Sean's Social Media Madness for Information Professionals

Check out two of the social news sites listed above. How do these platforms help you improve the relevance of the articles recommended to you? How could these sites be used in a professional sense? What issues could you identify when using them? Write a post of 400 words in your OLJ.

NBC News

The two social news sites I choose are Digg.com and NBC News. To begin with, the websites help to improve the relevance of the articles recommended to me in a variety of ways. Beginning with NBC News, the most trending articles are placed at the front of the webpage in order for the user to accesses them (NBC News, 2021). These articles are the ones that have the most user engagement, whether it be in the form of retweets, likes, comments, or other engagement. Furthermore, the position of these news articles will be based on topics that are trending or occurring at this moment. One such topic is the Corona Virus, which naturally is a hugely devastating and unfortunate happening throughout America, home of NBC news at the moment (NBC News, 2021). Some of the topics from the news website include politics, Coronavirus, US news, Exclusives, Foreign Affairs, Autos, Congress, Immigration and more. Twitter is a highly appropriate social media tool for the NCB news due to its immediate and bite-sized functioning. Twitter is the perfect channel for reporters or others to post information and connect with an audience instantly (Prodromou, 2013, p. 43). It also engages the audience by including videos, podcasts, pictures and text, ensuring this multimodal format of presentation is engaging for all learning types. Video plays a large role in the platform, as many interested users today rely on video for information. To sum up, the articles are the most popular or most significant issues affecting Americans today and have been put into one place for the reader.

Digg

Digg is a highly interesting platform, in that it gathers interesting articles from around the internet from various web pages, blogs, wikis and more, and puts the best of these articles and communications in one place for the audience. It will feature areas such as popular culture (TV, movies, books, etc), sports, promotions, animals, nature, food, mental health, news, politics, cars, internet, how to, culture, Corona Virus plus many more topics (Digg, 2021). The idea is that Digg is curating the best of this content and placing it in one place for you, which makes it so much easier for you to retrieve. With all this information in one spot, the user only needs to attend this webpage, rather than all other news, entertainment, and information sources out there on the internet (Digg, 2021). Being that Twitter is a platform where you can write anything from topical issues, to the weather, to what you’re having for dinner (Prodromou, 2013, p. 44) it is the perfect place for a brand such as Digg to reveal information.

How to Use

Regarding how these sites could be used in a professional sense, if I were a journalist, I might use NBC to find what is important or trending, before searching for my own story. For instance, if I discovered, from this well-resourced webpage, that the Coronavirus was trending, I would do an article on the Coronavirus. It is also important for workplaces, as many are affected by happenings in the country: perhaps a shooting, or a state affected by roadblocks, or fires, floods etc. By having an ear for current affairs you can more easily negotiate throughout the day in the workplace (particularly for managers who may need to hire new staff in case of an emergency). They could be used by librarians to work out what kind of book the library should stock. For instance, if a certain diet is popular, and this is shown via news feeds, they may acquire books of similar nature. Conversely, if new politicians are elected, perhaps biographies should be instilled which discuss the politician’s life.

The Digg webpage could be used by librarians to find interesting facts that could be used in the newsletter for a library, such as an article on how to best feed your dog, for example. By including these interesting anecdotes, readers may be more likely to read the following newsletters. Furthermore, it could inform librarians on topics of general interest which will, in turn, inform them of popular non-fiction categories they should acquire for libraries. Librarians should also look at the way the two Twitter accounts are structured, as it is said that Twitter accounts that tweet with purpose and as part of a business strategy are far more likely to be successful (Smith & José, 2009, p. 77).

They could also find popular cultural arts subjects trending, and promote these in the library and place special displays out for them.

Some of the issues I discovered when using them were that on the NBC webpage there are so many articles and subjects that it’s quite a lot to take in. It’s rather overwhelming and almost dizzying. Perhaps a more focused navigation system would help. Furthermore, the great number of pictures make the webpage a little slow to load, and the promotions are often confused with real articles, which doesn’t help the reader access quality journalism. On Digg, I thought, was user-friendly. I think perhaps having a more global focus may improve its audience rate.

References

Digg. (2021). Digg blog. https://digg.com/

NBC News. (2021). News blog. https://www.nbcnews.com/

Prodromou, T. (2013). The keys to success. In Ultimate guide to Twitter for business generate quality leads using 140 characters, instantly connect with 300 million customers in 10 minutes, discover 10 Twitter tools that can be applied now. Entrepreneur Media, Inc.

Smith, J., & José, L. (2009). Aligning your Twitter strategy with your business. In Dominate your market with Twitter tweet your way to business success. Oxford: Infinite Ideas.