For this week's assignment, I followed Yahoo News's Facebook page, CNN Breaking News's Twitter account and the LA Times City Desk Twitter account.
Yahoo: After tracking Yahoo News's activity on Facebook for a week, I gained a better understanding of Anna Robertson's presentation last week in class. Yahoo publishes about three posts a day, and they all tend to be light and interesting reads specifically catered toward regular Facebook users. And as the ages 18-29 demographic actively uses Facebook more than any other age group, these posts reflect their general interests. Anna said Yahoo tends to filter out the heavier news stories for more attractive, light-hearted pieces that would garner more clicks. For instance, there were few mentions of hard and dry political affairs this past week, but the page provided a link to a story about President Obama making a guest appearance on Mythbusters. I initially didn't quite understand why this has to be the case, as a great majority of Facebook users are well-educated, intelligent and up-to-date with current affairs. However, as Sarah said, there is a clear line between the content you think you'd like to read and what you actually choose to read. Yahoo News uses its Facebook page to lure the young readers with quirky stories and brings them into its Website. Its Facebook page also provides an effective platform for user interaction. In addition to Giveaways and quizzes for the users, Yahoo can gauge the popularity of a story by looking at the number of "likes." This would contribute to a greater trend, which can help Yahoo in their future endeavors.
CNN Breaking News: I started following their twitter page since the day I opened my account. Throughout the day, they post a flood of links to international and national breaking news stories and videos featured on the main CNN news site. Although I find the sheer number of posts often overwhelming, it's definitely a great way to stay updated. Also, because Twitter only allows 180 characters per post, the tweets to be very straightforward (ex. "Two U.S. hikers to stand trial next month, Iran media reports (link)") Their use of this social media platform is nothing interesting or creative, but judging by their 3.5 million followers, their conciseness is key to their effectiveness.
LA Times City Desk: Contrary to CNN Breaking News's twitter, I found their over-frequent updates to be way too burdensome. The tweets are concise and straightforward as the CNN account; however, as the city desk account, the updates are mostly made up of local headlines, which do not have as many pressing and interesting breaking news as CNN. The updates come at least three times an hour, and while CNN incorporates videos and photos as well, the LA Times City Desk is a lot more limited in this aspect. It would be helpful to incorporate more links to feature pieces and interactive pieces and limit the number of hard news headlines.
This status update went unnoticed in hundreds of news feeds. Even after an entire day, I didn't receive a single response. So I decided it was time to try something new. Facebook's new Question application has been around for a few weeks now, and I thought there was no better time to test it out than now:
I got this response from a UCLA student within a few hours of posting the question. She proceeded to inform me about a rally that will be held this Thursday at UCLA.
