Online Tools for Expanding the StoryNote
: Many of these storytelling building blocks have free or inexpensive web-basedsoftware available for you to use on your site. Most do not require a huge amount of technical skill to implement. The key is to be judicious in which tool to use with whichstory.
Hyperlinks
– The basic building block of the world wide web. Link out to other sourcesfor credible information. Your users will appreciate it.
Comments
-www.disqus.com- Let reporters interact with readers when appropriate inthe comments section of your web site.
Video comments
– www.seesmic.com- Readers can react to a question or a storythrough their webcams.
User Submitted Content (photos, video)
-www.flickr.com- You can have readers e-mail their photos to you, or have them put a “tag” on photos in a sharing site like Twitter,then you can use search to narrow down which photos you want to showcase on your site.
Facebook Page -
www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages- A facebook page allows youto feed content from your web site into the social network.
Twitter
– www.twitter.com- Link to your stories, respond to comments, take questionsfor an interactive chat or podcast, follow the conversation about a breaking news topic.Seewww.twitter.com/coloneltribunefor an example.
Ning Social Network
– www.ning.com- Create a group which allows people to connectaround a topic (see mediageeks.ning.com for an example).
Facebook Connect
- developers.facebook.com/connect.php – a way to ensure a “real”identity with comments on your site. Requires programming.
“Share This” links
-http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress- for Wordpress (there areother ways to include these links on your web pages) - allow readers to share your content across social networks like delicious.com, digg.com, and stumbleupon.com,among others.
Source documents
– www.scribd.com- upload PDFs of documents that can beembedded on web pages and shared by others.
Wiki
– www.pbwiki.com- Create an editable site featuring information about a largestory. You can also host your own wiki by installing a mediawiki.org instance on your servers.
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