The future of crowdsourcing

It’s hard to make friends when moving to a new town, attending a new school or finding someone with similar interest in activities.  I remember going to New York City in 2008 to the New York Anime Festival alone wishing someone had accompanied me that liked anime too.  I had no friends who had liked anime, which are Japanese cartoons. Where was I going to find someone in Schenectady that had liked anime, and most importantly how? 

            We all have things that we like to do, like bowling, but what happens if none of your friends like bowling? You have no one to go bowling with and you just wouldn’t play bowling by yourself.  I think there is a need for a Web site where people with similar interests and goals can unite and socialize, a web site where ideas can be made into reality by putting great minds together.  Similarpeople.com would connect people with similar interests, ideas and goals together. 

            There are many things that members of similarpeople.com can do.  Members on the site can put up their profile for free and post their interests in activities. Meeting up for leisurely activities is one of them.  Let’s say a member of the site moves to a new city or town and is having trouble making friends, that member can look for other members with similar interests and can invite the member to an activity.  For example, if there was an anime convention that I would like to go to, I would invite someone to go with that has a similar interest in anime in my community or meet up with someone who is already going to the convention.  On similarpeople.com, you can find bowling partners, shopping partners, jogging partners and partners for any activity you’re interested in doing in pairs or in groups.  It also helps meeting people abroad.  If you’re ever traveling abroad, you can find travelers who are in the visiting country offer to meet up with them and perhaps travel together.

            Another important aspect of similarpeople.com is that members can create groups or clubs.  Any member may be able to post a group on the site and add people to that group.  The purpose of the group is to make it aware there is a group locally and what times and days the groups can meet up.  For example, someone can make an anime group where members can meet every Saturday at a location to watch and discuss anime.  Anyone who wants to join the group can add themselves on to the group and begin attending the meetings.  Groups can include anything from leisurely activities to help groups like cancer group or groups for drug addicts or any kind of addict looking for someone(s) who is going through similar issues.   Members can also create volunteer groups where group members can offer their services to those in need like soup kitchens, after school programs, neighborhood clean ups and the list goes on. Example of group themes can include gamers, sports, shopping, traveling, dinning etc.

            On similarpeople.com, members can market their services.  In different categories, like cooking, dancing, music, language learning, members can offer lessons to anyone on similarpeople.com.  For example, a professional cook may offer cooking lessons for a cheap price.  Another member may offer dance or music lessons and can set up class information and pricing.  If I was looking for a lesson learning a new language, I could look online for language classes or I could meet a partner with an interest in exchanging language lessons; for example, my English for their Japanese.  People can exchange different type of services with other members based on agreement or charge people for certain services. 

            Similarpeople.com is a huge online community where people are joined together based on similar interests.  Members can meet other members for events.  Members can join groups in the community based on their need or interests.  Members can offer their services to the similarpeople.com community.

Is social media controlling our lives?

Here I am at the College of St. Rose coming out of work and I see students buried into their cell phones as they are walking to wherever their destination lies.  I then drive to school at UAlbany and I see a similar thing as I walk to my classes.  What does this mean?  A few years ago, we wouldn’t be seeing students as focused on their phones and texting.  That’s because today we live the social media world.

What does this mean?  It means that today, more and more students are talking less face to face and are relying on social websites and mobile devices to communicate.  Facebook has over 100 million members and similar results can be seen with twitter.com.  The number of mobile phone subscriptions worldwide has reached 4.6 billion and is expected to increase to five billion this year. 

So what does this mean? It means that more people are spending their time online, most people live the “on-the-go” lifestyle and that most people are using social media as a means of communication.  There are benefits to using social media online such as staying in touch with family and friends around the world.  I have a pen pal in Italy that I’ve been friends for 3 years. We’ve met online at a penpal site and now we’ve moved on to Facebook. 

But just as there are positives, there are some drawbacks.  Social media can be a distraction in the classroom causing students to pay less attention to their studies.  Parents who bring their work home because of social media and mobile devices focus less on their families and home activities.  And finally, social media can be addictive.  People tend to create a world unlike their real world on Facebook and can spend hours on Facebook.  Finally, check out this South Park video that portrays Social Media very well.

Will newspapers even exist online? Or in Apps?

Let’s stop and look at the world around us.  What do we see?  We see people walking and looking down at their cellphones, or if their rich enough, an iPad.  Yes they can go online on both of these devices, or even better yet on apps.  Today there are hundreds of thousands of apps and people are willing to pay for them.

Why apps? I believe because they’re fun, a time saver and manageable.  Instead of going online and putting typing in each site on the web browser, they can just click on the app and enjoy it as much as the web site.  Newspapers are currently investing in apps as well as online web sites.  A subscriber can purchase a subscription to a newspaper app with a fraction of the cost of getting the paper delivered to the front door every morning.  It saves the newspaper money by not having to use up paper, ink or a carrier.

