does. But its touch-based interface is more intuitive for drag-and-drop story building. And the availability on a portable device now means more people can Storify an event live. There's also a new feature to tweet from within the app, so you can quickly post your own updates while curating others'. (more...)
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BuzzFeed creates novel Facebook app for nostalgia

Digiday | BuzzFeed
Social-savvy news site BuzzFeed is creating a new kind of Facebook app to go along with some of its articles. The so-called "nostalgic app" pairs with a post like “What Was Your First Computer?" and lets readers add a note to their Facebook Timelines (a personal chronology) about when they first got a computer -- and how amazingly old it looks now. (If you try this out, know that Facebook is working to fix a bug currently preventing these posts from displaying, BuzzFeed Managing Editor Scott Lamb told me.) || Related: Why this app resonates: People share content because of what it says about them (Poynter) | BuzzFeed's latest hire: "Online curiosity collector" Katie Notopoulos (Gawker) || Earlier: Why news orgs should pay close attention to what BuzzFeed does (Poynter).
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WSJ Facebook pages hit by ‘comment flashmob’

Wall Street Journal | Facebook
A German group claiming affiliation with Anonymous told followers to flood the Journal's Facebook pages with comments this afternoon. The group is protesting a Journal article comparing the online hacking group to Al Qaeda. Comments began on the Journal's German-language Facebook page then spread to the main page. Commenters were instructed to post this message:
"Dear editors of the German Wall Street Journal, You equated Anonymous with Al-Qaeda in your February 2012 article and the related coverage. With this type of coverage you may be able to stir up fear in the United States, but not in the land of poets and thinkers! With this comment, we would like to oppose the deliberate dissemination of false information and express our displeasure with your lobby journalism. We are Anonymous. We are millions. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us!"
(more...)
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Facebook offers journalists verified accounts, announces new sharing apps

Facebook | TechCrunch | Facebook + Media | Lost Remote
Facebook has begun offering to verify the identities of journalists and celebrities with large followings on the network. Selected users are invited to privately upload a photo ID, and after verification they are allowed to use a pseudonym (which other users cannot) and will be recommended to subscribers more often. Facebook also just announced a new batch of news and media companies who have created "Timeline apps" to automatically share a user's reading or viewing activity with Facebook friends. New entries to "frictionless sharing" include BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Mashable, MSNBC.com, The Daily Show, TODAY Show and GetGlue. || Related: The Guardian says it's fine with putting its Facebook app in a "walled garden" (Digiday) || Earlier: Washington Post's Social Reader gets mobile apps (Poynter) | Full coverage of Facebook in journalism
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buzzfeed

Why BuzzFeed as a real news site is no laughing matter

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

When Gandhi said that famous line (if he did), he was describing the process of reform through nonviolent protest. But… Read more

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With growth like Pinterest’s, who needs a business model?

Wall Street Journal | RJMetrics
The Journal examines the business side of the fast-growing social network Pinterest, and finds there really isn't one. "Pinterest's monetization strategy isn't in the oven and it's not even off the baking table," board member Jeremy Levine said. Meanwhile, data analysis firm RJMetrics says Pinterest has more growth and sharing than Twitter did at the same stage. "Over 80% of pins are re-pins, demonstrating the tremendous virality at work in the Pinterest community. To contrast, a study done at a similar time in Twitter’s history showed that only about 1.4% of tweets were retweets." || Related: WSJ creates a guide to Pinterest, on Pinterest | David Pogue reviews the site: "It’s like virtual scrapbooking" (New York Times) || Earlier: Sharing sites like Pinterest raise copyright concerns (Poynter) | It’s time for journalists to pay attention to Pinterest (Poynter) | How to adapt online news in the age of sharing (Poynter)
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Chloe Sladden: Twitter is ‘the new newswire’

Twitter’s director of content and programming, Chloe Sladden, talked about how the media are and should be using Twitter Wednesday afternoon in her keynote speech to Stanford’s Future of Media Conference.
[View the story "Chloe Sladden shares insight on howRead more

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'Social media' concept

6 things we learned about journalism from Social Media Week

Panel discussions about journalism and technology can be pretty hit-or-miss these days. This week, I saw a couple of hits.

In two Social Media Week panels Tuesday in Washington, D.C., O’Reilly Media’s Alex Howard (better known as @digiphile)… Read more

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Facebook delivers 1 of every 4 online display ads

comScore
Facebook's 1.3 trillion display ad impressions accounted for 27.9 percent of all the display ads served online in 2011, according to comScore. The biggest content-related companies were Yahoo (#2 at 529 billion impressions) and AOL (#5 at 131 billion). These companies' dominance of display ads is likely helped by their ability to target ads to relevant visitors. Pew Research Center recently found Yahoo targets more ads (67 percent) than other news sites. Facebook personalizes almost all of its ads based on a user's demographics, interests and friends. News orgs mostly do not target ads. || Related: comScore also reports Web users spend about 5 percent of time on news/information sites, and 17 percent on social networks. || Earlier: Online advertising passing by news organizations (Poynter)
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