Listeners will be invited into NPR Community this week
NPR.org begins inviting visitors to join its new social media network Sept. 29 [2008], building on software licensed from Pluck Social Media to extend interactivity across the website.
The online conversation hub is getting a soft launch so technical staffers can work out bugs while NPR content creators learn to use their new tools and web users begin signing up and interacting. “We’re very eager to get people using it and want to make sure it’s functioning,” said Andy Carvin, NPR senior product manager for online communities.
Carvin's profile page: among the first
homesteaders in NPR Community
NPR chose the Pluck system because the company has “a lot of experience in the media space,” especially with organizations that need publishing tools for both local and national outlets, said Darren Mauro, NPR’s director of user experience delivery. “They understood the challenge that a media company has in inviting users in but in also respecting the journalistic integrity of its content.” Pluck’s clients include USAToday.com and other Gannett Media properties.
NPR’s new digital media chief, whose appointment was announced last week, is already well acquainted with Pluck. Kinsey Wilson is leaving his job as executive editor of USA Today and USAToday.com to join NPR Oct. 20 as senior v.p. and g.m. of digital media (separate story).
To users of Facebook and other social networks, the “NPR Community” will feel very familiar. Once registered, they can create profiles, comment on specific stories and join or start discussion threads on topics they choose. In coming weeks, NPR will add functions — for example, giving users the ability to join groups associated with member stations or NPR programs.
“During the first few weeks, we’ll be making sure workflow and operations are moving forward in a stable way,” said Mauro. “Over time, we want to see more people participate in the community, and we’d like to see a way for users to find and share more content across the site.” It’s hard to predict how quickly that will happen, he said.
Another key element in the works is interoperability for stations.
“They’re putting the bones in place for a social media platform, but how it’s going to become a true expression of the public radio community and how it works is still in development,” said Dale Hobson, web manager for North Country Public Radio in Canton, N.Y., who is among the station-based web chiefs briefed on the network before launch.
To fully interact with their own listeners within the site, stations need tools to insert their local content, such as top news stories and Flickr photo feeds, he said. “There needs to be some way to automate that process so it’s easier to manage,” Hobson said.
“It’s a complex undertaking, but we envision a more local-national experience” and user participation across station sites and NPR.org, Mauro said. But since stations use a wide variety of tools to manage their websites, NPR and station-based web managers need to think through “what’s in place and manageable for stations and beneficial considering other investments they’ve made.”
Mauro predicts that the solutions will come from services that use external standards, such as RSS feeds, the widely used markup language XML, and a variant for media organizations, NewsXML. “These are all ways to meet in the middle — to have each system talk to the others, regardless of the technology they’re built with,” he said.
For the near term, the social network will offer new tools for stations to create and interact with their own user groups, Mauro said. The group function is optional, and stations can tailor their various interactive features, including allowing group members to post messages, photos, videos and event notices. “Stations can enable all or one of these features,” he said.
Web page posted Sept. 29, 2008
Copyright 2008 by Current LLC
