Useful links from the last few days

Jul 7, 2010 by Dirk Singer

Useful links that caught my eye:

• Twitter breaks news, but will it break journalism? | memeburn – Interesting article from the South African Mashable, Memeburn, questioning whether the speed at which things break on Twitter result in news / journalism becoming less accurate

• The Future is Bright for Online Socialization – Another good article on the Pew Internet report on the future of the Internet. 85% of so called tech experts said that by 2020 the Internet will have been a positive force on the social world. However, relationships will have also weakened with there being more casual ones.

• If LeBron is Any Indication, Twitter Sponsored Trends Work – ReadWriteWeb reports that the NBA did well out for inserting promoted tweets into searches for ‘LeBron James’. The graph in the article shows NBA buzz going up as LeBron buzz goes up. However I am not sure the chart shows us all that much as surely the two are linked anyway?

• Blockbuster on the verge of defeat in battle against Netflix, technology | Econsultancy – Econsultancy reports that once staple of the High Street, Blockbuster, is largely finished: “While it has become somewhat cliché to claim that the internet has killed [insert industry name here], the truth of the matter is that technological disruption, led by companies like Netflix and Redbox, is responsible for many of Blockbuster’s woes.”

• BBC News – Prank leaves Justin Bieber facing tour of North Korea – A public vote on the Canadian singer’s My World Tour page asked users which country he should tour next, with no restrictions on the nations that could be voted on. This spurred users of imageboard website 4Chan to nominate North Korea, with the vote now turning viral.

• Study: Social media creating new social world for 2020 – “Social networking should reduce friction between human beings around the world by the year 2020, but the technology could also rob people of face-to-face relationships and foster shallower relationships, according to a new survey of top tech leaders and experts. Still, the benefits of social media should “far outweigh” the negative impacts over the next 10 years, according to the Pew Research Center study released Friday morning.”

• Guardian Takes Next Step in Open Content Strategy With Blog Plugin – “In another groundbreaking move, The Guardian newspaper in Britain has launched a plugin for the popular blog-publishing tool WordPress (see disclosure below) that allows web sites to embed the full text of Guardian news stories and other content for free. The plugin comes with a catch though: Sites also have to embed the newspaper’s advertising.” (via @jas)