Chapter 5
The New Media University 201
Communities, Social Calendars, and Livecasting
In the last chapter we reviewed the online provinces of blogs, podcasts, and wikis. In this chapter, we examine the nuances, risks, applications, and also the merits associated with content communities, social bookmarking, and livecasting.
CROWD-SOURCED CONTENT COMMUNITIES
Online content communities exist to promote the human filtering of online information (or manipulation of it, depending on how you look at it). These unique communities are basically social networks that increase signal and reduce the noise from all of the information out there, fostering interaction around compelling content. These platforms tap the wisdom of the crowds to source, share, and showcase news, videos, pictures, music or other audio, and events. The most popular content is determined by the crowdsourcing of votes to determine popularity and visibility of entries as organized by the specific categories within the network.
These communities serve as a lens into what's hot, interesting, or promising, as dictated by the psychographics that connect demographics. We'll open the curtains to reveal the groups of people powering these networks later in the book.
Leading sites include Reddit, Digg, Mixx, and Fark, among others. Combined, these networks receive, on average, 55 million unique visitors per month. In comparison, CNN.com receives, on average, roughly 30 million unique visitors. Niche content communities exist ...
