Mobile Mondays

Ideas and updates from the mobile team at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Join the conversation with #mobilemondays.

[mobilemondays]

Mobile Mondays:

Monday, 10/19/2015

AJC’s mobile team ( @MelroseGibson and @EricaAlyssa) round-up this week’s top mobile journalism stories from around the world.

1. Get AMP’d: Here’s what publishers need to know about Google’s new plan to speed up your website via  @NiemanLab 

Erica: I’m going to be 100 percent honest here and say most of this article kind of confused me, it’s a DEEP dive into what AMP means for publishers. As a content producer, I care about how my content loads and looks on mobile. My takeaways from this: AMP has the potential to do great things for mobile load times (something the mobile internet desperately needs) but it also could have very real drawbacks when it comes to the kinds of content that can be published. I still have many many questions about how AMP will be implemented and actually work.

Melanie: As a mobile product manager who is always worrying about the speed of her product, I think this is a great idea. I’d love to see how fast my sites would be using AMP HTML. However, there are two things that would make me hesitant to use it.  

First, this would take away some of the control that we have over our design and the quality of our photos and video. Second, there isn’t a revenue share option for publishers like with Apple New and Facebook Instant Articles. I’d be interested in learning more about the ad networks supported by AMP. If they line up with our current ad network strategy, I think this could be worth looking in to more. 

Ultimately, I think this would take a lot of time and resources to implement. Using AMP would mean giving up a lot of control when it comes to our mobile site. I think Joshua Benton expresses exactly how I feel about AMP toward the end of his article: “You’re trading in open web standards for something built by Google engineers who, despite what I don’t doubt are the best of intentions, have incentives that don’t line up perfectly with yours. And you’re becoming an disempowered actor in a larger Silicon Valley battle over ad tech.”

2. Snapchat To Shut Down Snap Channel, Laying Off Team, Changing Content Plans via @Deadline

Erica: Reading about Snapchat is a passion of mine, almost as much as sending my own Snaps. I truly believe Snapchat could change the way the next generation consumes news. I think Snapchat is the next iteration of meeting your audience where they are (mobile, social, Snapchat). But to get specific on this story, Snapchat shutting down its own discover channel doesn’t surprise me and actually makes a lot of sense to me. Snap stories from specific locations it Snapchat’s place to shine. Like we’re seeing on most mobile traffic, hyper local content preforms better. The Atlanta Snap story is a must-watch for most Atlanta Snapchat users, not the national Snapchat discover story that’s hidden in an different page. 

Melanie: Fail fast, fail often. I think that the Snap Channel was a cool idea, but I quickly forgot about it after it launched. Hey, I was really busy looking at snaps of my friend’s canine companions. I feel for everyone who was laid off and I hope they are able to find new positions quickly!

3. 5 reasons to pay attention to the young people in your newsroom via  @Poynter

Erica: I think I may be the youngest if not one of the youngest people in our newsroom at 22 and four months, and I could not agree more with everything in this post. Millennials get such a bad reputation in most all workplaces but I fell like this especially rings true in newsroom where there has been so much disruption in the past decade. The reporters who have lived through it all are skeptical, and with reason, but debunking the lazy, no good, after-my-job millennial stereotype is one of our greatest challenges as a generation right now and it’s refreshing to see some good press working towards that goal.

Melanie: At 25, I am not the youngest person in the newsroom or audience departments and I think that is pretty great. I love that our departments at the AJC are really diverse. What I loved about this piece was that it highlighted the good things about millennials instead of talking about why millennials are the worst. The third and fifth points resonated with me the most. We’re really adaptable and we’re ready to learn. I have a feeling people are really going to like us…someday.

That’s all folks.

Thanks for reading and be sure to follow this tumblr for more updates from the AJC’s mobile team.

[mobilemondays]

Mobile Mondays: a brief dispatch on native apps and the smartphones that enable us/them

Monday, 9/7/2015

AJC’s mobile team (@anasantosphoto and @ericaalyssa) round-up this week’s top mobile journalism stories from around the world.

1. Newsonomics: Why native apps still matter in the Age of Distribution via  @NiemanLab

Erica: “So does the mobile browser = like and the app = love?” -- this was what stuck out to me the most in this story. For me as a user, that equation rings true. But as someone who works to create mobile content for both our app and mobile site, I feel like both audiences should and can find something to love. I don’t think there’s that like/love divide. I do, however, see that intimacy that’s referred to in the app user’s experience. We get countless emails about how to make our app better from our app users. Whether it’s setting up a vacation mode to silence our push alerts or making a feature to increase text size, app users feel more ownership over their in-app experience. That, to me, is a great sign for the future of news apps. 

2.  Periscope, by the Numbers via @Medium 

Erica: Periscope’s 10 millions users are watching 40 years of video a day AND they reached this feat in four short months. These stats alone are worth noting to anyone who wants to understand mobile audience. Mobile users adapt to new trends and tech quickly. By this point, news organizations should be ahead of this user learning curve. Who could have guessed when Periscope launched back in March that it would be at this peak already? 