My question is, what if every newspaper subscriber gets the app and cancels an online and newspaper subscription.  Would that mean newspaper print will go out of business and online news sites will lose advertisers because of lack of viewers?  These are things we need to think about.  I think there should be a balance between online, newspaper print and news app users.  It should be taken into consideration when discussing saving the newspaper business.

What’s up with crowd sourcing?

Let’s forget about hiring the most successful candidate for the job and instead let many people contribute for free to get the job done! That is crowd sourcing. Crowd Sourcing is a new business concept coined by journalist Jeff Howe, and is when companies outsource work to a crowd of people (the public). Many companies are utilizing crowd sourcing to benefit their companies and their own research and the method has proved to be successful. Many people can begin to conduct their own way of crowd sourcing with a bit of creativity.

As many began to understand the term of crowd sourcing, many began to put the concept into use. Companies began using crowd sourcing as a way to benefit their business without putting forth huge amounts of money. Brainrack.com has benefited from crowd sourcing by putting businesses in touch with students throughout the world. Business companies can place a challenge on the Web site, or a question that students can upload their own solutions to. Out of the many suggestions received, the company selects a winner with the most prominent answer and rewards the them with a cash prize, usually between $300-$7,000. Another successful crowd sourcing Web site is http://www.onebillionminds.com/. The site gives the opportunity for anyone to pose their own challenge to the public in the categories of Science, Technology, Design, Business or Social Convention. It also offers you to set your own reward for the winner you believe offers the best solution.

The are times when crowd sourcing doesn’t work well, such as in Wikipedia. Wikipedia gives anyone the opportunity to edit or add information to the wikipedia site. Wikipedia once said that “David Beckham was a Chinese goal keeper in the 18^th century,” which is proof that this type of crowd sourcing can’t be that all accurate. “Richard Gere appears on the back of the Australian $10 Note dressed as a woman,” is also wrong information that was once found on Wikipedia. I must say however that Wikipedia is contains accurate information a lot of the time.

I believe we all can benefit from crowd sourcing, not for just existing businesses but new starts as well. I would love to begin my own travel writing magazine, but I don’t have the expenses to pay writers or for advertisers. I would offer beginning writers to write for my magazine for free but in return they will benefit from getting their names out there (publicity) and building their own writing resume. Writing publications may see their work and if they like the writers, they may offer them a paying writing gig. In this way, my magazine will get popular and the writers will get their names out there; we both benefit from this deal.

I believe that crowd sourcing will grow as more people understand its benefits between both parties, the crowd and the business. In order for it to work, both parties must feel rewarded or will gain a reward to feel obligated to participate in the crowd sourcing activity.

　

　

Is news becoming Entertainment?

I was watching the Daily Show with John Stewart for the first time this week to see why this news show is so popular.  It’s a satiracle news program hosted by John Stewart, in which the Stewart discusses the latest headline news with a twist of humor.  John discusses the budget, current events, politics, news and even pop culture on the show.

To think that this is the most watched news program in America scares me.  The show has won numerous awards including an Emmy and Peabody award.  It’s a fact that most cable TV networks which are presumably unbiased have less viewership than the Daily Show.  Stewart does his best to make fun of the news though he presents facts.

What should we do to keep viewers tuned in to local cable tv news?  I have no idea, but I believe that if Americans like the sort of news on the Daily Show as opposed to unbiased local news, then America is dumbing down.  It’s not enough anymore to include beautiful looking anchors to keep viewership at a steady or rising slop.  Perhaps entertainment is the “new” news.  It’s kind of sad.

Ethics is a must for journalists

I remember the first time I began writing for the Albany Student Press.  I did a few restaurant reviews, previews to events and I’ve met a lot of people in the process.  Let’s face it, people want to be heard and they turn to the newspaper as a way of getting their word out there.

There were times when I was offered free food, offered free tickets and other things while I was doing a review or writing a story about the person or place.  To be honest, I was tempted to take what was offered.  But I knew in my mind and consciously that as a journalists, it would be wrong.

Today journalists around the world a faced with the similar issues.  There are however ethics each journalist need to follow and the ethics exist for a reason.

We must refuse gifts as journalists, why?  Because it’s a conflict of interest.  Taking something from someone is sort of like a bribe and though you may think you can take free gifts without having it affect your judgement in writing, it is still wrong.  Journalists HAVE to act independently.  Taking bribes and gifts in my opinion is sort of like corruption. Journalists need to stay clear from this.

Journalist need to seek the truth and report it… taking gifts from others may cause you to distort the truth and when that happens, trust is broken between the writers and readers.  When we distort the truth, it makes the newspaper look bad.  It gives the newspaper a bad name and people begin not to trust their local newspapers. What is a newspaper without trust?  Therefore we need not set up news, not create any biases and just report the truth and be honest.  This will build trust within readers and will strengthen the newspaper.

