Why would you want to do that? Good question:

Just like Twitter, attempts to sell the benefits are not easy. And just like Twitter, when you see some examples you start to get it. Again the creativity comes from working within limits.

There are three examples over on the Press Gazette worth watching and for journalism here are some suggested uses to start with:

Print publications should be using it too – to promote cover art or front page leads; to take readers inside the newsroom, to a press conference or on assignment; to get a word from the editor or the writer of the cover story.

You can read Like Twitter before, Vine is worth your attention here.

Publishers describe their digital ad woe with these terms: “price compression,” “bargain-basement ad networks,” and “death of the banner ad.” Each describes a world of hyper-competition in digital advertising — a world of almost infinite ad possibility and unyielding downward pricing pressure.

Doctor identifies technology as a key reason for much of the above. He continues:

[Y]ou’ll see lots of talk of the ad-tech stack, and who owns it. Google, of course, owns much of it, through its successive AdWords/Doubleclick/AdMob and more creations, acquisitions and integrations. Its stack is so efficient that many publishers feel compelled to use it, though they are wary of getting their businesses tied ever more directly to Google.

You can continue to read The newsonomics of climbing the ad food chain here.

Statistics
How many people use top social media, apps and services?

The 7 most interesting social media studies and what to learn from them

By The Numbers: 25 Amazing Facebook Stats

By The Numbers: A Few Amazing Twitter Stats

Demographics
A demographic portrait of Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook users

Who uses which social network. US-based demographics

Searching and monitoring social media
Searching social media? Don’t miss what’s hiding in plain sight

Developing a social media policy
Social media: copyright and fair dealing

How to use Twitter
Twitter for the Newsroom

What use is Twitter?

Channel 4 News’s Faisal Islam’s top tips for digital journalists

How to use Google+
Eight Google+ tools for journalists

How to use Facebook
Best Practices for Journalists on Facebook

INFOGRAPHIC: How Facebook’s Graph Search Will Change Digital Marketing

How to use Pinterest
10 Innovative Uses of Pinterest

How to use LinkedIn
Top tips for journalists

Top 10 tips from 10 best LinkedIn Company pages 2012

How to use Tumblr
So who in news knows how to use Tumblr?

Blogging
Ten years on, how to make the most out of Facebook

How to write a successful blog that also promotes your business

Tumblr tends to be more visual, more instant; less of the analysis, more of the bite-sized. Of course all these rules are there to be broken but those truths about the platform most likely explain why lots of people (and by people I mean newspapers, magazines, broadcasters etc) are struggling to work out how to use it.

As a counterpoint, here are four traditional media outlets that are using it well:

1. Financial Times
2. The Economist
3. The Times
4. New Statesman

In my Press Gazette column this week I explain why they have mastered Tumblr.

• The New York Times
• The Atlantic
• Drudge Report
• The Huffington Post
• AOL News
• Gawker
• People
• TMZ
• Vice
• E.Online
• Perez Hilton
• Buzzfeed

The answer: the Daily Mail is gunning for them all. Or rather Mail Online US believes it is “uniquely positioned” to take them on and in the process “fill a gap in the U.S. news/ent landscape”.

We know all this because Forbes.com’s Alex Kantrowitz got hold of the marketing slide that shows Mail Online floating expectantly among this exalted company.

I’ve written some more about it over on the Press Gazette.

1. Why did people start reading news on mobile devices? And when?

2. How has the technology since the first iPhone changed the way we consume news on devices?

3. Why do you think Murdoch’s tablet-only newspaper ‘Daily’ failed?

4. How has the newswriting changed since the first iPhone? (i.e. shorter, punchier, use of images, headlines etc.)

5. We are available, and everything is available to us, at all times. Has this changed how many times people read news each day to keep updated?

They are interesting questions and I offered him my initial thoughts which I published on my Press Gazette blog.

Here’s an extract from the agenda for the blogging section of the day:

How to Blog . . . For reputation, profile and reach

In this session we will explore the basics of blogging, the dos and don’ts, reveal who are the masters of the craft, and layout the editorial techniques – as well as the tactics and tools – you’ll need for success.

You’ll cover a range of subjects including:
- Setting up: the basics
- When is a blog post not a blog post?
- What kind of blogger are you? The polemicist, the educator, the analyst, the observer, the magpie and more
- How to establish a tone of voice
- Frequency and variety: defining a rhythm to suit you and the reader
- Ten blogging heroes you should follow
- How to get noticed
- How to grow your traffic

The first half of the course deals, at similar length, with the use of social networks as a journalist or a communicator, in particular Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

The workshop takes place on Friday 24 May and you can find more details here.

The Atlantic had to act counter intuitively to properly make the transition, according to the original New York Times piece. And here’s an extract from my response:

It does take a “dose of counterintuition” to properly understand digital. Why? Because a lot of what we take for granted in print simply doesn’t translate online. Equally, the assumptions we are making about digital need to be challenged. Constantly.

For example, some of us still struggle with the notion that we should, on occasion, link out to our direct competitors. And if we do we will probably end up with more readers, not fewer.

Moreover, that in order to make money we should consider giving more of our stuff away for free.

We struggle, too, with the notion that digital can aid print, not cannibalise it, at least not at a micro level.

Certainly the internet has been “disruptive”, to borrow a term beloved by technologist, and there is a systemic shift from the older medium to the newer one.

But that’s not the same as believing that your own website will destroy your weekly, or indeed that your app will destroy your website. It might but it doesn’t have to. The New York Times, for one, claims that digital subscriptions have helped stem the decline in print subs.

You can read the Press Gazette piece here.

[N]ot only do contributors self-publish, but they are paid according to the size of the audience they attract … [E]ach contributor gets paid a certain number of cents for every visitor per month.

There is a clear incentive for them to get repeat custom, as they get paid 20 times that amount if the same person reads another of their posts during that month.

According to the piece, last year ”two contributors made more than $100,000, several made $75,000 and 25 made $35,000″. And, one assumes, 900+ made not very much at all.

You can read the full piece here.

Yesterday I quoted my old boss at the New Statesman. Today it’s Jon Snow, Channel 4 News presenter and Charlie Beckett who now runs Polis at the London School of Economics and was previously a programme editor at Channel 4 News.

Both had interesting things to say about the evolution of news in the networked age. Both were talking heads in the final part of Steve Richards’ Making News series on Radio 4.

Here’s Charlie on the ubiquity of news:

The very definition of news is shifting. It’s completely abundant. It’s almost environmental. It’s a bit like the air that we breathe … anyone can get it just about any time … [This] is completely, historically exceptional.

And here’s Jon’s take on what role Twitter really plays in the newsroom:

I think Twitter so far is the greatest asset that the journalist has managed to get hold of. And I think it has deepened the news coverage. I don’t think it has superficialised it in any way.

People think [Twitter] is about 140 characters. It’s got nothing to do with 140 characters, it’s go everything to do with leading people to water. Sometimes the water’s stale and boring, sometimes it’s deep and succulent.

You can listen to the edition in question here.