It is an interesting play by CNN. Zite is a powerful news reading iPad app with a lot of excellent functionality. It operates almost like a "Pandora for news" that gives users serendipitous resources based on inputted interest and usage. Yet, outside of being a cool iPad app, Zite is driven by some interesting technology that could be of great use to CNN.

Worio, as its own stand-alone product, did not take off. Yet, Zite pivoted from the search engine to Zite with now-CEO Mark Johnson as an advisor. Johnson will stay on as CEO and run day-to-day operations from the company's office in San Francisco while founder Ali Davar will remain the executive director and Mike Klass the CTO in charge of research and development. Anderson will report to KC Estenson, general manager of CNN Digital.

"When I became CEO of Zite, I was faced with a difficult choice: take venture capital and race to build Zite into a viable business or join forces with a large company and work with a larger pool of resources," Johnson wrote on Zite's blog today. "Despite many attractive paths in both directions, Zite chose to be acquired by CNN. We found a partner who shares our vision and our passion for building an incredible discovery platform."

To Remain Content Agnostic

Johnson also said that Zite will in no way promote CNN, Turner or Time Warner (which owns CNN) content. The platform will remain content agnostic.

"We see a trend developing here, one that is about the future of content discovery, and we believe that increasingly people will come to learn about new types of content based as much upon their personal interests and passions as they do the news of the day," Estenson said in a open letter regarding the acquisition.

In the history of news media, CNN seems to be the perfect candidate to take over a digital startup like Zite. CNN disrupted traditional TV news by launching the first ever 24-hour new network and CNN.com has been at the leading edge of technology and website design for the last several years. CNN now has a wing in its digital division solely dedicated to mobile apps, starting with the iPad and likely coming to other mobile platforms.

Zite had a little controversy upon its launch in March. It was sent cease-and-desist letters from a plethora of media companies that because of the way it stripped ads out of aggregated content. It rectified the situation shortly thereafter and Johnson was brought on board to be the CEO, replacing Davar.

Specifically, the live streaming will be done on the Republicans' page for PledgeToAmerica. When the Obama inauguration was live broadcast in 2009, the video appeared on CNN.com but was powered by Facebook Connect, which allowed viewers to see comments posted exclusively by their Facebook friends, if they so chose. CNN said at the time that 5.3 million video streams of that event were delivered.

Will viewers of the Pledge to America page be required to declare to all their Facebook friends that they Like the Republican Party in order to gain viewing or commenting access to the stream, as was so widely grimaced about when George W. Bush started a Facebook page?

Will any other online media outlets be allowed to live stream the proceedings, or will it just be Facebook? Twitter? Current.tv? UStream? Who will the new Hellen Thomas of live online social politics be - sitting in the front row and asking difficult questions for decades?

Actually, it's unclear whether Facebook itself will be providing the live stream or whether it will simply be Republicans embedding a live stream on their own Facebook page. I've emailed Facebook for clarification and to answer some of the more specific questions. Will Facebook staff be on camera hosting the coverage as they have in other instances? The company recently live-streamed an on-site visit by George W. Bush and it was quite charming (I say that as a non-Republican, too).

Update: Andrew Noyes, Facebook's Manager of Public Policy Communications, got back to us by email and had this to say. "Hundreds of members of Congress use Facebook to communicate and connect with their constituents in an official capacity and we're excited to see Facebook being used prominently as the 112th Congress gavels into session this week." It turns out that Rep. Boehner, the new Republican Speaker of the House, is leading the effort with his new media team. Facebook is, however, one of very few 3rd party services that Congress has approved for official use, something that was a subject of controversy when the US government started using YouTube prominently.

Many questions philosophical and practical about the implementation will be answered tomorrow morning, but no matter how it goes down, it's hard to argue that things haven't changed in the worlds of media and politics.

