Washington Post Plans Social Net for Readers
In the latest in its series of moves to become a "two-way" newspaper, the Washington Post is gearing up to launch a social network of its most passionate readers.
According to Colin Delany, WashingtonPost.com is implementing reader comments on all news stories. You can see a sampling here. They're starting with less controversial topics and will expand to all stories once content filtering mechanisms are operational. The Post also allows you to request the removal of a comment that you find objectionable.
From there, the Post will encourage readers to create profile pages that aggregate all of his/her comments in a central place. This in essence turns the Post Web site into a social network for people who actively comment on the site.
Tags: washingtonpost, newspapers
Indeed very progressive plans from WP. The China Daily News introduced this and more well over one year ago (and they can also help WP with some filtering technology) ...
Posted by: Hugo E. Martin | Thursday, August 31, 2006 at 08:19 AM
Austrian newspaper "Der Standard" (http://www.derstandard.at/) has had this for many years now. It became so integral to the site that they added the number of postings in brackets next to each headline. A recently added feature also allows users to rate comments. The community aspect is certainly a major reason why this is one of the best online newspapers in german language.
Posted by: Peter Schindlmeier | Thursday, August 31, 2006 at 09:34 AM
Just wanted to point out that the paper I work for in Toronto, the Globe and Mail (www.theglobeandmail.com), introduced comments on all stories last year -- and further enhancements are planned. Our readers have really taken to it.
Posted by: Mathew Ingram | Thursday, August 31, 2006 at 10:13 AM
We did a study on the features of US newspaper websites earlier this year. We found that 13 of the top 100 US papers offer the ability to comment on stories. It's a great idea if managing the comments is economically feasible or if they figure out a way for users to effectively police themselves.
Posted by: Todd Zeigler | Thursday, August 31, 2006 at 10:26 AM
www.ksl.com
Channel 5 in Utah has been doing this for a long time now.
Posted by: Russell Page | Thursday, August 31, 2006 at 12:04 PM
Nice!
Now if we could just get them to get rid of those damn pop-up ads ; )
Posted by: Jackie Huba | Thursday, August 31, 2006 at 12:20 PM
This is great. I'm excited to see how this works out. Hopefully the Post won't run into the same troubles that killed the LA Times "wikitorial" experiment a while back - vulgar comments, spam, etc.
Posted by: Mike | Thursday, August 31, 2006 at 07:58 PM
I think this will play out much differently than the LA TImes' wikitorial. Wiki's are inherently communal activities. What the Washington Post is trying to do is similar to Amazon Ratings or Yahoo Answers: users are encouraged to build something: namely a view of themselves as feedback experts. Would you be interested in being a top ranked commentor on the Washington Post website? Potentially, it could satisfy many people's dreams of being seen as a "journalist" at a major newspaper. Compelling...
Posted by: Dan Blank | Friday, September 01, 2006 at 06:22 AM
This is interesting, since just a week ago, Jason Calacanis predicted that traditional media-companies would make this move.
Posted by: Vincent van Wylick | Friday, September 01, 2006 at 09:20 PM