This post is data and vocabulary heavy and it doesn’t delve into the bigger question: How did this happen? 

But it’s still worth noting: Periscope and its 10 million users are here to stay.

3.  Why We’re Jealous of Chinese Smartphones via @WSJ

Erica: China seems to have cracked the operating system code as far as creating apps that work on your iPhone and on your friend’s Android. As much as we’d like to think everyone has an iPhone, that’s not true. We consistently see our audience split fairly evenly between operating systems yet most apps aren’t available to all. While the news apps world seems to fit into all operating systems, I can’t help but wonder if we’re really making sure every operating system gets the same high quality user experience? 

And finally: a 360-degree virtual reality show created strictly for mobile view? I think we’ve seen the future folks!

That’s all folks.

Thanks for reading and be sure to follow this tumblr for more updates from the AJC’s mobile team.

[mobilemondays]

Snapchat experiment, continued

By Erica A. Hernandez, Mobile Reporting Specialist for the AJC (@EricaAlyssa)

The seventh-annual Red State Gathering was held in Atlanta Aug. 7-8 and I was a part of a team of more than 10 AJC reporters, photographers and editors who were on hand to cover the event. We were expecting about 10 republican presidential candidates to speak at the event, which began the morning after the first GOP debate. With more than 900 people in attendance, we knew it would be a big engagement moment for us. So in a collaboration with the AJC’s audience and politics team, I snapchatted the event from the AJC’s official Snapchat account (AJCnews).  

Here is the result from day one:

The goal here was to make sure to get every candidate from that day into the story along with behind the scenes peeks and commentary from our talented political team, that was on site, churning out lots of content all day. 

Day 2 we we’re expecting Donald Trump to close out the event but that all changed when the host of the event, Erick Erickson, dis-invited Trump for comments he made about journalist Megyn Kelly on CNN.

This change of plans turned the RedState Gathering into the hub of Trump news, though Trump was nowhere to be found.

Day 2 results:

With the help of the social team sharing updates on various channels (Twitter, Facebook) our Snapchat audience saw a good amount of growth in followers and engagement on both days. 

Stay tuned -- and follow AJCnews on Snapchat to see what we try next. 

[mobilemondays]

Customizing tweets to effortlessly drive web traffic

By Ana Santos, Mobile Content Producer for the AJC (@anasantosphoto)

This week, the AJC had an article about tuition rising (again) for Georgia colleges. There was an opportunity to target different audiences so the social promotion was personalized for the students and alum from each school.

This is example of our general Twitter post using our quotable tool:

Then we optimized Twitter posts targeting major schools with the biggest tuition increases, including Georgia State University, Georgia Gwinnett College, Georgia Tech and UGA. Our first tweet had no customization.

The goal was to get more users to click through to our links or get the same users to click through multiple times. Here is an example of how customized tweets engaged the audience:

I know it’s a general understanding that people who comment don’t always read the article, but this shows specifying UGA as the topic drew a lot of attention from a niche group of followers.

The result: The day of the experiment, the story Tuition has risen again for Georgia colleges was among the top 15 most-viewed stories on myajc.com. Twitter drove over one-third of the traffic.

It’s a great experiment to see that spending an extra five minutes customizing tweets can result in an effortless +33% increase in page views.

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Mobile Mondays: Tracking the vertical video and social video trends

Monday, 8/3/2015

AJC’s mobile team (@anasantosphoto and @ericaalyssa) roundup this week’s top mobile journalism stories from around the world. 

1. How Al Jazeera’s AJ+ Became One of the Biggest Video Publishers on Facebook via @Variety

Ana: Al Jazeera’s start-up AJ+ is truly audience-first, with their audience being Facebook video consumers. Short, quick visuals-first videos with high sharing potential go far on Facebook. But does it matter how many people AJ+ is reaching if there is no monetization? It’s gotten to the point that Facebook is too big to fail for publishers, including AJ+. If Facebook is half of AJ+’s audience, what will they be without Facebook?

Erica: I believe once you see an AJ+ video it’s hard not to like them. It’s true, the company isn’t very well known. It flew in under the radar and started flooding our social feeds with top notch video content -- which makes it all the more cool. Tailoring the content to the Facebook audience is what I believe made the difference for AJ+. The text heavy, topical, short explainers are made to watch, not listen to and that’s exactly why they get so many views. But Ana’s point is valid: what’s a Facebook view really worth? There have been some talks of introducing Facebook distributed advertisements into video plays and sharing revenue with the video producer. I would be interested to see how this plays out for AJ+.

2. Vertical video via @mashable: Cronut inventor's new desserts will tickle your memories

Ana: Professionals used to make fun of vertical video, saying things like “who forgot to turn the camera sideways” or “vertical videos are the worst.” Now are those same professionals thinking differently? Mashable seems to be experimenting with vertical videos on layouts. And it works on mobile! An exciting experimentation into digital video. I can’t wait to see what happens.