Sanchez's popular Twitter account handle is named @RickSanchezCNN, but he'll be able to change that without losing his thousands of followers. He hasn't changed it yet, nor made any kind of statement over that public channel, but this unique intersection of traditional media and new media at a time of professional upheaval presents some interesting questions.

Does Sanchez own his Twitter account or does CNN? Ought he be required to remove the reference to CNN from his name? Should he do so before or after making some public statement about being fired?

You can still visit the Twitter profile page of another fired CNN reporter, @OctaviaNasrCNN, but all her followers and messages have now been switched over to @OctaviaNasr - without the CNN.

What Does it Mean to Have a Media Megaphone in 2010?

Did CNN lose out on the social media investment they put into Sanchez's personal account over the years? Ought they have driven all followers to an official company account instead, in case something like this happened? Presumably some people would see it that way, but social media is so personality-driven that wouldn't likely have worked as well.

Sanchez is out of a job, but he hasn't lost his very public voice. That's a historical anomaly. Does the free-form nature of social media, combined with the personal ownership over this platform, combine to make public figures more comfortable saying things they might not have said in the past?

Not everyone liked Sanchez on camera very much. (He's kind of annoying, as social media experts so often are perhaps.) Do people like him more or less in short-form text? Will he be able to pull something out of his hat, 140 characters at a time? Will his comfort with emerging media platforms make it easier for him to get his next job with old media? (The comments that got him fired will make that all the more difficult.) Perhaps he'll try to do something entirely new himself, on new media.

We could go on and on. There are many, many questions that come up about this situation and very few clear answers. We're in new territory, folks.

In point of fact, users have made something of it. fbLike has compiled a list of six OpenGraph success stories, and possible models, for use of the Facebook platform, and were good enough to share it with ReadWriteWeb's readers.

fbLike

fbLike was created as a dashboard for Facebook users, built solely on OpenGraph, to function as a social recommendation engine. Abhinav Prathivadi launched it as part of a university project at UC Berkeley in May.

CNN

CNN.com was one of the first adopters of the Facebook plugins. The homepage has a Popular on Facebook plugin in the right sidebar along with a Recommend button for each article, which drives traffic from the NewsFeed.

Yelp

While Yelp has been very popular for reviews about local businesses, the OpenGraph created a new opportunity to help users recommend restaurants directly on Facebook. Placing the Like button on reviewed locations allow users recommend the place outside the Yelp sphere.

IMDb

Movie site IMDb has used the Like button extensively on individual movie pages to enable a viral cycle of visitors. When users Like a page, it automatically generates a link to that page on the user's NewsFeed, which again helps drive traffic to the feature-rich website.

Fandango

Like Yelp, the movie site Fandango has implemented the Like button to allow users to recommend movies off-site. Since Fandango provides an integrated service for buying tickets, the key will be whether the recommendations result in increased ticket sales.

Levis

While most of the above examples are services, Levis has used the OpenGraph features to turn its catalog into a product recommendation portal. Product categories have the Like button clearly displaying the preference and enabling the user to recommend any products they have bought before to their friends on Facebook.

The Verdict

Will the utility to companies and the convenience and power of the recommendations to users outweigh Facebook's heavy-handedness and its frequent privacy breaks? Any additional tools that allow a website to funnel additional interested readers is of value, to both the site and the reader. Add the ability to prioritize and personalize (in however restrictive a fashion), and the value goes up.

When it comes to the question of whether OpenGraph adds value to anyone besides Facebook, the signs, so far, point to yes.

Magic 8 Ball photo by Brian Solis

Tonight the Outside.in site told me about a new real-estate valuation report for the neighborhood I just bought a house in, a city permit request by a local college planing to subdivide a big residential lot on the beautiful old street I walk my dogs on and some cool jobs in the neighborhood. What more could I ask for? Long term viability and an expanded staff for a service like this? That sounds great.

EveryBlock has to date been limited to a handful of big cities around the US, though. Outside.in has no such limitation.

