links for 2010-10-08

Quoting Marc Reeves: "To all of you who are saying, 'Sorry I'm just a journalist, I don't sell advertising or organise events...' I say, tough, that's just the way it will be from now on. We tried it the other way and it broke."

"I agree with his last point, but think that there needs to be wider communication of the issues. My research has not extended to social network users, but I’d be fascinated to know how many understand libel and contempt of court law. I disagree, however, that the grey areas are simple to navigate, or that defamation law poses so few problems". I'm with Judith on this one. I had been publishing for years pretty certain that I knew what I was doing. Then one morning I had some media law training at The Guardian, and nearly ran straight upstairs to delete my entire blog in a panic! I think the provision of decent free legal advice for dabbling online publishers would be fantastic.

"Google is testing a new feature that lets you connect your Twitter account to Google News. The friends box asks you to enter your Twitter username and click “Save.” When you click save, Google News will refresh, and you will see a list of updates containing news articles shared by the people you follow. Google even has a help document on this feature.

"The big social networks - Facebook Twitter, YouTube and MySpace, accounted for 43% of all links shared, email 30%, SMS 15% and instant messenger 12%". Interesting that 57% are going through 'unfashionable' channels.

"More importantly, this is a living experiment, an embodiment of the questions posed by Hacks/Hackers and their ilk in a more structured format. When the six-week time capsule comes to an end, I’m sure I will have learned a lot about journalism and journalists, the problems they face and their perception of data and information systems. I hope they will feel the same about developers."

"I created this BackType bookmarklet to quickly measure the reach of articles and blog posts in social spaces. Drag this button to your browser’s bookmarks tool bar."

"Channel 4 is axing 4iP, its £20m digital innovation fund, as part of a restructure that sees its online teams integrated into one department". Boo!