Erica: I was drawn to this story this morning for two reasons: No. 1 CRONUTS, No. 2 Snapchat really has stuck with vertical images and videos so I’m glad to see that trend is spreading outside of the app. Vertical video make sense for mobile. It’s how we hold and use our phone. It’s the most natural user experience and yes it can somewhat compromise the artistic view of the story a reporter is trying to tell or maybe it doesn’t have to? I think Mashable put together a great vertical video and fully used all the space in every shot and angle they showed.  

3. A new mobile ad report shows that while you probably start your day with social, news app users are loyal via @OMediaworks

Ana: This article introduced to me the idea of a “first” and a “last” app. “Here, we sought to identify the most common first “app of the day,” or the first app users access when they wake up in the morning, and last app of the day, which would be the last app accessed.” The most common “last” app is a news app, which is also the app with the most loyal users.I know when I wake up every day, I check Twitter and Facebook for trending this morning or breaking overnight news. But when I go to bed, I find myself scrolling through NYT Now or listening to NPR One. People keep talking about the diminishing relevance of news apps, but news apps done well can really capture and hold an audience.

Erica: I too had never really focused on the idea of a last app. Obviously capitalizing on being someone’s first app of the day is a big goal of many news app developers. But It seems social is more dominant in the early mornings hours. I admit that Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram are first on my morning routine after email. But being a last app can have just as much, if not more, of an impact on our audience.

Another important point made here is how the mobile audience traffic is dominated by android, though monetization isn’t. Is it worth spending more of our resources to cater to a device specific audience?

That’s all folks.

Thanks for reading and be sure to follow this tumblr for more updates from the AJC’s mobile team.

[mobilemondays]

Mobile Mondays: The most trustworthy news sources, according to millennials

Monday, 7/27/2015

AJC’s mobile team (@anasantosphoto and @ericaalyssa) round-up this week’s top mobile journalism stories from around the world.

1. The rise of the mobile editor via Poynter

Ana: Mobile devices have fundamentally changed the way audiences interact with information, media and news. The way our audience interacts with mobile devices is different than the way they interact with desktop or print. Therefore, the publishing and presentation strategy has to be different, and there has to be someone who maps that strategy out.

There has to be someone in the newsroom who consciously thinks about mobile-first and helps bring the rest of the publication down that route. Dr. Garcia says “mobile success is about a collaborative effort involving storytelling, design, technology, user-experience and advertising.” Mobile-first is the responsibility of everyone, but “the presence of the mobile editor as key.”

Erica: While reading this story I just kept hearing “YAAAAAAS” over and over in my head. It was dead on with what a mobile editor is and why it’s needed. I just wish we had gotten a little more insight as to how these positions function in the newsrooms that were mentioned, but that just because I wanted to compare and contrast it to what Ana and I do as mobile producers and reporters. One of the more important lines, beyond defining the role is conveying why it is so crucial. No sentence accomplishes this more than: “The mobile editor, even if confined to a mobile silo, needs to have enough gravitas and authority to be able to convince the newsroom that mobile is our recent present, our current, and our future, and that a majority of humanity will increasingly live more of their lives on mobile.” YAAAAAS!

2. The New York Times’ “Summer of Science” aims to make science journalism mobile-friendly and fun via Nieman Labs

Ana: How do you get people interested in science? How do you translate academic studies with complicated facts and figures and sometimes vague real-life implications into an everyday must-read? The NYT took an audience-first approach, focusing on high school students. The answer, not surprising to many, was a mobile-first design with content optimized for social media.

I disagree with Sam Dolnick, a senior editor for mobile at the Times, when mobile-first content means minimalist content. I do not think content for mobile devices should be shorter for the sake of being shorter. That’s assuming mobile audiences only want to skim and have short attention spans. A mobile audience is just a digital audience on a mobile device. Not all wired users want longform pieces, why would mobile audiences want only shorter content? You have to take content customization on a case-by-case basis, putting audience first.

Erica: First off I have to say I’m so eager to see how this goes for the Times and hope we get an end-of-the-project update at some point. Secondly, this is a great idea and what makes the concept and execution of this so sound is that they realize the mobile audience is the social audience too, the overlap there is too great to ignore. So the project isn’t just about designing and creating mobile-friendly content it doing that for content that is highly shareable. Mobile and social’s overlap is something that we need to continue to learn about in order to fully capitalize on it, and this project could help further that understanding. 

3. Millennials No Less Trusting (or Distrusting) of News Sources via Pew Research Center

Ana: I will admit I am the typical millennial… according to this Pew Research study on trust and distrust in different media organizations based on generations. My parents just don’t get why I love The Daily Show! NPR is doing a great job of gathering a young and diverse audience, as is the Washington Post and NYT. This study is interesting to me, because being good as social media or being mobile-first doesn’t automatically make a news organization trustworthy.  There are more things at work than just a tech-savvy team.

