For news junkies, having preferred sources served in a tailor-made format may be the height of convenience. NEOtropolis discusses “How to Customize Social Media for Your Personal News Consumption.” Build-your-own news feed options have been popping up all over the social media landscape. Just last week Twitter bought Summify, whose proprietary algorithm combines users’ interests with links popular among folks they follow on Twitter.
Writer Katheleen Colan has tips for getting the most out of each platform. In Facebook, she recommends using the new groups feature to corral interests. That feature, of course, was a response to the circles in Google+, which she suggests using in a similar fashion. Ditto for the analogous functions in LinkedIn and YouTube. Colan seems most impressed, though, with Twitter’s efforts:
“Twitter is made for fast and efficient news aggregation and again, it’s all in the lists you create. Twitter’s ‘List’ function allows you to populate lists of like-minded Tweeps to quickly scan up-to-the-moment news on any topic under the sun. I probably keep too many lists and often construct temporary lists during large, important events.”
Colan goes on to recommend the HootSuite dashboard for some serious media aggregation. The application monitors social networks, performs custom analytics, and provides a space for collaboration. The basic version is free, so it might be worth checking out.
Cynthia Murrell, February 1, 2012
