Google News today announced it is rolling out a new layout with new features designed to bring readers a more personalized, local and social news experience. While still highlighting top stories and adding a list of trending topics similar to Twitter's, Google is now giving the reader additional customization options and adding a section for local news and weather, among other features. As Megan Garber at The Neiman Journalism Lab puts it: "The new site is trying to balance two major, and often conflicting, goals of news consumption: personalization and serendipity."

Sponsor

The new "News for you" section is an enhanced version of the old "Recommended" section, giving readers the ability to rank both topics and sources up and down, and add additional topics to their news stream. By allowing users to exclude topics and sources they don't want to read about, they're free to create personal "info bubbles" of their own design.

In order to keep readers abreast of the world outside their custom bubble, Google has added the "trending topics" section (something that's been showing up in the wild /> [...]

Wed Jun 30, 2010 17:52 pm

Part Two of Three

In the book Engage!, I use music as a metaphor for the business approach necessary to execute socialized programs flawlessly. I suggest that today, many organizations approach new media with the style of jazz improvisationalists. They possess an incredible ability to jam independently and also together, but they often drift into wild, wonderful solos that may or may not lead the audience back to the heart and soul of the brand purpose and mission. Instead, I suggest that we assemble a team of virtuosos who can perform the dedicated requirements of their roles to contribute to an organized and powerful performance designed to engage and stimulate its audience.

A conductor who possess social prowess and business savvy is necessary to creating and managing a holistic social media program that extends from the top down, from the center outward, from the bottom up, and also from the outside in.The quest to find the conductor and the members of the orchestra rekindle the debate to who owns social media. But, I argue, that the only the person who masters the majesty of music theory, instrumentation, leadership, artistry, and stagemanship can effectively lead and inspire a band of leaders. Simply said, The person and team qualified to lead social are those qualified to do so.

Again, a hybrid approach is essential. In the very least however, they will possess the ability to understand customer touchpoints, channels of influence, market dynamics, challenges and opportunities that face consumers, and how engagement and the production of social objects trigger measurable reactions that impact the bottom line.

Advertising Must Look Beyond Madison Ave.

Advertising, along with every form of marketing, communications, and s/> [...]

Wed Jul 14, 2010 06:02 am

We labor under two major misperceptions about technology: Technology from one point in time is better than one further in the past and anything new displaces what came before. When we actively think about these ideas, we may dismiss them. But it's my contention that these are in fact our unconscious, default positions. (These notions would no doubt be scoffed at by medieval Europeans who spent years desperately dreaming of copping a squat inside like the Romans did. But they are operant in the here-and-now.)

As people who live in and among the very latest of technology, I think it's a necessary corrective to examine how we use legacy technologies. So, I asked the most first-adopty people I could find, my fellow ReadWriteWeb staffers. What "old fashioned" technology did they employ every day? Some of them did not respond, as they were immersed in a virtual reality safari or traveling in time. But here's some backtalk from those who did.

Sponsor

Marshall Kirkpatrick, Co-Editor and VP of Content Development

Fireplace; bicycle; iPhone 3G (just kidding, kinda); shovel instead of tiller and gardening at home instead of Food Inc.; text editor instead of word processor; wi-fi instead of wireless card; printed newspapers and magazines because they are cool; books; dirty scowl instead of brain-piercing laser beam

I'm not going to say anything about the chickens.

Adrianne/> [...]

Thu Jul 29, 2010 15:50 pm