The Siri I’m speaking with is a 24 year-old adult film actress who has been described as “the Christina Hendricks of porn.” She registered her stage name in June 2011, four months before Apple released its personal assistance app.

With a Tumblr blog (NSFW) and a flourishing Twitter account, Siri is one of many actors in the adult film industry using social media as a branding tool. CNN recently reported that 90% of porn stars are on Twitter. This combination of sex and tech is a social media geek’s wet dream.

Siri didn’t create an online presence overnight, but after her first year as an aspiring porn star, she has gained 18,600 Twitter followers, and her blog gets more than 100 questions and comments each month. There are a lot of upstart brands that would kill for those metrics.

With the help of her husband, Siri spends an estimated five hours each day updating her online profiles, and it has paid off. Because of her popularity with fans, Siri was voted Miss Freeones Best Newcomer for 2012.

You may think that building a social media following is easy when you’re selling sex, but aspiring porn stars trying to establish a buzz face plenty of challenges. The biggest hurdle: getting in front of a camera for a studio film. Siri created her Twitter account last summer and spent six months planning how to launch her career before moving from Texas to California. Her first scene wasn’t released until this past February.

“I would guess that I had less than 100 followers from the time I created the account until attending the AVN Awards in the last week of January,” Siri said. “Once I started shooting, fleshing out the blog, and posting photos of things, I was steadily gaining followers. A couple weeks into my first month of shooting, I remember waking up and realizing I’d hit 1,000 followers. That was the first big landmark.”

After the initial surge of support, Siri developed a social media strategy that provides her fans with what they care about the most.

“I don’t post a lot of random tweets. It’s usually a redirect link that goes to a blog post with a photo, an update about what I’m shooting, or a video clip. I almost always post actual content.”

On Siri’s blog, you’ll find naked photos mixed in with answers to fan questions and insightful opinion pieces. You can read about her support for gay marriage, her views on Internet piracy, and porn star karaoke nights.

Porn stars who moonlight as social media marketers are quickly changing the landscape of the industry. Adult videos used to be distributed only on VHS tapes and DVDs, but now, porn stars can market and distribute their own content, building a fan base that could lead to higher salaries from porn studios.

For porn stars who bare all on camera and then communicate individually with fans, social media can have its drawbacks regarding an invasion of privacy. Siri encountered plenty of “trolls” who made disrespectful remarks about her occupation or body just to upset her. The few instances genuine fans asked provocative questions, she politely declined to answer and set firm boundaries about what aspects of her personal life are off-limits. Surprisingly, it worked.

“The interesting things about these fans is that while they may not have realistic expectations of how well they can get to know me, they’re usually the most loyal fans,” Siri explained. “The last thing they want to do is annoy me or anger me, so when I do set a boundary, they’ve all been very respectful of that.”

Since Twitter and blogging are relatively new to the industry, porn stars are still figuring out how to best use the technology to carve out successful careers. Some have capitalized on social media to break into mainstream entertainment. Sasha Grey (370,000 followers) had a legion of fans before starring in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience and landing a role in “Entourage.” James Deen (80,000 followers) was recently featured in GQ and will appear alongside Lindsay Lohan in the upcoming Paul Schrader film, The Canyons.

Siri is open to acting in non-pornographic films, but she’s not looking to go “mainstream.”

“Ultimately I want to have my own membership site,” she said. “My greatest hope is [to have] my own production company, because I want to have a hand in everything at some point.”

With a rapidly growing social media presence, Siri can accomplish her goals sooner rather than later. According to Family Safe Media, 28,528 Internet users are viewing pornography every second. That number may devastate parents and stiff Republicans across the country, but it also shows how big the market is for this new, entrepreneurial breed of porn star.

Siri is giving “start-up” a whole new meaning.

The post Social Media Helps Legitimize the Porn Industry appeared first on The Faster Times.

David had the good fortune to marry a writer who willingly shares of herself for a living. Despite my protests, he insisted we not post our wedding photos, wanting to keep some semblance of the sacred to ourselves. Not sharing our pictures meant that strangers wouldn’t even get a glimpse—we had 15 people at the ceremony and no one but the photographer had a camera in hand.