Are you willing to die for journalism?

I had an interesting discussion in class the other day with Professor Armao  about whether or not I would be willing to die for journalism.  We discussed the names of some journalists who did die in the sake of providing news and their beliefs and how journalism differed between the U.S. and other countries throughout the world.

In countries like North Korea and China, the media is censored by the government.  The government decides what goes into the news and what gets left out.  Sites like CPJ.org keep us up to date about the issues journalists have faced throughout the world including facing injustice, death or jail time just for reporting the facts in other countries.  These organisations fight for the rights and freedoms of these journalists in other countries.  On April 8, CPJ.org had reported that Matthew VanDyke, an American journalist, had been missing since reporting the news in Libya.  Sadly, reports like this are common.

I thought about it, if I was willing to die for journalism.  I think yes and no.  If my reporting was promised to make a huge difference and save many lives from harm, then I would be willing to die for it, but at the same time I don’t know what it’s like to be in that situation so I can’t say for sure what I would do if the opportunity would present itself.

Blogs killing journalism?

Every day I wonder if I picked the right major (Journalism) at my current educational institution. Why? Because newspapers are getting smaller every few years and many are discontinuing for good; also because the number of bloggers have increased and are appearing to be a news source for many people. 

Most bloggers write for free.  Some bloggers report the same information of a regular newspaper article and add in their bias.  It’s unoriginal reporting.  Most of these bloggers are gaining all the traffic to their web sites when the traffic should be going to the original source of the article.  Newspaper web sites need the traffic to attract advertisers so that journalists can get paid.  If all the traffic is being directed towards the blog, then how will the original journalists who have done the original reporting get paid? 

Let’s talk about biases.  Newspapers have a code in which they are to leave out their biases so that the reporting can be fair and that readers can make their own judgements.  Bloggers are breaking that code by sauteing their posts with biases.  Biases can lead a person to make a wrong judgement because readers and authors have a special relationship in which they trust each other.  Biases can break that trust.  Perhaps biases are a good thing and can provide a standard argument to an issue. 

So what do you guys think?  Is journalism being killed by blogs?

Paywall…ways around it.

Let’s face it, newspapers will no longer be here in 20 years if the decline in sales keep continuing.  Advertisers are making the Internet their official home as it’s cheaper and easier to post ads online.  The price of newspapers are rather sharp as expenses need to cover ink production, paper, news carriers, etcetera.  There are ways in making a profit for news  by considering a few simple ideas.

Charge for online content.  Many newspapers are giving their content away for free online. 
“Why buy the cow when we get the milk for free?”  By simply charging to online content, perhaps having a system where people can choose which days of the week they may be able to access articles.  For example. Mon-Fri, Fri-Sun, etc.  The key is to lure them in by offering a free month trial of getting online content for free, then once that’s over we may be able to charge them monthly if they so desire.

Invest in merchandise.  A newspaper can make money by putting their brand out there.  Let’s say the Times Union gives away free T-shirts, cups and hats  just by joining the Times Union Facebook page. Perhaps they may charge better merchandise online to customers for a little fee.  It’s free advertisement and there’s no middle man.

Create an App.  If newspapers don’t have their own app by now, it’s about time.  There’s an app for anything these days. With the launch on the popular iPad and the popular demand for smart phones, app’s are here to stay.  If a newspaper has an app, it may offer things like the latest news, video content and images that a regular newspaper wouldn’t be able to offer.  It’s a great way to make money.  The subscription for the app should be cheap by offering small weekly or monthly payments.

Punish blogs for copyright infringement. Blogs really attract attention away from the source their news information comes from.  Newspapers should search out these blogs and take legal action.  If it’s not original reporting, then you shouldn’t blog about if or you should give proper credit to the original source it came from.  That said, blogs should go the extra mile to alert readers where they got their information from to bring traffic to the site of the original source.

How much do your students know about current events?

It scares me to know that not many youth are updated on their current events.  As I was reading this passage on poynter.org, I remembered the first time I took a journalism course with Professor Barnes at SUNY Albany.  Prof. Barnes introduced the course with a quiz about current events, and it became an habitual thing every class once he learned that a majority of the class didn’t know anything going on in the news.

What does this tell us about our young people?  It tells us that they are not really interested in current events anyhow. I can take a guess that they are more interested in what’s going on in Facebook that about the war with the U.S. in Libia.  After seeing this video by YouTube sensation Kassem G, in which he interviewed Californian’s about the issue in Egypt, it tells me that students have pay little attention to the news.

This is an issue.  I think the solution is to incorporate current events in the curriculum in our schools.  Perhaps incorporate in the classroom lessons of any subject and students will begin paying attention to the news.