January 2012

False Joe Paterno death reports relied on faulty sourcing

TweetI wrote a retrospective on how a student news organization falsely reported the death of Joe Paterno, a report that quickly infected mainstream outlets. My piece was co-published at Poynter and ProPublica, so, uh, choose whichever one you like better. If you’re interested in learning more about the episode, there are three pieces I suggest …

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Want Facebook virality? Put it in an image

Tweet(Note, 12/4/13: When I wrote this post almost two years ago, everything here was true. Now, much of it no longer applies. The timeless summary: Experiment with different forms of posting, watch your own data, adjust based on what you see.) “You can’t always control who walks into your life but, you can control which …

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Social search, recommendation saturation, and how Google+ just strong-armed us

TweetOver at Nieman Lab, Carrie Brown-Smith verbalized something that’s been weighing on me lately: the social media bubble may be bursting. But this isn’t about hostility toward social media, and she’s no retrenchment-minded Luddite. She says, in part: But despite all of our excitement over its potential, I’m beginning to wonder about how big of a …

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