As a compromise, I posted one photo of me in my dress. It was taken through a mirror from quite a distance, but two things are clear: I look very, very happy; and my left palm is resting delicately on my slightly protruding belly.

A few hours after the shot went live, a friend chatted me up: “Are you pregnant?”

I haven’t spoken to this person since the sixth grade, when we co-choreographed a dance to the New Kids on the Block and performed it at the school’s lip sync competition. We lost touch more than 20 years ago—until, like so many of my generation, we found each other again through the long tendrils of the Internet.

In typical chat form, the question appeared as is, without pleasantries. There was nothing to buffer the stark fact of it, which, at 34, even asked by the closest friends in the best of circumstances, is fraught. (Let me add that this friend has two beautiful kids I’ve only seen online and will surely never meet.)

Why I couldn’t ignore such an inquiry by a virtual stranger in a medium that demands nothing of me will give you a glimpse into my psyche, but I worried (I worried!) about being rude. After all, she had “liked” so many of my posts over the years, congratulated me on my engagement and wedding, reposted many of my essays. I felt tethered to her in some real way, as I do to so many of the hundreds of people I read about regularly but haven’t seen in decades. “No!” I wrote. “Just fat, I guess!”

“Noooooooooooo,” she insisted. “It’s the hand on the belly.”

I took a peek at the image in question: yes, the ever-so-slight roundness could be misconstrued as a three- or four-month-along pregnancy. I reassured her that it was just…my body.

“Is it in your plans?”

In a world where people post photos of their fetuses, keep us abreast of their labor (“already 2cm dilated!”), share news of their dying parents and ask for love and support in their surgery or mourning, isn’t it natural to ask someone—a person you once upon a time loved very much—whether they’re pregnant, or wanting to be? Why not, when you’ve “shared in” so many otherwise private happenings in their lives?

Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to walk away.

It isn’t news that in our increasingly public world many of us don’t know where to draw the line. Perhaps because I have recently moved abroad and feel my isolation more acutely, these online friendships have taken on a weightier significance—they have, at least temporarily, had to stand in for my complex flesh-and-bones relationships. Logging on once felt like checking in with a warm, extended family—fun, often informative, but basically innocuous. Now, the one-dimensionality of these connections feels bizarre and dangerous, like taking a slice off someone’s face and calling it a face. Whether this face is beautiful and successful, or failing and suffering is irrelevant—both are the distortions I falsely believe I am getting to know, one click and comment at a time.

Lately, when I hang out with friends I have had more contact with online than in our three-dimensional world, I feel myself pushing through a wall of information to get at the truth, the muck of it under the veneer, the actual person with a delicate heart. And I likewise find myself pulling back from commenting on acquaintances’ darkest troubles, reminding myself that it should never be that easy to insert yourself into a narrative that has more dimensions than the format could ever contain.

This pregnancy inquiry was, of course, a somewhat isolated incident—not everyone asks such things online, but increasingly they do. Because of what we publish about ourselves—and I am as guilty as anyone—we assume a level of comfort and familiarity that is not only potentially insulting, but misses the real point of connecting: to be privy to the intricacies and nuances of another’s life, the mess of trying to be a human being in a world with other human beings; to cultivate relationships where you earn the right to ask, and even seemingly simple answers can never simply be “liked.”

The post Facebook Knock-Up appeared first on The Faster Times.

I haven’t done an in-depth study of Google Social Circles, so I don’t feel qualified to judge how much privacy it does or doesn’t violate. But although this is the duh statement of the century, I still feel the need to point out that this scandal, it’s not about privacy. Of course it’s about competition and control of information.

Facebook and Google have been clashing over what information they allow each other’s services for quite some time now. Facebook wants to keep a walled garden, where it controls your information and profits from it. Google wants to open up access to information (see Google Books). You can’t really get two more opposite philosophies. And of course Google is making a big push into Facebook’s social territory.

The Facebook-Google battle is an epic one that will surely be fodder for a movie someday. And as many have pointed out, this is only the beginning. In my opinion, Facebook is attempting to become the next web. That’s a high-stakes game, and the company may play some dirty tricks to get there.