Erica: It’s hard to talk about the impact of mobile and social channels on content metrics without discussion millennials. Yes, millennials are another key component to this equation as they are arguably the high mobile-using demographic. This study showed millennials are just a little bit more trusting of media than the generations that came before them (about 3 to 4 percent more trust media, to be exact). This is good news for our mobile efforts. Our native mobile audience trusts us now it’s just a matter of getting them to see our content and enjoy the experience while view it (see articles 1 and 2 above). 

That’s all folks. 

Thanks for reading and be sure to follow this tumblr for more updates from the AJC’s mobile team.

[mobilemondays]

Mobile Mondays: Why Snapchat’s new app design won’t help Discover

Monday, 7/14/2015

AJC’s mobile team (@anasantosphoto and @ericaalyssa) round-up this week’s top mobile journalism stories from around the world.

1.  Snapchat Redesign Puts Spotlight on ‘Discover’ News Portal via the Wall Street Journal 

Ana: Millennials love Snapchat, but let's admit it: Discover is easy to forget. Less than 2 million of Snapchat's daily 100 million users look at Discover, according to this article. Snapchat seems to want to change that, by putting Discover right above our friends in the Stories section. 

I immediately noticed the change when I opened Snapchat. But will this user experience update result in more clicks for publishers like National Geographic and Vice? If visits don't dramatically increase with this new design, Snapchat just isn't the media publishing powerhouse it's cracked up to be.

Erica: I first saw this update as I was logging into our newsroom’s snapchat, an eye catching difference but not so alarming as all the content and information presented to me was the same -- it was just organized differently. Ana and I had been discussing the usefulness in having a newsroom Snapchat account with a few of the AJC interns last week and all of them came to the realization that they like the content presented in the “Discover” page but they just don’t go to it unless they’re “really bored.” I completely agree. Before it was too easy to forget about, but this update and redesign changes all of that.

2.  Reinventing Google for a Mobile World via the New York Times

Ana: You don't need a fancy study to show you how mobile devices affect information sharing and consumption. The way I operate on a desktop is different than the way I operate on a mobile device. Google Search's power is diminishing and "whoever figures out what questions people really want to ask their phones while they are walking around, and how they will ask those questions” will hit the jackpot, according to this article. Search is a huge part of my mobile experience, but I don't always Google it. 

When I want to look up a recipe, I Pinterest it. When I want news, I Twitter it. When I want recommendations on salons and restaurants, I Yelp it. When I look for things to do, I Facebook it. Sometimes Google Search may not have all the answers I'm asking while I'm on the go.

Erica: The parallels to the obstacles Google is facing as a search engine and we’re facing as a news provider are vast. Google is seeing more traffic driven from mobile devices and so are we. Google, however, is seeing a lot of the traffic it is losing from desktop searches moving to app searches in iTunes’ app store (which it practically dominates). We, on the other hand, are waiting to see our app’s numbers pick and regain that gap in users.  

3.  How mobile metrics fall short for news outlets and advertisers via International Journalist’s Network

Ana: What is the value of a page view or a visit, at least according to advertisers? I would think the modern advertising in the digital age would be easier and more precise than advertising in the non-Internet era. It is much easier to target people by location, interest and income now than ever. But can we agree on the value of a visit? Are all visits equal? It seems as things get clearer, they also get more complicated.

Erica: The challenges capitalizing on a mobile audience are endless. There are too many different ways to pull the numbers in Chartbeat, Adobe Omniture or one of the many other metric trackers we use here, but none of them ever seem to fully capture the whole picture. This piece really hit home with the struggles to get advertising into AJC’s mobile application. It’s a tough sell since we are still growing our audience to be of an influential size.

[mobilemondays]

In an effort to grow our Snapchat audience, I snapped live from arguably Atlanta’s largest weekend event: the Atlanta Street Food Festival in Piedmont Park. 

Here is a look at the final product. Each individual snap was viewed about 70 times, a big jump from around 20 times at last weekend’s AJC Peachtree Road Race.

Erica A. Hernandez, mobile reporting specialist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution authored this post. Follow her on Twitter @EricaAlyssa.

[mobilemondays]

AJCnews’ Snapcat story from Saturdat July 4, 2015 AJC Peachtree Road Race. 

See our full post about experimenting with this medium. 

[mobilemondays]

Snapchat: Live From The #AJCPRR Finish Line

There’s no arguing Snapchat is here to stay but the question now facing us at the AJC and reporters at media outlets across America is how do we engage our audience on this somewhat mystifying medium?

The AJC has had a Snapchat account for some time (follow us at AJCnews) but no one has really put much effort into pushing content out through it or growing our specific audience on it. With that in mind, I wanted to experiment with live event coverage via Snapchat during one of Atlanta’s biggest events, the AJC Peachtree Road Race.

The Goal

As a mobile reporting specialist, I was already positioned to be at the finish line on race day gather quick hit videos, stories and photos. The idea being this content could be turned around and pushed out on social very quickly to engage our mobile audience whom were either at the race cheering others on, running the race or just following race updates from home.

