Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. Social Networks and New MediaIncludes box on a new scam (imagine that!). From The Financial Times:Friends, not editors, shape internet habits By David Gelles in San Francisco Financial Times Published: September 2 2009 03:00 | Last updated: September 2 2009 03:00 Charles Miller has had his media diet reshaped by social networks. Just a year ago, the marketing executive for DirecTV in Los Angeles began his day by looking at the home page of the Yahoowebsite, surfing links to the major news stories selected by the site's editors. But today Mr Miller begins his day on Twitter and Facebook - primarily social networking sites--where he reads stories and watches videos suggested by his friends and connections. Mr Miller's changing habits are representative of a broad shift occurring among internet users. With social media on the rise, traditional internet portals such as Yahoo and AOL, once the front doors to the online world, are being spurned in favour of social sites, where users are discovering a new, more personal filter to the infinite world of the internet. "The people you know are going to pick things that are more interesting to you," says Mr Miller. This behavioural change has forced content providers to adapt quickly. Rather than assuming that users will seek out their content, media organisations--from the big international newspaper groups, down to the small local publications--are now actively promoting their content on social networks, and encouraging readers to distribute links to their friends. It is de rigueur for news websites to be embedded with devices that automatically publish articles to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and to content sharing websites such as Digg and StumbleUpon. Read the rest of the article Labels: advertising, media, new media, publishing industry, social networks, underground economy Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). |