Hell, it already has. Google “Facebook privacy issues,” and you get almost 62 million results. Facebook is more an expert in what not to do regarding privacy than what to do.

What was it I said about Facebook being a slightly abusive best friend I just can’t quit?

The post Facebook and Google: PR Campaign Wasn’t About Privacy (Duh) appeared first on The Faster Times.

The films cost $2.99-$3.99, can be accessed for up to 30 days after purchase and watched 24 hours after beginning them.

I unfortunately see some problems with the YouTube approach, which seems to continue to demonstrate Google’s not-quite-with-it-ness. (Google bought YouTube in 2006.) Here are six reasons why I won’t be watching movies on YouTube.

1. Branding. When I think about YouTube, I think about humor, stupidity, funny cat videos, people going crazy over double rainbows. I don’t tend to associate YouTube with quality content.

2. Pricing. I’m broke, so I’d much rather wait a little longer for movies if necessary but get unlimited numbers  from Netflix starting at $7.99 a month then pay $2.99 or $3.99 per movie.

3. Set up. My husband and I already have an Xbox 360 and Wii. I don’t need yet another device to comfortably watch movies, such as a Google TV or iPad, like I would with YouTube movies (or have to physically attach my laptop to my TV). I already stream Netflix from the Xbox to the TV. My best friend does the same with her Wii, my parents with their Roku.

4. Streaming. Unless they have some magic new technology I haven’t yet read about, I’m worried about all that pausing and buffering that tends to happen when I watch YouTube videos.

5. High-def. As commenters on various blogs have pointed out, most of these YouTube videos are going to be available only in standard definition. In contrast, Netflix’s Watch Instantly offers 66 pages of HD movies and television shows. (To be fair, however, a cursory glance shows that these are not the hot new movies.)

6. Registering. You need a YouTube account to access the movies. I have one but use it so infrequently that I don’t remember the login. If I’m going to download a single-shot movie that I simply must watch immediately, I’ll go to iTunes or Amazon, places I already log into fairly regularly.

I could be wrong, of course. This could be a viable plan for others. However, I think I’ll stick with Netflix.

Get more social media, technology, and writing tidbits from me on Twitter, @evakl.

The post Six Reasons I Won’t Watch YouTube Movies appeared first on The Faster Times.

I then hopped on Facebook and started telling my friends to turn on the TV. But I had the news from Twitter first of any of my friends, and I had it from journalists and people trained in separating fact from fiction.

Twitter for the win. Need any more reasons to join?

There is simply no better real-time news source these days. Political uprisings, disasters, dramatic historic news. If you want a head start, get a Twitter account and follow some folks—news organizations, reporters, friends, etc.

Yes, you will see a lot of rumor and guesswork, but through crowdsourcing you will also start to see confirmations and a sharper picture emerge.

Just remember to keep a level head until news has been confirmed and don’t tweet anything as fact unless it’s been cross-checked by multiple reputable sources, as I wrote regarding Japan.

I appreciated that CNN didn’t speculate about what the President was going to talk about until the news had been confirmed. That’s their role as a news organization. However I also appreciated that I had a head start from Twitter about what the news might’ve been.

The New York Times and Atlantic have more on how the news spread on Twitter. And Mashable offers a nifty timeline of tweets showing how the news unfolded.

Another reason I love Twitter and Facebook: the feeling of community at times like these. My husband wasn’t home for most of the hour as I was waiting for the President’s speech, but I shared the moment with people all over the country and world. News, insights, humor—they were all there for me to read and benefit from, on Twitter from experts and on Facebook from my friends and family.

This is truly a global moment and I experienced it globally—not just uni-directionally from the television, but interactively between me and the world community, thanks to social media.

Get more social media, technology, and writing tidbits from me on Twitter, @evakl.

The post Osama Bin Laden News: Twitter for the Win appeared first on The Faster Times.

It’s also super clever. You gotta watch it more than once, look very closely, and pick up on some of the things you missed on the first viewing. (For instance, don’t miss the first item on the list of other video suggestions while the plague of locusts video is playing on YouTube).

Happy Passover to all the Jews and Gentiles!

For more social media, technology, and writing tidbits, follow me on Twitter, @evakl.

The post Geeky Passover Fun for Anyone appeared first on The Faster Times.

