August 4, 2009

Analyzing Mobile and Social Media from the Road

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By Mo Krochmal

The 2,563 miles I drove over from July 23-Aug. 3, 2009, gave me a wonderful opportunity to do some hands-on testing of mobile technology and to research social media in preparation for the 2009-2010 academic year where I will teach students online journalism and journalism tools as assistant professor of journalism at Hofstra University.

You can view a compilation of my status updates and sharing from the trip on the Krochmal.Storytlr.com site, or click this http://tr.im/vkLj

Rationale
I believe that social media and mobile technologies are at the frontiers of new journalism's evolution and understanding how these work will allow me to be a more effective teacher in the classroom as well as continuing the innovation began last semester with the rollout of NassauNewsLive.com, my student-run research project in hyperlocal multimedia community news.

Preparations
This summer, I have immersed myself in social media, starting with the Edelman New Media in Academia conference at Georgetown University in June, followed by a working stint at Jeff Pulver's 140 Characters conference in New York and a partnership with social media expert Carmina Perez in producing weekly videos on social media news as well as producing a weekly news roundup on blip.tv.

For this trip, my social media operating system would be both Facebook and Twitter.

This trip was planned to visit and interview people working at two community newspapers in North Carolina to learn about their challenges and the social media plans. I visited both the Shelby Star and the Daily News of Washington and interviewed publishers and journalists.

Toolkit

I assembled a toolkit that included an Acer laptop, a Logitech 2 megapixel webcam, a Broadband2go modem and $20 of bandwidth.

My primary tool was a new Nokia N97 mobile telephone with touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, 3G connectivity, and an onboard GPS system as well as a 5 megapixel camera and a video camera. I purchased a cigarette-lighter adapter for the device as it is a total energy hog and constantly needs refilling.

I added a number of software applications for the trip.

I used:

Snaptu for Twitter browsing,
Twitpix and Mobyphoto for sharing photographs on Twitter.
I also installed and connected Tumblr to my phone, using the service to post voice entries onto my life stream , and DialtoDo to post voice to text on Twitter.To share my tracks, I installed the GPSed.com software and turned on the tracking feature.

Earlier in the summer, I had created a website that covered my research into mobile tools and provides some tips on selecting mobile hardware, software and services.

As a matter of course, I frequently use Qik.com for live video streaming from my telephone. I would recommend that users install backups for this service.

I depended on the AT&T network and was frequently disappointed with the accessability in the rural areas that I was traveling.

The numbers

This portion is devoted to the numbers – simple numbers that can be taken from the individual websites/social media I used.

On Facebook, during the study period, I initiated 36 events – either as status updates, or content sharing. These 36 events produced 48 comments in return. For Facebook, all of the responses and comments are considered to be from first-or second-degree friends.

I made four initial postings before getting a response. My first posting of a photography album brought five comments and convinced me to share photographs on Facebook for the most response.

I created six photo albums over the 11 days of the trip, with a total of 134 edited photographs. These generated 13 comments from my 206 Facebook friends. Only a small fraction of my FB friends also monitor Twitter, so very little overlap but they each got unique offerings, not the same content posted in two different places. I also offered the FB photo albums to the general public and tweeted the URLs for traffic and to measure the uptake.

Learning: Social networks are different and require different approaches. Visual offerings work well in addition to the status changes that people come to expect from Facebook. The photography albums took time to produce and were generally done at the end of the day on a laptop with Internet connectivity. The search for great photo opportunities took a lot of time and attention. Captions are important.

Twitter

On Twitter, I started on July 23 with 766 followers and went down to 755 before closing out the story period with 759.

I sent out 27 messages during the 11-day period, and received 21. The most tweets I did in a day was 18 on July 29, with 3 being the smallest amount on Aug. 1. I tweeted via txt on my phone, with voice-to-post and voice-to-text services. I also shared photographs taken with my phone.

A total of 50 percent of my tweets came from the web, 11 percent from Ping.fm, 7.25 from Snaptu, 5.9 percent from Twitpic and 4.4 from txt.

The worlds "social media" were included in 14 percent of my tweets while the word "live" was in 11 percent while the keyword "streaming" took 9 percent.

I wrote 80 status messages, participated in 33 conversations, shared 24 photos, and 11 videos via the Qik.com live streaming mobile service.

I received some 56 responses with 27 coming from former students. I enjoyed 2 re-tweets and received 5 tweets from North Carolina folks.

Content

I choose to blog my trip but in methods that were sustainable over the period of 11 days. I didn't have the large chunks of time that blogging requires, so I opted to go with microblogging via statuses. I didn't do a lot of linking nor retweeting. I wasn't able to monitor my networks like I would at home and I wasn't able to easily tweet from my phone via the Snaptu application, or txting. I was able to do a few tweets by dialing them as I drove. This is a fertile area for exploration – voice activation. My phone has a voice command feature that could be great on a road trip, allowing you to dictate tweets, or listen to your messages by voice command.

I used the live blogging service to do extended reporting. I was constantly looking for picturesque backdrops for my standups. So, there I would be. In the backwoods of North Carolina, on the Blue Ridge mountains, standing there with my mobile phone in one hand, holding it up while I spoke into the lens. I would organize my thoughts in my mind before speaking and then would just let it rip as I talked, trying to keep it no longer than 4 minutes.

I did 10 Qik live videos, with my July 26 2-minute qik from the Blue Ridge Parkway recording 16 views. In total, my Qiks received 64 views.

I had 14 pictures shared through Twitpics and this method quickly emerged as one of my favorite ways to share. I usually took photos of interesting foods I encountered along the way and sent the pictures as quickly as I could using e-mail. This had a certain amount of latency and creating captions was not easy and intuitive, but the results were instant and quick. And, additionally, the photos look great when they appear in the storytlr application.

Conclusions

During the trip, I was disappointed with the number of responses and replies I received. I would have liked a lot more, but it just shows the value of any response and the challenge we face in eliciting those responses.

They are the true value in social media and they can't be faked. You either get them or you don’t.