BloggersBase merges Blogging with Citizen Journalism

One may describe BloggersBase is a new blogging or a writers community. It is a blog hosting service and citizen journalism site at the same time, but it has a strong focus on journalism. The blogs are rather the medium and used for the technical realization.

It is a site with a very modern touch, that integrates various social networking means for both authors and readers. Authors have their own blogs, where all of the written stories are gathered. Additionally stories may become rated to be displayed at the homepage. Actually there is no concrete business opportunity offered to writers, but authors may gain reputation and win cash prizes for featured stories.

Spot.us matches Citizens with Journalists

The approach of Spot.us to journalism is a hybrid of citizen journalism and conventional reporting. Spot.us is calling it 'community funded reporting'. The way this is done happens by several steps. The initial step is to suggest a story. Then people become matched with journalists, if someone is interested in the subject and pitches it. Now people may fund the story by donating money. The rights to a resulting story may become bought by a news publisher or available to everyone by a creative commons license.

User generated Advertising at Current.com

Using a thorough approach the news sharing site Current is matching citizen journalism with user generated advertising. Current is a well known site to share written news and video news. A success story has been reported by ReadWriteWeb that Current makes millions by user generated advertising. This of course supposes that the feature is worth to have a look. It is easily to become found right at the top menu and by this it is an essential part of the homepage. The link refers to a particular page called Viewer Ads. At this page visitors are encouraged to make an advert. At the top there are some ads and below sponsoring offers by advertisers. It seems to be a fair and lucrative business as further information is telling that spots aired at Current will earn 2500 dollars and if a spot is aired by a sponsor elsewhere, too, the opportunities are even rising up to 60000 dollars. Below there is the coverage by ReadWriteWeb with some further information.

Has Current Solved the User Generated Advertising Mystery?

Do you know Machinima?

I found an article related to the video posted a couple of days ago showing a scene within Second Life. There is a special term describing such videos. It is Machinima. I have not known this, but this is what research is for. Here is a link to a definition at wikipedia. The article describes Machinima as "animated films created by using a number of different game or virtual world engines" and is stating that this kind of films may be an option for marketers. This is similar to my statement at the former post, in some way marketing related and a possible new form of journalism.

Machinima is a futuristic, viral option for marketers

Citizen Journalism Award

This is a real interesting project, a citizen journalism award organized by a well known organization and supported by several technology companies. The award is a partnership between the Pulitzer Center and YouTube and supported by Sony VAIO and Intel. The award is targeted at non professional journalists and aims to get reports about otherwise not covered and unknown issues. So everyone who likes to report something is encouraged to upload a video. More about the award at the Project Report homepage.

News Rating with Yahoo Buzz

Yahoo Buzz is a news rating service similar to the most popular Digg. At both services people can vote for the stories. At Digg only user submitted stories are available for voting, which makes it some kind of a social network. Opposite to this beside user submitted stories Yahoo Buzz determines hot topics based on most popular search terms submitted at the Yahoo Search Engine. Based on user activities like passed on news and votes stories may make the way to the Yahoo Homepage.

To publishers Yahoo Buzz might be important as it has a large reach as reported in an article by ReadWriteWeb.

At Yahoo Buzz now everyone can rate and submit stories. For publishers, bloggers as well as publishing companies, there is a special partner feature to submit content. Website owners may get content for websites by a widget.

Live Blogging, Stream your Posts

Cover it Live is an amazing live blogging application. It enables live streaming of posts similar to a news ticker, which visitors and viewers can read and watch without reloading and scrolling. This is most convenient for events or reporting. Posts do appear immediately and may contain images, photos and videos. Visitors are able to comment and to participate in polls in realtime, too, by a chat like input. Results of polls do immerdiately appear within the stream. Further features are the integration of related news and recommendations. After finishing a live session a streams containing all media and polls may become stored and made available for later access.

It is a hosted solution that may easily become integrated at blogs and homepages and which is available in various languages. For further information there is a demo video at the Cover it Live homepage. For other live application see the label live at the top of the blog.

Earning Money by Citizen Journalism

Citizen journalism describes stories or media by everyday people, who like to write stories or who do capture photos or videos. This may happen occasionally or more ambitiously. And as there have been several articles at this blog about live broadcasting and storing that live video or photos by personal broadcasting services (see the label live video) and the possibilities of citizen journalism here come some information on how to sell stuff.

So if you really got a story or aim to sell something, it needs some contact to the media. This may happen by a direct contact. Direct contacts often are offered at particular media websites or at newspapers. Usually one uploads the media or send it by multimedia messaging. Some publishers may pay you. iReport.com for example is a website by CNN, where people can upload videos and other media. The most interesting stories will make the way to the CNN news site or tv channel.

A further way are marketplaces specialized in participatory media or user generated content. Some of these marketplaces do welcome or are even dedicated to citizen journalism. At these websites one may list and sell content. CitizenSide is such a marketplace, where photos and videos are traded. They do especially welcome amateur photographers and there are no requirements related to quality. The content is what makes the media valuable. The same is due to Scoopt, which is rather specialized in photos but do market videos, too.