Things not to love about Outside.in include a garish new advertising-filled page layout (just subscribe by RSS feed) and a heart-breaking iPhone app. That app discovers your location and brings up area news - lots of fun to use when house-hunting in different neighborhoods. Not so much fun when it fails to work, which is more often than not in my experience. If you want a good local news iPhone app, check out Fwix. I'm eagerly awaiting the launch of Nozzl Media, a related service we profiled in our report The Real-Time Web and Its Future.

These kinds of data parsing services, tied to real-life experiences like geographic location, are becoming an important value add now that more and more data is coming online. Everyone wants to discover the future of news - these kinds of services could well be an important part of it.

Note: Outside In is also the name of a 40 year old youth social services agency that also deserves respect, speaking of local.

According to CNN's General Manager of CNN.com Kenneth Estenson, CNN.com currently gets about 1.7 billion page views and 100 million video views every month. In total the CNN homepage has been called up over 120 billion times since its first iteration in 1996.

CNN clearly put a lot of thought into this redesign. As William Hsu, CNN's VP for News Advertising Sales for Asia Pacific told Exchange4media.com earlier this week, the CNN team "did a lot of research, biometric research, in Europe" (update: a CNN spokesperson just told us that this study was done independent of the site redesign). According to Hsu, these studies showed that very few users ever went beyond the current homepage. Because of this, the new homepage will show far more content but will also make it easier for readers to navigate the site.

More Emphasis on Video - Including Videos from TED

At today's press event, CNN also stressed that the new site will integrate more of its TV product. Instead of keeping video and text separate, the new CNN.com will bring the two together. 50% of CNN's users already watch both the video and read the story, so bringing the two closer together is a smart move for CNN. CNN also announced a partnership with TED, which will bring TED videos to a completely new audience.

NewsPulse

The new homepage will also have a new feature called 'NewsPulse.' This will allow users to reorganize news stories by correspondent, subject, or keyword. Today's press event was low on specifics, but this looks like a good way to personalize CNN's homepage and to find interesting content on the site.

Similarity to CNN Go

CNN also recently launched CNN Go, which focuses on news for the Asian market and also has a more magazine-like layout.

What About the Competition?

We have also heard that MSNBC will soon launch a redesign of its own. While we aren't aware of any specifics yet, the new MSNBC will focus on adding value to news wire stories by bringing together more material from NBC's affiliates and a larger focus on interactive elements designed specifically for MSNBC.

The choice of the fake user's "real" name, username, avatar, and bio are typical examples of the kind of crass and often tasteless humor that runs rampant on anonymous forums like 4chan. The new Twitter account clearly refers to Joseph Fritzl, the Austrian who, unknown to the rest of his family, imprisoned his daughter in his house's basement for 24 years until his double life finally unraveled last year.

Not all of the humor on 4chan is this crass, however. The site, after all, was also the breeding ground for popular Internet memes like Rickrolling and lolcats.

While the members of 4chan's 'random' board (often referred to as /b/) first tried to manipulate twitter with automated scripts that set up fake accounts, they weren't able to hack Twitter's captcha process, which is probably the reason why even the enterprising 4chan pranksters haven't been able to reach more than 200,000 followers for their fake account yet. Knowing 4chan, however, we don't expect them to give up anytime soon, and we wouldn't be surprised if they managed to break Twitter's captcha at some point as well.

If you would like to see how exactly this hack works, here are the instructions that one of 4chan's members created for the rest of the /b/ community.

Oprah Might Just Win this Race

However, given that Oprah is going to talk about Twitter on her show tomorrow, there is still a good chance that she will pass by Kutcher, CNN, and 4chan's BasementDad in no time.

Moot

The members of 4chan's /b/ board also made the news a bit earlier this week, when they manipulated a Time.com poll so that it featured the name of 4chan founder 'moot' as the most influential person in the world.

Where is Twitter?

Interestingly, Twitter, which should be aware of the sudden rash of fake accounts that all subscribe to only one user, hasn't closed this account yet.

