Resource: Social Media

Tools

Social networking allows people to share information, photos and other materials and talk about them online. There are many free social networking tools, including

  • Ning allows anyone to create a social network instantly.
  • Twitter is a "micro blogging" tool that enables people to communicate with their contacts (called followers) via short messages (called tweets).
  • Facebook is an immensely popular social networking tool. Many news organizations have created "fan" pages on Facebook or share content on Facebook. One Knight-funded experiment by NewsCloud enables special news sites on Facebook.
  • Flickr allows users to share photos. Sites can create photo groups around different topics and locations and link to them on Flickr.
  • Seismic enables live video from computer to a site. It's a great tool for doing interviewing people.

Training

News University offers several low-cost Webinars on social media. Titles include:

  • "Social Networks: The New Architecture of the Web"
  • "Twitter for Journalists"