Social networking is the game changer for business. If you own or run a busines of any kind, whether it’s a solo practice or a worldwide enterprise employing thousands of workers, social networking is quickly becoming a key connection point between your business and your customers.

Starbucks, Dell Computer, Zappos, and many other large enterprises have invested millions of dollars to build sophisticated social networking systems. Smaller and individual enterprises are using free, off-the-shelf services—such as Facebook and Twitter—to create viable social networks that build brand loyalty, increase their customer base, and ultimately drive sales.

Pathways to Connection

The ways that organizations connect to the social networking world vary widely. Some companies simply choose off-the-shelf solutions and allocate appropriate staff to the project. Other organizations with specific needs or business goals choose to build, buy, modify, or license a complete social networking solution for their business.

For many organizations, off-the-shelf technology offers all the flexibility and features needed to take full advantage of social networking with and among customers and clients. For others, a custom-built system is best. But before making any large-scale social networking decisions, you need to first understand the bottom-line business goals for social networking and connect these goals with the potential offered by social networking.

In addition, consider how your social networking implementation will influence existing organizational systems and practices.

Nine Stages to Success

These steps and overall advice may be modified depending on your organization’s structure and needs. While you can move through the steps rapidly, don’t skip any. The process is intended to provide a business direction that will save your organization time and money and produce top and/or bottom-line value.

The nine-stage process can be used in a variety of business scenarios; it is deliberately broad and intended to help you make the best initial decisions possible for your organization. Some organizations already have well-documented decision-making processes, so incorporate these established ways of critical thinking into your planning.

1. Identify needs based on critical business initiatives.

Implementing social networking systems at any level must be linked directly to business or market value. Whether you are driving change from inside a business unit as an individual contributor, as a director of marketing, as a senior vice president of sales, or as the CEO, business alignment is not optional. Just because social networking is “cool” or other companies use it is not enough of a reason to garner needed leadership and stakeholder buy-in.

Your initiative must align with a critical business initiative or business direction. For example, if your organization’s goal is to grow market share among teenage users of your product, that strategy would clearly include Facebook or perhaps a custom-built social networking system, if appropriate.

2. Establish a core decision-making team.

Assuming you have established a clear business need, you need a team of assorted experts to make next-step decisions. Following are some important team members and their functions:

• Project sponsor or champion—usually a business unit manager or division manager who expects that social networking will drive growth or value or has a vested interest in the success of the project. In some cases, this might even be the CEO or another person from the executive team.

• Team lead—this is the person who will drive the project day to day, help manage the overall project timeline, and so on. This person is often the individual who had the original vision to leverage social networking to support some critical business driver and is passionate about its potential for the company.

• Information technology (IT) representative—invariably during the development of functional specifications and organizational IT requirements, someone from IT will be useful. In addition to technical support, this person can typically access the IT roadmap for the company, can act as a proponent for the initiative, and can help streamline the process.

• Functional stakeholder(s)—there may be other functional stakeholders that make sense to involve, including a person from human resources and representatives from other parts of the organization who will be directly affected. For example, you may need to involve a person from the sales organization if the social networking solution is intended to help make sales operations more efficient, or you may need a marketing representative if the social networking system will be used to drive marketing and/or awareness.

3. Develop core functional requirements

Most organizations leverage a standard set of technology applications, operating systems, and security systems. Any new system must be compatible with existing systems, and the IT department must sign off on your plan.

4. Develop a criteria matrix.

Based on the core functional requirements, the team creates a criteria matrix that can be used to assess potential social networking systems. This can easily be captured in a spreadsheet or a word-processing document. Once the draft criteria matrix is created, share it with some non-team members to validate assumptions.

Another person from the IT organization might be a good resource to review the proposed criteria matrix. Once the criteria matrix is completed, identification of solution candidates can begin.

5. Establish a list of potential solution candidates.

With the business need clearly identified and objective criteria established for the selection process, the next critical step is to identify a list of solution candidates. Be aware that many social networking systems exist, and new ones are created continually. Talk to peers and conduct some research, if necessary, to identify any new or niche solutions that might work well for your organization.