With that goal in mind it seemed like a very natural progression to add Snapchat to my coverage plan. The audience we were looking to reach would likely be on Snapchat more than they’d be on our homepage (like most mobile visitors to our site).

Snappin’ Away on Race Day 

I set out on race day at 6 am to catch the MARTA to the finish line. Once I got off at midtown, I saw the station was flooded with racers trying to stay dry on their commute to the starting line. I knew I wanted to tell that story but I wanted to show a sense of place since this wasn’t obviously race related.

After a few attempts of getting a shot inside the MARTA stop, I pointed the camera out toward the rainy street scene and got a much better result.

I wanted to show more than just the women’s and men’s winner crossing the finish line. That kind of news is not what Snapchat users would expect on that platform. They are looking for more interesting, sometimes funny photos and videos that show them a little slice of something they’re experiencing or something they wish they were experiencing.

Like Instagram, breaking news on Snapchat isn’t going to perform too well, but compelling images and vibrant scenes will.

My goal for this experiment was not only to test what works and flex my Snapchat muscles, but I also wanted to see if the thirst for Snapchat content was there. Since we aren’t regularly posting content to Snapchat yet we aren’t campaigning hard to grow awareness of our account. But I forwarded a screen shot to our social media manager on-call on race day and asked him to tweet it out to encourage people to follow us.

He did.

It’s important that he included that photo because it gave our audience a peak of the kind of content they’d be signing up for – we were not and would not tweet out a call to action for a blind follow.

The Results

In one day the AJCnews Snapchat account jumped from 19 followers to 34 followers with just that one tweet from the main AJC account.

My final product ended up being less than 200 seconds long and feature five photos and six video clips.

(Watch full Snapchat story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-71dJhbJX4)

In a world where social referrals to mobile rule, any new social connections to our audience can be beneficial and is worth exploring. Here’s hoping Snapchat becomes a natural part of our mobile and visuals daily work flow.

Erica A. Hernandez, mobile reporting specialist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution authored this post. Follow her on Twitter @EricaAlyssa.

[mobilemondays]

The best social media posts about SCOTUS gay marriage

The White House won on Twitter with its #LoveWins animated graphic that showed the history of gay marriage in the U.S.

#LoveWins. pic.twitter.com/s5aiwIsFz8

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 26, 2015

Today is a big step in our march toward equality. Gay and lesbian couples now have the right to marry, just like anyone else. #LoveWins

— President Obama (@POTUS) June 26, 2015

TIME magazine showed the power of quotables with a simple but powerful line that sums up the SCOTUS same-sex decision.

Supreme Court says same-sex couples have right to marry in all 50 states http://t.co/x9SaFg52KP pic.twitter.com/6fU8abBvUI

— TIME.com (@TIME) June 26, 2015

AJC political reporter Greg Bluestein was at a Georgia courthouse when couples started rolling in to apply for marriage licenses. Georgia banned gay marriage in 2004.

The second same-sex couple to legally wed at Fulton County courthouse fills out paperwork while choking up. #gapol pic.twitter.com/FwRXvn7Q9F

— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) June 26, 2015

Never underestimate the power of a map.

Map: Where gay Americans can now marry http://t.co/SPxAigMO4L pic.twitter.com/MSsoNDGD0X

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 26, 2015

Vox’s Ezra Klein reflected on how much eleven years can make a difference.

If you had told me in 2004 that America would have a black president, universal health care, and gay marriage by 2015, I would have laughed

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) June 26, 2015

The last paragraph of the SCOTUS ruling went viral and many media organizations, including Vox and Buzzfeed, picked it up and displayed it on Twitter like this.

Justice Kennedy's closing paragraph. pic.twitter.com/V3jZbFPAUg

— Matt Ford (@fordm) June 26, 2015

Other people made comparisons to other current events, such as the debate on finally eliminating Confederate flags from the South Carolina State House and other places in the U.S.

Here's a gif for you, America. You fucking earned it this week: pic.twitter.com/OrfVsJauxe

— Ben Rosen (@Rosen) June 26, 2015

what a week pic.twitter.com/V3pLCz0H8g

— Jonah Green (@jonah_green) June 26, 2015

MARRIAGE EQUALITY IN ALL STATES & WE'RE TAKING DOWN CONFEDERATE FLAGS 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 https://t.co/m1JdXWTStT

— king corv (@IsaiahSmith311) June 26, 2015

This week was a pretty spectacular week for SCOTUS decisions.

Dang, universal healthcare AND gay marriage in America by 2015 pic.twitter.com/tVou0FXMDM

— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) June 26, 2015

[mobilemondays]

Mobile Experimentation: End Chronic Homelessness in Atlanta

I formatted a blog post, "End chronic homelessness," which were two opinion articles posted on the MyAJC site that were posted on one blog post. My goal was to format this blog post to make the articles look better for a mobile screen. Here is the before and after of what I did.