Update: We just head from Twitter's Biz Stone. Twitter is aware of this situation and "and will react accordingly."

Note: we did not include a link to 4chan in this post, as a lot of the material there is NSFW (or worse). If you insist on going there, a quick Google search for 4chan will do the trick.

If there was any doubt of the power this platform provides, we've just witnessed an incredible - if not historic - example of what it can do. President Obama's inauguration is sure to knock Facebook Connect ahead of its main competitor in the realm of portable social identities, Google Friend Connect, whose current claim to fame is a blog widget that does little more than the falling-from-grace Yahoo's MyBlogLog widget does now, save for some over-hyped integration with social services like Twitter, Plaxo, and Orkut.

In the end, not only did Facebook Connect provide an interactive look into the thoughts and feelings of all those watching CNN's coverage via the web - it did so without crashing. According to the statistics, there were 200,000+ status updates, which equaled out to 3,000 people commenting on the Facebook/CNN feed per minute. Right before Obama spoke, that number grew to 8500. Additionally, Obama's Facebook Fan Page has more than 4 million fans and more than 500,000 wall posts. (We wonder if anyone on his staff will ever read all those!).

CNN didn't do too badly either. They broke their total daily streaming record, set earlier on Election Day, and delivered 5.3 million streams. Did you have trouble catching a stream? We didn't hear of any issues, but if you missed out, you can watch it again later today. CNN will replay the live video at 3 PM,  5 PM,  9 PM, and 12 midnight (EST) on cnn.com/video.

For more political coverage as it relates to the web, see also our post from last night 7 Online Things You Can Do to Help Obama Restore America.

• Martin Atkins
• John Bradley
• Johannes Ernst
• Snorri Giorgetti
• Eran Hammer-Lahav
• Dick Hardt
• Mike Kirkwood
• Brian Kissel
• Scott Kveton
• Chris Messina
• Peter Nixey
• David Recordon
• Eric Sachs
• Nat Sakimura
• Luke Shepard
• Joseph Smarr
• Allen Tom

Current members of the OpenID Foundation are encouraged to visit the OpenID Foundation, log in with their respective OpenIDs, and cast votes for up to seven candidates. For those who have not yet joined the Foundation, registration is open, starting at $25 for an individual account.

The elections will remain open until December 24, 2008. The new Board will be announced before December 31, 2008. Board members begin their term on January 1, 2009.

We'd like to continue the discussion in the comments - and also tell us how you listen to podcasts these days. I usually listen to them while walking the dog. But everyone is different, so tell us your preferred podcast listening method.

Richard MacManus

• NPR: All Songs Considered, plays all the latest music; check out their review of the top music of '08, it's must-listen for music geeks
• Live in Concert from All Songs Considered
• ReadWriteTalk (iTunes link), our own podcast channel, hosted by the awesome Sean Ammirati
• RWW Live, ReadWriteWeb's bi-weekly podcast show hosted by Sean, featuring a few of the RWW authors and special guests
• The Semantic Web Gang, Paul Miller and his Semantic Web crew

Marshall Kirkpatrick (walking the dog while listening to podcasts is a common theme here at RWW)

• StackOverflow (and many other things on ITConversations)
• TWiT: This Week in Tech
• Gilmor Gang
• NY Times Backstory
• RedMonk Podcasts

Sarah Perez

• CNET's Buzz Out Loud ("my hands down favorite")
• Diggnation
• CNET's Loaded
• TWiT: This Week in Tech
• The Social Geeks (featuring Sarah)

Frederic Lardinois

• Slate Gabfest with @jdickerson
• NPR On the Media
• Nature Podcast
• FLOSS Weekly (Free Libre Open Source Software)
• New Yorker Out Loud

Lidija Davis doesn't listen to podcasts, but she participates in one - The Drilldown.

