Topic 4 Social News, RSS, Wikis and Forums

Social News

So far in our social media tools, we have looked at Social Networks, Themed Social Networks and Media Sharing.

This topic is all about Social News.

Social News sites are a place where users can contribute News articles or links. The social side of it is that other people can vote on the articles and the most voted articles will usually get displayed more prominently. This is called "crowd sourcing".

You can also share what you find easily on your favourite social network such as Facebook and Twitter.

WARNING: You can really lose yourself in some of these sites and well and truly lose track of time!!!

BuzzFeed

Buzzfeed was founded in 2006 and calls itself a Social News and Entertainment website. You may have seen articles from BuzzFeed that have been shared on your Facebook feed.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/

About BuzzFeed

This is from their website:

BuzzFeed is the leading independent digital media company delivering news and entertainment to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

BuzzFeed is the world’s leading independent digital media company, which leverages data and innovation to reach hundreds of millions of people globally.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/about

Some Buzzfeed statistics https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/buzzfeed-statistics/

BuzzFeed also has localised content, so in Australia, you can view things that are trending here. It covers general news as well as Entertainment and images and videos that are currently "trending" on the Internet.

Digg

Digg has been around for a number of years (founded on 2004), but was relaunched after a total rebuild. It was acquired by another company in July 2012 and is now considered a "startup" again. Time will tell whether it will get back to its former glory. This is how Digg describes itself in its About page:

Digg delivers the most interesting and talked about stories on the Internet right now.

Digg does curation: building products that make life smoother, simpler, and smarter. Founded in 2004 Re-founded in 2012 Re-re-founded in 2019, Digg provides the most relevant and compelling content to millions of users a month.

http://digg.com/about

http://digg.com/

If you like a story you see, you Digg it (click on the +Digg button). The more Diggs that a story gets, the higher up its ranking goes.

Reddit is also a user driven news website. As with Digg, users vote on stories to raise them up or down, with the view to them making the "front page". It is made up of sub committees that focus on specific topics. To access stories, you can use the Reddit search feature or choose from the topics at the top of the screen.

https://www.reddit.com/

On the right hand side of the screen you will see the Top News Communities, trending communities and popular communities.

https://about.reddit.com/

Huffington Post

The Huffington Post is a politically liberal American online news aggregator and blog that has both localised and international editions founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, Andrew Breitbart, and Jonah Peretti, featuring columnists. Wikipedia

Founded: May 2005

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/

Niche Social News

As well as the new sites mentioned above, there are also what could be called Niche Social News sites. These are sites that are specific to a particular area of interest. There is a range of different topics including Art, Entertainment, Automotive, and Technology.

https://www.eonline.com/au/news

http://www.tmz.com/

http://www.autonews.com/

http://www.technewsworld.com/

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/

http://mashable.com/

https://www.socialmedianews.com.au/

Regular Newspapers/News organisations/Online News

Most large news organisations also have added social news sharing sections to their websites. Some implement their own sharing and voting technologies as well as having Facebook and Twitter pages. You can share news direct from the websites using the social media icons available.

Wikis

Wikipedia defines a Wiki as:

"A wiki is usually a web application which allows people to add, modify, or delete content in collaboration with others. Text is usually written using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor. While a wiki is a type of content management system, it differs from a blog or most other such systems in that the content is created without any defined owner or leader, and wikis have little implicit structure, allowing structure to emerge according to the needs of the users."

Wiki Sites

ShoutWiki is a free, ad-supported wiki hosting service. We offer wiki hosting to individuals, companies, school, universities and communities.

Shout Wiki http://www.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page

A Wiki ([ˈwiː.kiː] <wee-kee> or [ˈwɪ.kiː] <wick-ey>) is a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change most content very quickly and easily via website.

And that is it! At the Wikidot.com publishing network we offer everyone a Site (your-site-name.wikidot.com) — a customizable place in the Internet where Users can edit content, upload files, communicate and collaborate.

Wikidot http://www.wikidot.com/

Forums

Wikipedia defines a forum as

"An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible.

Forums have a specific set of jargon associated with them; e.g. a single conversation is called a "thread", or topic.

A discussion forum is hierarchical or tree-like in structure: a forum can contain a number of subforums, each of which may have several topics. Within a forum's topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as so wish."

Forums are topic related - Any topic or question you would like to ask, and I am pretty sure you will be able to find a forum where other people are discussing the same subject.

Here are some examples of forums:

http://www.backyardchickens.com/

http://www.backyardpoultry.com/

http://baustralianxtrail.runboard.com/

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/

http://www.mrexcel.com/

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