Before

The text of the story was unedited in terms of formatting. Besides the bolding of the title and byline, not much else seemed to be formatted on this blog post. I thought it should be made obvious to the reader where one opinion piece started and the other ended.

I also believed that the bylines should be structured differently. It wasn't obvious to the reader who the author was and why they should listen to them.

TKTKTKT

After

I formatted the titles as Heading 1 on Wordpress, I capitalized the authors' names and added their biographical information in the byline, not at the bottom after the article.

I also added lines between the two pieces to signify they were totally different and not necessarily written for each other. I added links where I could (I only added five in this blog post), but I didn't change any of the content. I linked to Rick Badie's AJC bio page, the home pages of the organizations mentioned in the bylines, and linked to the MyAJC version of the article.

As a side note, I didn't center the titles. That is how the mobile version of Wordpress translates that formatting. The headers aren't centered on the wired site, as you can see here.

Side-By-Side Comparison

The left is before, and the right is after optimization.

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Mobile Experimentation: Honey Boo Boo moves to Atlanta

An optimization of AJC's Buzz blog's Honey Boo Boo family now living in metro Atlanta, covering how to organize lots of aggregated content and embeds in a blog post.

Before

In her blog post, Jennifer Brett links to lots of previous articles about the Shannon family, famous for the TLC show "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo." She also embeds a Facebook post relevant to the story as well as a transcript of the Facebook post's text. I faced two challenges with this blog post: organizing aggregated content and a big chunk of transcript text.

The problem with the transcript is that it is long. It takes up a whole screen of the iPhone 6+, to give an idea of how it might not be legible on mobile.

After

My biggest changes for this article was placing the list of past coverage at the bottom, after the content. I'm interested in exploring more of inserting related content throughout an article. But I felt that placing a list of past coverage before the content of the article wasn't a good experience for the reader. Also, as a content producer, I wouldn't want a user going to an older article before reading all or most of the current article.

I also added more links throughout the article, to make the article look more interactive and resourceful.

The biggest challenge was this huge block of text (the transcript). Instead of putting it in quotes, I indented it. Alternatively, I could have italicized the block of text.

Hopefully these small changes add to a better user reading experience.

[mobilemondays]

Mobile Experimentation: Embedding iFrames for mobile-first

While threading and optimizing content for mobile this week, I looked at "Jon Stewart’s top 5 greatest Georgia politics hits" on the AJC politics blog. Jon Stewart had announced he was leaving The Daily Show, so AJC Washington reporter Daniel Malloy did a round-up on the top clips where Georgia was mentioned criticized made complete fun of.

I did some tweaking of the title, experimented with iframes for mobile and played with the power of lists.

Before

Here are some screenshots of what the blog post looked before I went in and made some edits.

There were several things I noticed that could be modified for a mobile audience. The first and most obvious was the title. If you read the title alone, you weren't exactly sure what the article was going to look like before you clicked it. It could have been a short burst, an article, or a list. That uncertainty can turn some prospective views away.

Second, the videos were not responsive to the smaller screen size. When you clicked the videos to watch them, they adapted to your screen and played perfectly fine. But at a glance, they were not fitting properly. Plus, the iframe was messy with more The Daily Show promotional links.

Third and lastly, this blog post was clearly a list, but why wasn't it formatted as such? For some weird reason, people love lists. They like numbers and order.

After

To optimize the headline, I added the words "top 5" into the title. Then, I listed the videos 1-5, giving each video a title and dating them. Then I added a briefly summary of the video's content, including linking to AJC content relevant to the video clip.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make the iframes truly responsive. I set the iframe width at 100% in the blog post, so the image is warped when you look at the video on a wider screen, lik a desktop. Ideally I would have found a way to make the iframes truly responsive on a smaller screen, but this is a work-around that sufficed for the time being.

I also did NOT change or "break" the link. This story had already been published and promoted and visited, therefore I would never change the link.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Here are some side-by-side comparisons of before (left) and after (right.). You be the judge of whether these changes truly make the story more mobile-friendly.

Header

Body

Body (cont.)

 Footer

Article

Jon Stewart’s top 5 greatest Georgia politics hits (AJC)

[mobilemondays]

Mobile journalism lessons from news:rewired

Top stories, articles and keynote speakers from the February 2-15 news:rewired conference that would benefit mobile journalists and newsroom producers.

5 essential tips for great visual storytelling (journalism.co.uk)

How to utilize visuals to "accompany a great piece of writing or reportage" featuring lessons learned from the visual storytelling session of digital journalism conference news:rewired.

Also read As it happened: Keynote from Aron Pilhofer, where the Guardian’s executive editor for digital talks about how mobile functionality is key.

How journalists can understand and maximise Twitter’s potential (news:rewired)

Joanna Geary, head of news partnerships at Twitter UK, talks about three key areas (use of data, engagement, and discovery and multimedia) in digital journalism conference news:rewired's afternoon keynote speech.

How NPR and the BBC are making online audio more engaging (news:rewired)

How turning radio news "into mobile-focused digital news" helped NPR and BBC Newsbeat overcome the problem of audio being difficult to find and share online.