The key here is to not cast the net too widely, especially if your organization is trying to make a decision as rapidly as possible. Add the candidates’ names to the matrix and assign reviewers or a team to assess them. Facilitate a meeting with the reviewers and discuss each portion of the criteria matrix and the proposed solution candidates, as well as required timelines and any special instructions.

6. Review potential solutions against criteria and rank them.

Every solution that is considered should be reviewed against your criteria and rated.

7. Participate in product demos with company-specific use cases.

One key decision-making tool is a use-case scenario that describes how the end user would experience the custom-built solution. This is extremely important for custom-built solutions, because you are requesting functionality that isn’t typically available out of the box. You will want to verify the new functionality will work in scenarios that are representative of actual activities your company might experience.

Additionally, while you might participate in demonstrations for off-the-shelf social networking, the frequency of that is far less than with custom-built solutions.

9. Use an off-the-shelf, buy, modify, or build a social networking solution.

Depending on the specific solution and your organization’s goals, you now should have all the information necessary to make the decision to use an off-the-shelf solution, buy a solution, modify a solution, or build a social networking solution for your organization.

Even if your decision is to forego building a custom system, your thoughtful review will enable you to connect all the options for maximum efficiency. In addition, the decision-making process likely uncovered options, such as customization offered by Facebook, other social networking systems, or third-party providers that fit your business or enterprise goals.

10 Steps to Social Networking for Business offers worksheets to help you with these stages. Learn more and get a sample chapter, access the book’s blog, or join the Facebook group. You can also follow Hartley on Twitter.

For more social media, technology, and writing tidbits, follow me on Twitter, @evakl.

The post Choosing the Best Social Technology for Your Business appeared first on The Faster Times.

1. Launch your website. There’s no excuse for not having one (except of course if it’s been in progress for years and you finally manage to get a placeholder site up, where it’s sat for months and months. Ahem.) Include such sections as About Me and Contact Me, including a good description of what you do. (Mine is not a good description. See previous placeholder comment.)

2. Create a blog. No, I don’t think blogs are dead. Well, at least I don’t think blogs with good content are dead. But don’t start a blog to write about your own life, unless you are a) either a fantastic or funny writer (see dooce) or b) fine with mainly being read by your mom, Aunt Mildred, and best friend Ginny. However, if you have a niche in which you’re an expert and have quality, unique content to add, by all means write about it.

And make sure you’re going to post regularly. It doesn’t have to be every day, but it should probably be at least every week, to keep people coming back. I’ve launched blogs previously but decided not to start a new one as I was beginning my grad program. I knew I’d have trouble keeping up with it—so I made Twitter my blog instead.

3. Set up a program like Google Reader for others’ blogs. While I check Twitter much more often these days, I still look at my RSS feeds from time to time and keep trying to pare them down to the really critical ones. While you can set up lists in Twitter (see below) to help catch stuff, there may be some people who still don’t tweet their blog posts (shocker, I know!), so you’ll need to maintain a RSS reader until they jump on the bandwagon.

4. Start a Twitter account and create a background. Start out by titling your account with either your name or the name of something else you want to brand (your company name, your book name, etc.). Don’t go cutesy: the idea is for people to remember it and remember what you do when they see it. This is the age of Brand You after all.

Then, create a custom Twitter background that provides all other pertinent contact info for yourself. These days, people may find you through Twitter versus your website or other social media sources, so you want them to be able to hop to your other online venues easily.  (This, I don’t have yet.)

Also find people to follow and listen to before you start tweeting. Some ways to do this include searching on the Twitter homepage (enter in a name in the Search box, then click on People), typing in a name + Twitter into Google, viewing the recommendations based on who else you follow on the Twitter homepage, or clicking Twitter buttons on people’s websites and blogs. Take a few days at least to listen to people and see how they use Twitter, getting the sense of it.

5. Use a Twitter dashboard like TweetDeck. It enables you to view at a glance columns for people you follow, direct messages, tweets that mention you, even Facebook status updates. I recommend setting up columns with search terms that interest you—for instance your name or the name of your company if it’s not your Twitter name (those mentions will pop up automatically), or topics you’re interested in by using keywords and/or hashtags. For instance, each week after I post a Faster Times piece, I set up a search on keywords in the title so I can see exactly who is retweeting or mentioning it.