10 Favorite Podcasts From the RWW Community

We got a great response from our friends on Twitter (follow @rww on Twitter if you want to participate in future polls). A number of podcasts were mentioned multiple times. Here are 10 of those that randomly caught our eye:

• This American Life, presented by Chicago Public Radio
• For Immediate Release, a show about PR and tech
• TED Talks, brain food
• You Look Nice Today, "an audio-based Journal of Emotional Hygiene"
• Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, NPR quiz show
• KEXP song of the day, Seattle radio station which has a selection of great podcasts
• Six Pixels of Separation, podcast of Twist Image, a Digital Marketing agency
• MacCast, Mac fans computer show
• BBC Friday night Comedy, "a satirical take on the week's news with the cream of UK comedy talent."
• Strange Love Live, which @dieselboi described as "a fun, insightful and sexy podcast"; our own Marshall Kirkpatrick was on it recently.

Below is the full unstructured list from friends of RWW! Sorry there are no links, but generally you can copy and paste an item into Google to find out more...

Kate LaFrance: Stephen Pierce's blog dtalpha.com.

Roger Harris: Nature magazine, Scientific American, NPR

Terri Ellman: This American Life and Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me.

Kenny Hyder: the maccast & atomfilms

Mike Billeter: Marvel's own Mighty Marvel Podcast and The B.S. Report with Bill Simmons (ESPN).

Rob Inskeep: Killer Innovations - http://bit.ly/killer and, on a lighter note The Instance - http://bit.ly/Instance

Mike Keliher: You Look Nice Today, On the Media, Shill, Inside PR, For Immediate Release

eco2oh: Cool Hunting Video (brilliant art/culture/design snack) Tiki Bar TV, Eban's Lounge Podcast Selection, Dishy Mix

Joseph Miller: This American Life, TWiT, Stanford Entrepreneurship.

Simon Young: http://forimmediaterelease.biz, http://jaffejuice.com/, http://twistimage.com/blog, and of course http://ijump.tv :)

ipevo: Inside Mac Radio

itamarw: The Bugle (Times Online), BOL

Mike Robinson: BBC Friday night comedy http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/... TED Talks, always interesting... http://www.ted.com/index.ph...

kitalooclef: More Hip than Hippie, You Look Nice Today, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Real Time with Bill Mahr, The World's Tech podcast

Paul Laroquod: ill doctrine; Cult of UHF; Quirks & Quarks; Art & Story; Sessler's Soapbox.

Andrew Korf: Ian Masters on KPFK.org: http://www.ianmasters.org/

Rob Cottingham: For Immediate Release, Lullabot, Six Pixels of Separation, CBCRadio Comedy Factory, Manager Tools

Kevin Marks: RadioLab; In Our Time; This American Life; BBC Friday night Comedy; On The Media more at my last.fm account kevinmarks

Daniel Howe: The Father Bob Show - He's a disgruntled elderly priest from Melbourne who likes to speak his mind http://is.gd/bQ92

Iben Rodriguez: WNYC-RadioLab, VODcars, PBCC-Sunday-Sermons, ScienceFriday, and Berkeley-Groks.

chase squires: Marketplace ( http://marketplace.publicra... ) and the Stuck in the 80s podcast ( http://blogs.tampabay.com/80s/ )

Adam Ritchie: sound opinions from american public media, nyt popcast, npr all songs considered, boston globe page one, rocketboom

Erin | Books in 140: This American Life, CBC's Writers & Company, New York Times Book Review, New Yorker podcasts

Steve O'Hear: TWiT, phonesshow (prev smartphoneshow), mobile with the guru

Charles: "The Lew Rockwell Show" http://lewrockwell.com/podc...

Kim Gaskins: Savage Love http://is.gd/2rG0

Ethan Watrall: iFanboy, Quirks & Quarks, Wormwood, Leviathan Chronicles, OnBoardGames

Kevin Pedraja: This American Life, Fresh Air, NPR Morning News Summary, KEXP Song of the Day, Beautiful Places in HD

Kiran Max Weber: Future Tense, Core Intuition, gdgt, StackOverflow and TWiT. Gillmor Gang would have made it but think it died.

