Reuters reported on Monday afternoon that social-networking site MySpace.com plans to launch a "news feed" feature in the near future.
The statement was made by Peter Levinsohn, president of MySpace parent company (and News Corp. division) Fox Interactive Media, at the Reuters Media Summit on Monday. "The concept of a news feed is something we are very focused on, and we'll be well down the path in the next 30 to 45 days," Levinsohn said at the summit.
The news feed, which provides a user with updates from the people on his or her friends list, was pioneered by MySpace rival Facebook. Originally seen as invasive and "stalker-ish," the news feed is now considered by many to be one of Facebook's chief innovations.
Additionally, Reuters reported, Levinsohn said that MySpace will start allowing its members to operate different versions of a profile for groups like family, friends, and co-workers. This is something that Facebook does not offer--though the company has hinted that it may be on the way--but more recent entrants like Plaxo Pulse do.
MySpace, to put it bluntly, is playing catch-up. It still leads the U.S. social-networking market in overall membership and traffic, but has come under fire for everything from design to usability to underlying architecture. In recent weeks, the company has opted to join Google's OpenSocial platform, potentially boosting its tech cred--and announced a targeted advertising program days before Facebook launched its "Social Ads."
Reuters and the Nokia Research Center have announced that they are working on a joint project to enable journalists to file and publish stories and multimedia news content from handheld devices instead of computers. Called Reuters Mobile Journalism, the initiative relies upon connecting peripherals to Nokia's high-end N95 device--a Bluetooth-enabled keyboard, a small tripod for video interviews, and a microphone that can plug into the mobile handset--as well as software to make it easier to put together text, images and streaming media.
The Nokia N95
(Credit: Nokia)"By running on handheld devices, rather than on bulkier laptop computers, the mobile journalism application enables us to create complete stories and file them for distribution, without leaving the scene," Nic Fulton, chief scientist of Reuters Media, said in a statement from the two companies. "This saves us time and benefits our audience by ensuring that they receive high quality news that is absolutely up-to-date."
It would also, of course, require that the reporter in question be equipped with an N95 handset.
Over the summer, Reuters ran trials of mobile journalism in situations as varied as the U.S. presidential primary campaign events, the Edinburgh TV festival and New York Fashion Week, where stories were filed from the field. Currently, the plan is to make the finished product available to professional journalists, but a number of university students will be used for a trial run to see how the "toolkit" fits into the ever-growing citizen journalism niche.
MySpace will soon launch more than a dozen branded video channels, featuring content from big names like the National Geographic group, The New York Times, and Reuters. Users will be able to access the video content on branded content microsites similar to YouTube's partner channels with the BBC, NBC, and CBS. MySpace is allowing content providers to customize their content interface, with special backgrounds and color schemes. Expect something similar to Trailer Park, which MySpace launched last month.
The new service will tie in to MySpace's current videos platform, although there's no word yet on whether or not members will be able to embed the new content on their profiles or on outside blogs and Web sites.
Also of interest, MySpace's "Daily Reel" channel. This editor-controlled channel hosts content that is deemed the best on the service. MySpace editors will add their own dialogue, and package it as a top five. From the press release, I can't tell if it's going to be like America's Funniest Home Videos, or Fox's Daily Show ripoff.
Maybe the most interesting news out of this morning's announcement is participation by Reuters and National Geographic. Both content providers are also sharing entire shows on Joost, which could signal overlap from other providers that are currently sharing their content on the competing service. Given the choice between viewing the content on a Web site and installing a program, many users are likely to go for MySpace's approach, or just stick with YouTube.
More on CNET's News.com story.
News organization Reuters is working with photo editing powerhouse Adobe and camera maker Canon so changes to digital photos can be detected,
Reuters, the news agency whose image was tarnished earlier this year when a freelance photographer provided
"I am pleased to announce today that we are working with Adobe and Canon to create a solution that enables photo editors to view an audit trail of changes to a digital image, which is permanently embedded in the photograph, ensuring the accuracy of the image," Glocer said in the blog posting, a transcript of a December 11 speech at the Globes Media Conference in Tel Aviv.
"We sought a technical solution so that we had total and full transparency of our work. It's what we stand for. It's what we've always stood for. And we hope that it will provide reassurance to editors and consumers of our services," he said. "Transparency and truth are important to us."
The issue of trust is increasingly important in a "citizen journalism" world where the ordinary public, not just news professionals, supply content, he said.
"What does the future look like in a world in which the consumer has taken over the printing press, the dark room, the television studio? What does the result of a mashup of professional and "amateur" actually look like? And more importantly--is trust the victim in a world of millions of news sources--will we live in a world where truth is passed through a sieve of opinion and commentary?"
It's not an academic issue for Reuters. Earlier in December, it announced a deal with Yahoo in which people who post photos to the Flickr photo-sharing site, can tag their shots and submit them to Reuters.
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