Also create and use lists to catch important tweets. It’s often said that Twitter is like a stream: you can step in and out and not worry about missing too much. In fact, that’s why I like it. However, there are some types of tweets you may not want to miss: those from your in-person friends, for example, or from people in your industry. I have a Twitter list set up for social media so I can quickly and easily catch up on all the important news.

6. Create a Facebook Page. If you have a company, create a page for it. It’s important that this be separate from your personal page—do you really want all your professional colleagues to see that your mom calls you sweetiekins? Go ahead and send it out to all your friends and ask them to “like” it, though. You don’t want to look lame with two people on there. You can do that a few times, but space the requests out—don’t harass people. Same goes for posting on this page; don’t overdo it. No, I can’t give you a number. Just keep in mind the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). People don’t want to be sold to, they want to be given benefits.

My Facebook Page for my freelance writing and editing? It’s in the works, and has been for a couple months. Sigh.

7. Join a Facebook Group. Like mini Facebooks within Facebook, Groups are great ways to keep in touch with certain segments of your friends or get support for certain niche interests or activities. My online community has a Facebook group, and I’m also part of a writer’s group a friend started.

8. Set up a Linkedin account. While more and more people are using Facebook professionally for their companies, Linkedin is still the go-to place for individual professional accounts. You don’t need your clients to see you boozing with your friends at the corner bar.

I plan to cover Linkedin more later, but for now know that you should at least have a basic profile set up and search for friends to link to (let it mine your email accounts). That’s as far as I’ve gotten. As I have more time, I plan to share status updates, use Groups, explore company pages, and more. At the very least, Linkedin can help you track down people who may not be on Facebook. (Yes, they still exist.)

9. Link to social media accounts on your website. This is a no-brainer. Now that you’ve set up your Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin accounts, as well as your blog, throw big, visible buttons up on your website so that people can easily subscribe to them.

10. Explore other options but don’t get overwhelmed. You’ve covered the basics. Now pick and choose from among other options, such as developing YouTube videos or podcasts; creating an account on a social media sharing site like StumbleUpon or Digg; setting up an account on Quora, etc. But keep in mind that it’s better to use a few tools well than create 100 different social media accounts that will look like ghost towns because you never use them (like my Quora account, where I have 13 followers but have never written a question nor an answer).

In short, do as I say, not as I do.

For more social media and technology tidbits, follow me on Twitter, @evakl.

The post Top 10 Social Media Steps You Should Take (But I Don’t Have To) appeared first on The Faster Times.

The day of the earthquake in the U.S., the State Department tweeted a suggestion that people in this country use Twitter and Facebook, as well as email and text, to contact loved ones in Japan since phone service was disrupted. Tweets from Tokyo reportedly topped 1,200 per minute less than an hour after the quake.

Back in August 2010, a U.S. Red Cross survey found that social media was the fourth most popular source of emergency information for respondents. I venture to guess that the use of such tools in emergencies has increased since then.

For me, Facebook and Twitter were good ways to check in with friends who had family in Japan without feeling too pushy. For some reason, using social media felt less intrusive than an email—which seemed to demand an answer that checking in with my friends who were already searching for info using those tools did not.

Once I’d been reassured that my friends’ families were okay, I stayed glued to those social media sources for up-to-the-minute information. They have been helpful in finding out what was going on in Japan before it could be reported in traditional news sources.

What technologies such as Twitter and Facebook offer in crises is speed. I can review at a glance short bursts of information from a long list of news media that I already follow, from reporters, or from other individuals. I can also send a tweet in about 10 seconds, and receive information back from queries almost as fast.

But there’s a downside to this rapid transfer of information, and that’s the potential spread of misinformation. As this Fast Company article pointed out, there’s nothing stopping Twitter from conveying panic—or from being used by despots to do evil as radio helped Rwandan genocide.

Passing misinformation via social media can be pervasive. This Salon piece explains how a blog post saying there was no chance of significant radiation being released in Japan went viral. Its author was identified as a “MIT research scientist”; but in actuality Josef Oehmen works in a business management unit.