Andrew Korf: http://ecorner.stanford.edu...

Mike Maney: "Open Sources" podcast from @mjasay and @daveofdoom at http://www.opensources.com/

mike dunn: http://www.podiobooks.com, http://www.somethingtobedes, http://www.thebitterestpill, http://www.evilgeniuschronicles, http://www.deltaparkproject.

Hanna Wiszniewska: Changesurfer Radio http://bit.ly/OF7d, Pop!Casts http://bit.ly/liEk, TEDtalks http://bit.ly/vUTq

Tony Bain: venture-voice

alexislyon: Coffee Break Spanish!

McMatt: Sci. Am's "60 Second..." series. Informative, leads to other info and very chipper. http://tinyurl.com/5vgr79

Shaun Trennery: Twit, No Agenda, ZA Tech Show, Tech 5

Sarah Wood: Diggnation, Totally Rad Show, The Stealth Mac, We Need Girlfriends, KEXP song of the day

aussiesasha: social blend @ mixxingbowl.com :)

Sea-Fever Consulting: For Immediate Release, Six Pixels of Separation, No Agenda, You Look Nice Today, Just One More Book

Will King: TEDTalks, FastCompany.TV, MacCast, NPR Planet Money, KRCW LeShow

Sherif Mansour: 1) The Scoop (Aussie) http://tinyurl.com/594dwx 2) Instantiate Podcast (Aussie) http://instantiate.platform... , 3)TWiT (US)

arikhanson: For Immediate Release; Marketing Over Coffee

Chris from Germany: http://www.podcast.de/podcast/8995/Sci_xpert_-_Leschs_Universum
it's in German, a Munich university professor, over 30 parts, 15mins each

Steve Spalding: You Look Nice Today - Merlin Mann's podcast, Buzz Outloud, TWiT

Aaron Hockley: TWIP, TackSharp, Hanselminutes, .NET Rocks

Bram Pitoyo: strangelovelive

Chris O'Rourke: StrangeloveLive, Webb Alert, The Microsoft IT Manager Podcast

Chris Judson: FOSS Weekly, Reduced Shakespeare Co, YouLookNiceToday, Speaking of Faith, Wait, wait...don't tell me (last two are NPR types)

Michele: The Moth, Splendid Table, This American Life

dieselboi: Strangelovelive is a fun, insightful and sexy podcast

Brett Roberts: TED, Ask a Ninja

dekkerd: GDGT weekly, TwiT, loaded, Buzz out loud, geekbrief.tv

Shelley O'Connor: www.polyweekly.com

Jon Burg: FIR, Six Pixels of Separation, Cranky Geeks, NBC News, Naaleh

Finally, if you're wondering who is the guy who got a podcasting RSS tattoo, it is Drew Olanoff!

According to citizen reporter, Johntw: "Steve Jobs was rushed to the ER just a few hours ago after suffering a major heart attack." Apple quickly squashed the story, claiming it to be untrue. Did citizen journalism just fail us? You bet it did.

The report about Steve Jobs appeared on CNN's citizen journalism site, iReport this morning. It read as follows:

Steve Jobs was rushed to the ER just a few hours ago after suffering a major heart attack. I have an insider who tells me that paramedics were called after Steve claimed to be suffering from severe chest pains and shortness of breath. My source has opted to remain anonymous, but he is quite reliable. I haven't seen anything about this anywhere else yet, and as of right now, I have no further information, so I thought this would be a good place to start. If anyone else has more information, please share it.

Silicon Alley Insider then proceeded to follow up, making phone calls to Apple. They were able to reach Katie Cotton, Vice President of Worldwide Communications, who replied saying "It is not true."

This Is Trouble

The question was then raised: do false reports like this damage CNN's credibility? The answer is yes, absolutely. This particular report may even lead to an SEC investigation where CNN will be asked to provide an IP address for the user who posted the story.