As it happened: Experimenting in the newsroom (news:rewired)

Learn about how newsrooms are starting to think mobile first (and sometimes mobile only) and how the BBC will plan their election coverage around mobile.

Food for thought: How Al Jazeera engages younger audiences through an app VS Should news organisations still bother making an app?

WhatsApp ‘like a Ferrari you can only drive in a courtyard’

The message app WhatsApp has 700 million users, making it a mobile-first platform that news organisations can’t ignore.

As it happened: Emerging technology session

"This is the time to get there and find out and seeing how people are using smart watches. Moving from mobile to Gear was a smart move for Samsung." - Subhajit Banerjee, mobile editor for The Guardian. 

As it happened: Engaging younger audiences

A look at some of the ways news outlets are reaching out to 16-34 year old readers, with a focus on mobile and social strategies.

[mobilemondays]

What is Snapchat Discover?

How Snapchat became a global force for news media and entertainment consumption

A collection of links to all the stories and articles you will ever need to understand Snapchat and utilize Snapchat Discover for news.

What is a Snapchat news audience?

Why BuzzFeed is expanding with new Distributed division (journalism.co.uk)

An analysis of Buzzfeed's aim to create original content published directly to the social web, on platforms and apps like Instagram, Vine, Tumblr and Snapchat.

Our Year on Snapchat: Mashable's journey into ephemeral storytelling (Mashable)

Be the Star of Your Own Snapchat Story (New York Times)

The best way to understand Snapchat Stories is to imagine a short and very personal TV show: directed, edited and starring you. According to Snapchat, one billion Stories are viewed each day.

A Teenager’s View on Social Media: Written by an actual teen (Medium)

Snapchat is where we can really be ourselves while being attached to our social identity. Without the constant social pressure of a follower count or Facebook friends, I am not constantly having these random people shoved in front of me. Instead, Snapchat is a somewhat intimate network of friends who I don't care if they see me at a party having fun.

Snapchat has a secret new way to add your friends (The Next Web)

Snapchat's new Ghostcode lets you scan and "magically" added new friends, bypassinng the need to search for a username.

Thoughts On Snapchat For News (NPR Social Media Desk)

NPR Social Media Desk intern Tajha Chappellet-Lanier (@TajhaLanier) takes a closer look at Snapchat and lessons learned from other media organizations on the social media platform.

The Weird Near Future of News (The Awl)

NPR on Snapchat: Now you see it –– now you don’t. (NPR Social Media Desk)

Snapchat is getting its own original video series sponsored by AT&T (The Next Web)

Launching Discover

Introducing Discover (Snapchat)

Snapchat Discover is a new way to explore Stories from different editorial teams. It’s the result of collaboration with world-class leaders in media to build a storytelling format that puts the narrative first. This is not social media.

Inside Snapchat’s original media ambitions (Digiday)

When Snapchat launches Discover feature at the end of the month, it will start publishing original content, as well as content from other media companies, turning the messaging platform into a platform-publisher hybrid squarely aimed at young media consumers.

CNN launches on Snapchat to deliver news to more audiences (CNN)

Snapping the news (NPR Social Media Desk)

This morning the company was quick to declare the new publishing feature is “not social media.” Whatever the platform is or is not, the design is slick and user-friendly. Just like a regular “story,” the videos and images disappear after 24 hours. “What’s news today is history tomorrow,” the company wrote in its announcement blog post.

Snapchat opening the door for new way of journalism (USA Today)

Are news organizations launching on Snapchat after the release of Discovery being innovative or jumping the bandwagon?

How news organizations are using SnapChat to report and distribute news (Northwestern University Knight Lab)

A look at how a few publications are using Snapchat to gather and distribute news.

Snapchat ventures into news territory (Columbia Journalism Review)

Snapchat similarly gives outlets a large—and particularly young—user base. And it will provide media outlets a slice of ad revenue in return for piquing those users’ interest. Stories hosted on Snapchat exist not in a newsfeed that rewards engagement, but rather a section separate from the rest of the app. There is currently no way to share or comment on stories, a marked difference from similar efforts elsewhere.

Snapchat’s new Discover feature could be a significant moment in the evolution of mobile news (Nieman Lab)

Snapchat Launches Discover (TechCrunch)

On Snapchat’s not-so-social bet on content (The Next Web)

Good content is R.A.R.E – Relevant, Actionable, Responsive and Entertaining. Snapchat Discover is missing a huge gap of audience interaction and engagement that is crucial for real relationships to form.

Snapchat Is Going to Beat Facebook at News, And it’s a good thing for everyone (except maybe Facebook) (Medium and Huffington Post)

Is Snapchat Discovery marking another giant shift in news access. Is this the rise of the Front Page again? "Instead of users seeing news that is filtered by “friends,” likes, comments, and shares, users see a series of videos and cards curated by an editor." This brings power back to the editors, "who is trained and skilled at knowing what news matters and what news doesn’t."