Hundreds of websites and message boards picked up the blog post. And, according to the Salon writer, “A website called TheEnergyCollective.com…republished Oehmen’s blog post, and that version of the post alone was subsequently shared on social media sites 35,000 times.” That site is run by a new media PR firm that works for nuclear supplier Siemens.

The main reason social media tools can pass information so rapidly is that data is often not verified. It doesn’t follow the journalist credo, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” As we saw in the Oehmen example, that can be dangerous.

So which to rely on in a crisis, traditional or social media? This question parallels the larger issue of citizen journalists or bloggers versus trained journalists. But I think in both cases that this is a false dichotomy. It doesn’t need to be either/or. The two can complement each other.

For instance, because CNN had its iReport infrastructure already set up—where citizens share videos not vetted by CNN but presented on a special website—they could let us see what the Japanese people were experiencing before reporters could hit the ground there.

But CNN is careful to post an alert that pops up when you visit the website saying that stories are not edited, fact-checked, or screened. At the top of the videos, a note says “Not vetted by CNN.” Only certain videos are selected by staffers, vetted, and then used in CNN’s coverage with the notice removed.

To me, this is a good solution. Crowdsource with boots on the ground, warn people that information hasn’t been vetted, then apply the traditional tools of journalism when presenting the source officially.

From the individual standpoint, do something similar. Use social media to get your up-to-the-minute information—then cross-check. Look at multiple sources, many of them traditional media with reporters trained to separate out truth from misinformation.

And read, and follow, this great list of tips,  7 Ways to Be a Good Twitter Citizen During a Crisis. For example, only retweet from trustworthy sources, check the timeline to make sure an update hasn’t been posted, and check for related tweets to verify.

Help a Reporter Out founder and social media consultant Peter Shankman also shares some good tips on Mashable in his piece on What Responsibility Do Social Media Users Have During a Crisis?. His suggestions include report what you know, avoid what you don’t; and think before you share.

The nice thing about Twitter is that it lets you easily cross-check even the traditional media, which can also spread misinformation. For example, Wired writer Steve Silberman pointed out in a tweet on Thursday: “From reading news, I gather that ‘copter waterbombing of reactors has been: 1) Dramatically successful 2) Moderately so 3) A tragic failure.”

In other words, no matter what the source, when in doubt check it out. As a matter of fact, check it out even when not in doubt.

ABC News offers 7 High-Tech Ways to Help Japan. In the spirit of this piece, I should note that I have not personally checked these out.

For more social media tidbits, follow me on Twitter, @evakl.

The post Japan and Social Media: Truth, Lies, and Consequences appeared first on The Faster Times.

The Poynter Institute named Mark Luckie one of its 35 Influencers in Social Media in 2010. He is the founder of the popular blog 10,000 Words, covering the intersection of technology and journalism, and the author of The Digital Journalist’s Handbook. Luckie recently sold his blog to the parent company of Mediabistro.com, although he remains its chief writer.

Last year, Luckie also parlayed his blogging and tweeting into a job as National Innovations Editor at The Washington Post. What does that mean, exactly? Read on to find out how he’s helping the Post engage readers with social media, what he thinks the future of social looks like, his tips for selling a blog, and more.

What have been the key responsibilities of your role as National Innovations Editor since you started at The Washington Post?

On one hand, I’m responsible for taking a look at the web presence of the national section and seeing ways we can improve [how] we present our stories online. Whether that’s using photos, videos, crowdsourcing, or call outs, we’re using all of the tools at our disposal to enhance our already great coverage. The other part of that is that a lot of these things I’m also building from scratch using tools like Dipity and Audiboo, as an experiment for the rest of the newsroom.

In a Nieman Journalism Lab interview before you started your job there, you said you were going to focus on fostering conversation and online engagement. How have you been doing that?

When we’re doing these web elements or we’re looking at our web presence, the first question[s] we ask [are], “What does the reader want to see?” and “What does the reader want to talk about?” So often we’re using the tools not just to present information but to foster a discussion—creating forums and Twitter call outs, and having live chats, so we can really interact with our readers and they can also interact with us.

Why is that important for the Post to do?

