Here’s another “grab bag” with a smattering of observations, updates and snarky remarks.
Psychoanalyzing The New York Times Twitter Description
It seems logical to assume publications pay attention to the words in their own outbound communications.
If that’s the case, does the NYT Twitter description reflect a greater emphasis on engaging readers than The Wall Street Journal’s?
Takes me back to an earlier post “The Conversation About The Story Is As Important As The Story Itself” and remarks by David Schlesinger when he was still editor in chief at Reuters.
Volume Production of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant
Every vendor in the enterprise computing space pays attention to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.
If you’re a startup, simply landing on this sacred turf can increase the valuation.
I know the magic quadrant generates a nice revenue stream for Gartner.
I had no clue that Gartner released over 120 Magic Quadrants in 2011.
There’s even one for “North American Property and Casualty Insurance Claims Management Modules.”
Experimenting with Weibo
Weibo dominates micro-blogging in China.
It doesn’t hurt market share that the government blocks Twitter, but that’s a narrative for another time.
In the spirit of learning and experimentation, I decided to join the Weibo fray last week (with a helping hand from Christine Li, one of our account folks who translates select tweets into Chinese).
I’ve managed to secure a grand total of zero followers.
Tough crowd.
Accessing Non-English Journalism
I stumbled across a new form of journalism called Worldcrunch.
Here’s what the site does:
The most relevant foreign-language stories are produced in English by Worldcrunch staff and contributors around the globe, deployed to react quickly to breaking events and find the best content in the international media.
I like the concept.
It means gaining access to that enlightening or contrarian or quirky story in German, Chinese or Hebrew that otherwise requires language expertise.
Noticed that Time is one of the media properties already leveraging Worldcrunch stories.