YouTube Plays a Significant Role in Citizen Journalism

YouTube has been making waves in the news again now that they have launched YouTube Direct.

Aspiring journalists would love this addition since YouTube Direct is a tool to make the process of submitting video clips easier for YouTube users and these clips can be highlighted by news media companies. Among the media companies that have participated in YouTube Direct are the San Francisco Chronicle, the Huffington Post and the Politico.

YouTube’s growth has been astonishing. Every 60 seconds, there is 20 hours worth of videos being uploaded. And a significant number of these uploads are about news and politics – both professional and amateur.

Olivia Ma, news manager of YouTube’s News and Politics team is proud of the birth of the YouTube Reporters Center. This is a resource to help people learn the right ways on how to report news and showcases instructional videos that also give tips and advice on how to report efficiently from well known journalists.

She also shared that YouTube is now becoming a video platform for US congressmen and senators as well. In fact 98 senators and almost 400 congressmen now have their own YouTube pages so that they can easily communicate with their constituents.

At this era of high technology, people are carrying video enabled cell phones and cameras so there are no longer a need for fancy video equipments in order to capture news worthy moments. All you have to do is to shoot, upload the video and you can watch yourself giving the latest news in the Internet at no time at all.

TweetsGiving Hopes to Raise $100,000 for Charity

Last year, Twitter launched their TweetsGiving program and almost raised $11,000 which enabled them to build a classroom in Tanzania. This year, the Thanksgiving Twitter program is back and they are aiming to raise $100,000 in 48 hours for charity scheduled for November 24 to 26 2009.

As a background check, TweetsGiving is a global volunteer and non profit organization that uses social media for its charity drive every Thanksgiving. The program was made to support Epic Change and to help build additional classrooms, a library, a cafeteria and a dormitory for a school in Arusha, Tanzania. It is recognized as a global celebration done online that aims to change the world through gratitude. The 48 hour event also has live events all over the globe where guests are invited in order to encourage people to give to a common cause.

The school that you will be helping is a school founded by a Tanzanuan Epic Change fellow known as “Mama Lucy” Kamptoni who used to sell chickens and used her earnings to build a school that now has 300 children and facilities are much needed.It is easy to participate in this fundraiser and give your own donations for this cause. First you can simply share whatever you are thankful for on Twitter, Flickr, your blog,  YoutTube, Facebook or blip.fm  then add the link to www.TweetsGiving.org and the #tweetsgiving tag. Another way to contribute to the success of this program is to contribute in cash. Each $10 donation equates to 1 brick for the development of the school in Tanzania. Next year, Epic Change and Twitter aims to widen their campaign by reaching out to other parts of the world beginning next year. This Thanksgiving, why not show your gratitude by giving back?

Twitter Lists Improves

Twitter, one of the biggest Social Media sites in the World Wide Web has launched a new feature a few weeks ago called Twitter Lists. This feature has got users of the micro blogging excited allowing them to make lists of Twitter users that other users can follow.

This allows Twitter users to organize other users that they follow into groups or lists. Lists can be a stream of stories, breaking news, or tweets from the users who are behind the stories. The Twitter Lists can be public for the entire world to see and they can be private for personal use.

Basically, Twitter Lists have three aims: to organize your followers and the people you are following, to lists out recommendations for the Twitter users to follow and third is to make a list in order to measure the influence that they have.But a weakness was immediately spotted in the list and that is the fact that there is no way to describe what the list was all about. And now, Twitter is making improvements in their Twitter Lists feature starting out by applying the number one suggestion and request of Twitter users which is descriptions. Before, you can find that there is only a title indicated in the Twitter Lists.

Now, when you edit any list, you will find that you can place in a description which will allow you to describe your list in a hundred characters or less. All you have to do is to visit the list page, click “Edit” which can be found at the top right of the edit page, add a description then save.

Now that Twitter has a description field available you can now use short and snappy titles and be able to give a more effective description on what the list is all about.

Facebook and MySpace Addresses Scam Ads

A lot of buzz has been spreading around the World Wide Web about scams and deceptive ads reaching Facebook and MySpace – two of the most popular social networking communities online. The two social networking giants have decided to make commitments when it comes to tracking down all these misleading offers and scams.

A favorite target these days are the social gaming applications found in the networks. They have been found to allow certain types of scamming advertisements that urges users into a contract for services without disclosing the costs they will have to pay up front.

For instance, Farmville, a popular virtual farming simulation game, have users spend real money in order to buy virtual goods or to complete offers or surveys from their partner companies so that the users can have virtual credits. The problem lies in the fact that some of these offers have “opt out” riders that places the user in a paid service or subscription that requires the user to act in order to avoid any misleading charges.

MySpace CEO Own Van Natta has identified these “opt-out” offers as misleading and made a change to the terms of Use in order to clarify what is acceptable for both users and developers.

Facebook also made an announcement that they have joined in the fight to eradicate this type of scamming advertisements. In fact if you check their blog, you will see that they have disabled two complete ad networks because of this and that Facebook have addressed ad-related violations in over a hundred applications.