We don’t want to be just a voice on high that says “Okay, here’s the news, now take it as you will.” We know that our readers know more than we do, and we want to give them a place to share their knowledge and also to interact with our reporters so that they know we are a part of the community, that we’re trying to be a part of the conversation. Definitely having a rapport also builds our readership. We want readers to feel a part of The Washington Post.

Why is it critical for news organizations to get into social media?

It’s about the social part. We are adding the social on top of the media part. You can’t function in media nowadays without being social, not only to push your stories out to people but also for them to push stories to you and to have lively discussions.

People are going to discuss our stories whether we give them the opportunity to or not. They’re going to go to social networks and talk about our stories, so we want to be in the middle of the conversation, fostering that, and try to own that as much as possible.

What other advantages does social media offer traditional media?

From a business standpoint, it’s an increase in page views. We don’t like to think of it that way, but more eyes on your story. That’s really the goal of news, right? To get as many eyes on your story as possible. Social media affords you the opportunity to do that.

How and why did you first get interested in digital tools, especially social media tools?

I think of journalism as an art; I like to try to think creatively about what’s the best way to tell a story. I studied film through college, right up until I decided to become a journalist. The digital tools are just a different way of telling a story. That’s what interests me, because it’s very visual, artistic, creative. To pair that with my love for journalism, it’s fascinating.

You have a successful blog, you tweet, you wrote a book about journalism and digital tools. Can you describe how social media contributed to you building your personal brand and landing the job at the Post?

If it wasn’t for social media, I wouldn’t be able to reach as many journalists and digital professionals as I have. I didn’t do any sort of advertising or promotion for the blog. It really was word of mouth, and a lot of that took place on social media. So I really have it to thank for where I am right now.

Would you say the blog and you tweeting and having this personal brand were major factors in you landing the job?

Absolutely. People are impressed when you have a high number of Twitter followers and high engagement. I think that absolutely contributes to it. Twitter specifically enables me to interact with other journalists and people. People who may not have met me before have interacted with me through Twitter. [Ed note: Like me!]

That’s really the cool thing. You don’t have to have a personal interaction with anyone anymore for them to know you and your work. I think that’s definitely contributed to a notoriety, if you will.

You sold your blog to a major brand, something many people aspire to do. What advice can you give people?

First, don’t concentrate on trying to sell your blog, because then it’s going to be transparent. People can instantly tell if you’re doing it just for the purposes of creating a brand.

I think that the things that you need to build a blog to that level, one is content you can’t find anywhere else on the web. That’s what I really tried to do with 10,000 Words, provide content that you couldn’t find anywhere else. The second is audience. Once you have the content, you have to build up the audience. That’s why my site and the Huffington Post and all these sites get sold, because they have a built-in audience that larger companies are looking to tap into.

Where do your ideas come from for the content?

I really just try to answer the questions that I have. So if I’m working on a post about crowdsourcing, I want to know, what are some examples. Or if there’s something that I need to get accomplished, and I can’t find the tool for it, then I go looking for it on the web. That creates the post for me.

And lot of it, the example posts, are just looking at what are other people outside of journalism doing. New innovations that are coming out and seeing how they can be applied to journalism. And a lot of it is just me in the grocery store or taking a walk, and thinking of a post and saying, “Hey, I should write that down. That will be good.”

What’s your prediction for the next big thing or things? What will be hot in social media next?

I think the big thing right now is increasing the use of mobile applications. A large percentage of people have a smart phone, and that enables them to not only send us texts or updates or check our content on [a] mobile [platform], but also to send us photos or videos.

We can do even greater multimedia crowdsourcing using a mobile platform, and people don’t have to be in front of a computer to do it, which I think is incredibly fascinating.

What’s after social media in the digital world? Is this a bubble that will burst?

I don’t think social media itself is a bubble. You have individual companies that will come and go. But really since the beginning of the Internet, it has been a social platform. That’s actually why it was invented. So as the tools develop, it’s really just becoming more of what it was intended to be, which is a social platform. I don’t see that dying out anytime soon, and actually I see it increasing even more.

Addendum: The Post just launched its Tumblr blog that will explore the digital and social future of news.

The post Social Media Stars: Washington Post National Innovations Editor and 10,000 Words Founder Mark Luckie appeared first on The Faster Times.