The problem here stems from the fact that because CNN has obviously decided not to police or edit the iReport section of their web site, the section is left wide open to "reporters" who want to wreak a little havoc.

But who are these citizen journalists? And how easy is it to become one?

Apparently, it's as easy to become a citizen journalist on CNN as it is to sign up for a new web app from an internet startup, if not easier. The process involves nothing more than filling out a name, screen name, and email address. Adding a phone number is optional and only necessary if you want the story to be considered by CNN. There's a CAPTCHA to prevent bots and an email confirmation link, but thanks to disposable email addresses, those are practically a waste of time these days.

Above: The Registration Form - Congratulations, You're A Journalist!

While most citizen journalists take their responsibility seriously as reporters of actual news, it's apparent that with iReport, just as with any web site on the internet today, there is going to be someone who decides to have a little sick "fun" with it. Who is the reporter by the name of Johntw anyway? As far as we could tell, the only way to get in touch with the reporter is through iReport's built-in messaging system. We sent him an email asking him why he reported this story, but it remains unanswered. In our minds, we're already imagining an adolescent kid who's having a good laugh with their friends this morning over how they just "punked" CNN.

We're interested in seeing how will CNN respond to this muddying of their good name. Will they disassociate themselves a bit from iReport? Or will they just be happy for the pageviews it brought? And will this give pause to other news outlets thinking of launching citizen journalism sites of their own? It's very possible. In these tough economic times, news reports that affect how the markets move are taken very seriously. Had the timing of this report been different, Apple stock could have really suffered. Fortunately, the rebuttal today came out fast enough that it shouldn't have any long-term effects. Next time, we may not be so lucky.

As Erik Berlin also points out, offering embeddable video should be a no-brainer for content producers. Indeed, one could argue that the success of entertainment sites like Hulu can at least be partly attributed to the fact that their videos can be embedded. Among some of the recent converts to embeddable video are the Internet outpost for South Park, which is making clips from all episodes of the popular animated show available for embedding. MSNBC enabled embedding in January this year and both CBS and ABC announced the availability of embeddable clips from news and entertainment programs.

Here is Dan's comment, with some great advice for big media companies using web 2.0 technologies...

"The top concern many media companies had initially when venturing into web 2.0 was moderation of conversation features such as comments. The truth is you can’t grow a community without it but with some clever thinking the hurdles were overcome. Take the New York Times for example, they have now embraced it and as result have shifted into a gear that enables them to grow.

I think moderation of community and content are the biggest factors in stopping media companies in taking social media a step further; they are frightened of the unpredictability of the medium but they have the resources to do it. It’s great to see CNN take the social web seriously.

One suggestion in resolving the accuracy problem is a self policing community – where the community governs the content via voting on whether or not it is appropriate and accurate. Slashdot.com did this even before web 2.0 was a popular term. It worked extremely well ensuring quality content. It’s simple features like this which can save a lot of resources and hassle."

Great points Dan. For everyone else, be sure to comment (or trackback) tomorrow to be in to win a $30 Amazon gift voucher - we're giving one away every day for the next month.

The new site, according to Mediaweek who got an advanced look at the site, will be completely open in terms of what users can upload. Users will be in charge of deciding what constitutes news, and which submissions should be removed from the site. "The community will decide what the news is," CNN News EVP Susan Grant told Mediaweek. "We are not going to discourage or encourage anything -- iReport will be completely unvetted." (Though CNN will monitor the site for inappropriate content.)

Mediaweek says that the new site will look and feel a lot like YouTube and will also feature the usual community features, such as the ability to rate and discuss videos, and embed them on other pages.

CNN recently paid $750,000 for the domain names "ireport.com" and "i-report.com," so this is clearly something they are serious about. And they should be. As we've noted in the past, citizen journalism is fast growing in importance. The only way to keep up with a shrinking news cycle, is to have distributed reporting capable of capturing breaking news as it happens. Often times, the people best suited to report breaking news are amateurs. CNN saw that happen with last year's California wild fires, when much of their most compelling footage came in via i-Report.