Discover: Snapchat’s New Feature is Genius (Medium)

Snapchat Discover prompts newsrooms to think mobile first (IJ Net)

[mobilemondays]

Mobile Mondays

FEBRUARY 2015

All the significant mobile/social media news for journalists this month.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Links are broken. These three alternatives have improved our readers’ reading experience. (Medium)

Sebastian Kersten tackles the dilemma of links embedded in a story. Do they hurt or help your user experience?

One of the most distracting phenomenons during reading are links. They keep pointing us to directions that are probably valuable, but at the same time force us to make a decision: to click or not to click.

Nearly half of Facebook’s users only access it on a mobile device (TNW)

Facebook saw 1.19 billion monthly active mobile users, an increase of 13 percent year-on-year.

Facebook Users Are Increasingly Going Mobile (NBC)

Facebook launches tips for places to compete against Yelp and Foursquare

Facebook is about to become a more serious competitor to Yelp and Foursquare. Now when you walk into a business, the suitably named “Place Tips” feature will pop up recommendations about the business.

Creating And Deploying Small-Scale Projects (NPR Visuals)

Monday, February 9, 2015

The Top 6 Tech Skills You Need in 2015 (Inc)

What skills should you master to stay relevant and what are this year's hottest technology trends? Aaron Skonnard, CEO of Pluralsight, lists mobile skills are one of the top skills to know in technology and provides a list of beginner-level courses related to mobile technology.

Instagram looks to expand its ‘editorial’ team (Digiday)

Like so many other platforms before it, Instagram is looking to hire former journalists to identify and popularize budding Instagram stars. (The editorial — or community management — team is actually part of Instagram’s marketing division.)

Is hiring journalists such a good idea for Instagram? (Columbia Journalism Review)

Designing Twitter Video: A look into the design and prototyping process (Paul Stamatiou)

I wrote 6,200 words about the design, prototyping and research process behind Twitter Video. http://t.co/PJWusvj3Xo pic.twitter.com/TwDU5Jf3s6

Reuters Launches On-Demand News App

What makes Reuters TV so significant? Consumer habits for televsion-viewing have changed, shifting in favor on mobile. “It’s TV news for the Netflix generation: on-demand, up-to-date, personalized to you and available anywhere and at the duration that’s right for you,” says Issac Showman, managing director of Reuters TV

Innovation in News Media: A Look at the Latest Innovations Shaping the Future of News (Reuters Institute)

An analysis of the power mobile will have over news in the upcoming years by Juan Señor, partner at Innovations Media. For example:

It is estimated that 1.8 billion or 82% of mobile phones will be smart phones by 2017

Mobile devices were responsible for 28% of all the website traffic in the third quarter of 2013

Tablet ownership is expected to quadruple in two years

In Photo Sharing, Every Picture Tells a Story, When It Has the Right Caption (Wall Street Journal)

For a sizable and influential group of posters, many with followings in the tens of thousands, captions are about developing a signature style.

“The caption is as important as the picture,” says Matt McDonald, who is chronicling his yearslong road trip in a 1986 Volkswagen van with lengthily captioned photos on Instagram.

Captions with a consistent voice often rely on a repeated gimmick: a time stamp to mark the moment, an inspirational quote or familiar song lyrics. Length can be as varied as tone, from a single cartoonlike emoji to several paragraphs of text.

Millennials Spend More Time WIth Mobile, Impacts TV Time (MediaPost)

How are the digital habits of millennials different from the habits of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers, and what are the implications for mobile content and marketing?

Monday, February 16, 2015

Mobile on the Move: How the News Travels and Where It’s Headed (PBS Idea Lab)

Report: 80% of all mobile data is consumed by just 10% of users (Gigaom)

As photos flood our screens, which ones hold our attention? (Poynter)

The question the study looked at is “What makes a photograph worth publishing in an age when images are shared in an instant, around the world?” The study has gone beyond the anecdotal to provide some scientific facts, such as:

Captions were very well read and important to context and understanding. A well-written—or even just lengthier—caption increased the likelihood that a photograph received attention. - Sara Quinn, research author

Inside The New York Times Instagram strategy (Digiday)

Each New York Times desk — be it food, fashion, sports or video — operates its own Instagram feed, determining what and when to post, according to MacCallum. Some editors choose to repurpose existing photos and videos for their Instagram feeds, but others share certain things exclusively on Instagram. The travel desk, for example, cuts 15-second videos specifically for Instagram, which serve as vignettes from its “36 Hour” weekend travel guide series.

Mobile journalism lessons from news:rewired

What is Snapchat Discover?

Why are people still using SMS in 2015? (The Next Web)

Q&A with BBC News Labs on predicting the future of news (IJNet)

Everybody knows mobile journalism is going to rock our world. So my task was to formulate a real prediction. That was the exciting bit, as you can see the tech becoming very real in your mind.

Snapchat’s new music feature isn’t perfect, but it’s leading the way for mobile-first content creators (The Next Web)