Comments on: NPR does social media better than New Facebook http://www.radio-sweethearts.com/2008/09/30/npr-does-social-media-better-than-new-facebook/ are too cute by half. Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:00:56 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: andy carvin http://www.radio-sweethearts.com/2008/09/30/npr-does-social-media-better-than-new-facebook/comment-page-1/#comment-2636 andy carvin Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:01:31 +0000 http://www.radio-sweethearts.com/2008/09/30/npr-does-social-media-better-than-new-facebook/#comment-2636 I think it's a fair assessment to say that so far, it's not much more than creating a profile and commenting. There have been a few factors at play. One big thing is the need to redesign the entire site. We've got a team of folks here working on a major redesign, which is slated to roll out next year. Because it literally takes a year to do a redesign like that, we had to decide whether to wait until it's ready and have community tools integrated throughout the site, or if we start with the basic and force them into the current templates. We decided to go for the latter, because we didn't think users would want to wait for basic commenting features until 2009. We also decided to take a staggered approach to rolling out features. For example, later this fall we'll add tools similar to Facebook groups, giving shows and stations the ability to form communities with their own bulletin boards, user-generated photos/video, event listings and the like. Again, we could have waited until those tools were ready, but the more functionalities we layer into a release, the more complex and time consuming that release gets. Lastly, there's the buy-in factor - getting buy-in from NPR journalists and staff. We've been pleased with how supportive our colleagues have been, but for a lot of them, this is very new territory. By rolling out certain features in smaller batches, it makes it easier for us to train everyone and get them thinking about the best ways to integrate these tools into their journalistic activities. So for starters, we're encouraging staff to create profiles and join the discussion threads. As they get comfortable with that, giving them the tools to create communities with user-generated content will be an easier step for them. Hope that makes sense. -andy I think it’s a fair assessment to say that so far, it’s not much more than creating a profile and commenting. There have been a few factors at play. One big thing is the need to redesign the entire site. We’ve got a team of folks here working on a major redesign, which is slated to roll out next year. Because it literally takes a year to do a redesign like that, we had to decide whether to wait until it’s ready and have community tools integrated throughout the site, or if we start with the basic and force them into the current templates. We decided to go for the latter, because we didn’t think users would want to wait for basic commenting features until 2009.

We also decided to take a staggered approach to rolling out features. For example, later this fall we’ll add tools similar to Facebook groups, giving shows and stations the ability to form communities with their own bulletin boards, user-generated photos/video, event listings and the like. Again, we could have waited until those tools were ready, but the more functionalities we layer into a release, the more complex and time consuming that release gets.

Lastly, there’s the buy-in factor – getting buy-in from NPR journalists and staff. We’ve been pleased with how supportive our colleagues have been, but for a lot of them, this is very new territory. By rolling out certain features in smaller batches, it makes it easier for us to train everyone and get them thinking about the best ways to integrate these tools into their journalistic activities. So for starters, we’re encouraging staff to create profiles and join the discussion threads. As they get comfortable with that, giving them the tools to create communities with user-generated content will be an easier step for them.

Hope that makes sense. -andy

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