"The real contribution of citizen journalists in a story like this, where whole areas of land are closed off and the fields of greatest danger keep shifting, is in having more eyes on the ground," Thomas Hollihan, a professor of media at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California, told the Baltimore Sun. "Citizen journalists are swapping information back and forth - reporting where the flames are now headed or showing images on their cell phones of the fire. And with so much happening so quickly, that kind of information can be really powerful - if it is accurate."

Accuracy is a potential concern for CNN, who have had editors vetting users submissions before allowing them on the web. CNN's Susan Grant said the network will be clear about labeling the new iReport site as a "post-moderated site" (i.e., moderated after posting, rather than before) and that the views put forth in videos uploaded to the site don't necessarily reflect those of CNN.

But accuracy concerns aside, not embracing citizen journalists, or at the very least their tools and methods, seems to be something that the mainstream media can't afford to do. As Scott Karp says, "The news business -- and the journalism it supports -- can no longer afford to wait for innovation to happen in due time. It needs to happen NOW."

CNN Election Center 2008

In our opinion, CNN has by far the slickest and easiest to navigate election site out of all the major mainstream news media sources. They have a well designed, easy to navigate, and clearly laid out page that puts a wealth of information at your fingertips, including live election results, delegate counts, entrance and exit polls, candidate overviews, money charts, and general election info. If you're looking for just the straight state-by-state results, USA Today does a great job.

Politweets

Politweets is our favorite Twitter politics mashup. Last month we said that, "For political junkies, Politweet will be a must monitor web-site on every primary date this season until we know who the candidates for the general election are." Assuming Twitter can keep the lights on, Politweets will again be a must watch site throughout the day. Also check out the SuperTuesday Twitter stream from the Virtual Vantage Points blog.

Google Super Tuesday Map

In an effort to make sure Twitter goes down, Google has also teamed up with the service to create a maps mashup that shows Twitter updates about the primaries as they come in from across the country. It will display election results down to the county level after the returns are in, as well. The Google News team also slapped together an election gadget so you can embed state-by-state results on your web page.

YouTube YouChoose Super Tuesday

YouTube has a Google Maps mashup of their own that will aggregate and post geolocated videos throughout the day from candidates, news organizations, and YouTubers. The coverage isn't really restricted to Super Tuesday states, but it is still worth checking out -- many times the citizen journalist view is clearer than the one you get via mainstream sources.

MTV Choose or Lose Street Team

Speaking of citizen journalism, MTV's Street Team has citizen journalists dispatched to 23 Super Tuesday states to upload live and recorded mobile videos and blog posts throughout the day (absent is a representative from West Virginia, whose primary is actually May 13 -- the Republican party is awarding some delegates today via a statewide convention, however). Last week we called MTV's online election coverage a coup for citizen journalism.

Newsweek Live Webcast: Inside Super Tuesday

If mainstream journalism is more your thing, then Newsweek has you covered on the web. The magazine, along with owner the Wasington Post, is trotting out the heavy hitters for six continuous hours of live streaming web video coverage. Bob Woodward, Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn, Howard Kurtz, and Leonard Downie will participate, with Newsweek editor Jon Meacham anchoring from Washingtonpost.com's headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. WaPo and Newsweek reporters Michael Isikoff, Howard Fineman, Jonathan Alter, and others, including those from online magazine Slate, will contribute reports throughout the evening. Newsweek's operation is aiming to bring the name appeal and polish of broadcast news to the web. We'll see if it works.

Memeorandum

From the maker of Techmeme, Gabe Rivera's political memetracker keeps a pulse on the political blogosphere. It's a safe bet everyone will be buzzing about Super Tuesday today, but what are the individual storylines that will no doubt permeate the coverage? Following the related and discussion links on Memeorandum will let you find out. For a broader view of what people are talking about on the blogosphere, check out PoliticalTrends.info.