Ok, this is a fascinating rant from Robert Scoble. His list of the newspaper industry’s woes, and in some cases unforgivable missteps, when presented like this could take your breath away. Yet all is not quite what it seems – e.g. the Huffington Post is a news aggregator and walks a fine line in repurposing other news outlets’ content. Google and Yahoo are search engines linking back to the newspaper’s sites etc, etc, but there is a point here – the newspaper industry [rather like the music industry] would have preferred that the internet would have just curled up and died – unfortunately it didn’t and it won’t….plan B anyone?

All the text below this line is from Scobleizer the blog:

The newspaper industry just gave away another free meal, er Twitter: do they have any left?
I’m listening to Dave Winer and Jay Rosen “reboot the news.” Jay is a journalism professor and Dave is a geek that helped either birth or bootstrap all sorts of publishing technologies including blogging, RSS, OPML, XML-RPC, and more. So, hearing the two of them do an audio podcast every Sunday is very interesting.

I’ve been pretending in my head that I’m a newspaper exec. When I do that I keep beating myself around the face. Why? Because the newspaper industry keeps giving the geeks free meals. Let’s study the free meals:

Free meal #1. Giving away classified advertising to Craig’s List.
Free meal #2. Giving away photography to Flickr (look at the photos from the Chinese Earthquake, why didn’t this happen on a newspaper branded site?).
Free meal #3. Giving away front page news to blogs like Huffington Post.
Free meal #4. Giving away “small” community news like births, deaths, birthdays, etc to Facebook.
Free meal #5. Giving away real-time news to Twitter.
Free meal #6. Giving away news distribution to Google News and Amazon Kindle, among others. With new sites like Kosmix coming on strong (hundreds of percent of growth month over month).
Free meal #7. Giving away restaurant reviews to Yelp.
Free meal #8. Giving away traffic information to Google Maps.
Free meal #9. Giving away celebrity news to Facebook and Twitter. (Why is Oprah on both of those, and why didn’t the newspaper industry lock up Oprah and keep her on a newspaper brand?)
Free meal #10. Giving away local news to Topix (at least that was funded by a newspaper brand).
Free meal #11. Giving away business news to Yahoo Finance and Google Finance (and something new that will get announced tomorrow).
Free meal #12. Giving away news ranking to Memeorandum.
Free meal #13. Giving away astrology to Astrology.com.
Free meal #14. Giving away comics to Comics.com.

What is their latest giveaway? Crowd-sourced news. I visit Twitter Search every day to find out what is “hot news.” That’s something I used to look at newspapers and older media for (radio, TV) but Twitter is just plain better at telling me what is trending.

OK, so now my face is bloody because I’m seeing all the things the newspaper industry gave away. Do they have anything left to give away?

YES!

Read the rest of this very lengthy post here….

In the current economic climate it goes without saying that most small businesses have been feeling their share of the pain. Of course, depending on which particular sector of an industry your company has the most experience in also determines the number of times the dice will roll in your favor; some industries thrive throughout downturns others suffer as their clients suffer – hard and fast decisions have to be made almost weekly to keep a company on course. Nemo is thriving but we had to make a course correction.

Unfortunately, this week, Nemo had to make a very hard decision to lay off 9 of our employees; 9 very smart, gifted and intelligent workers, who through no fault of their own find themselves suddenly without a job. People are the backbone of every company so it goes without saying that their loss is also Nemo’s loss.

In the end we are all human and of course like every company should we care about our laid off employees welfare. To help them we decided to turn first to the power of the community and social media by using our Twitter account. By noon on the day of the lay offs I sent out a message [or tweet] to the community explaining the cuts, but more importantly letting companies know that if they needed these skilled workers they could get in touch directly with me or Nemo. It worked.

I was blown away at how fast the response to my tweet was. Obviously in such a tight-knit community there was an outpouring of goodwill and good lucks etc but, most importantly, more than five companies and/or individual business owners reached out to us for info about our released staff. The result was that some of the Nemo alumni were in job interviews as soon as the next day. Obviously good news all around and it’s worth pointing out the power of Twitter and reaching out to your supportive community online.

Our message on Twitter.

And a typical response and re-Tweet.

When the Nemo alumni land new jobs, and if they are willing to have me share the details, I will post them up here.

Follow us on Twitter: @NemoHQ

Schooled in Social Networking

Beginning next year, Birmingham City University in the UK will begin offering a one-year course in social media with an emphasis on using social networking sites as communications and marketing tools. Costing over 6,000 U.S. dollars, the program will also teach students how to set up blogs and publish podcasts.

Though the school reports that there has already been significant interest in the course, a few initial thoughts come to mind. First off, many students are already very skilled in social media; is it necessary to dedicate an entire year to the subject when ample resources are available online for free? Secondly, social applications and technology are changing so rapidly that one has to wonder if, by the time the year-long course is up if much of the content will still be relevant…

Stars Love Twitter

Did you know (or care) that Martha Stewart is on Twitter? Currently, she has over 200,000 followers, including Jane Fonda and Michael Phelps. In return, she follows P. Diddy and Snoop Dogg (who refers to Twitter as “twizzle”).

Other famous tweeters include Trent Reznor, Courtney Love, Shaq, Ashton Kutcher, John Mayer, Yoko Ono, Al Gore and Demi Moore.

When celebrities join Twitter, it lends a sense of credibility and authenticity to their brand. And more importantly, they’re generating a constant stream of free publicity with the ability to set the record straight when something unflattering arises.

Fans love tuning in to hear random tidbits from idols’ their daily lives such as when Martha tweeted on March 4th that she had just dined out with Ludacris. According to her, “he loved lunch–esp. the choc cake.”

Of course, there is always a potential downside when a celebrity is allowed to run free with technology away from the watchful eyes of their publicists. Recently, Beyoncé’s little sis Solange Knowles sent out erratic messages to her thousands of followers, only to follow up with a tweet the next day, wondering how she had ended up in the hospital.

Fans prefer the real thing, even when it’s a train wreck in progress. One of Courtney Love’s recent tweets was as dramatic as ever; “THIS MOVE HAS BEEN A TRAGEDY. THIS HOUSE IS CHAOS BEYOND WHAT I COULD HAVE IMAGINED, SOMEONE THREW OUT A HUGELY EXPENSIVE PIECE OF ART!”

While most celebrities compose their own tweets, there’s a handful that hand off the task to their staff, including 50 Cent. His 230,000 followers weren’t impressed when they learned that he has his “web guy” write and post for him. Though, there’s no need to get angry since “the energy of it is all him.” On the temptation of hiring someone else to tweet for him, Shaquille O’Neal nailed the general consensus by saying that “It’s 140 characters. It’s so few characters. If you need a ghostwriter for that, I feel sorry for you.”

If you really can’t get enough of celebrities on Twitter, Celebrity Tweet (complete with the too-obvious tagline “Stalk Celebrities on Twitter!”) provides a real-time feed of their tweets.

Not surprisingly, Twitter really has become a self-induced stalker’s paradise.

Admit it, your mom is on Facebook.

Not surprisingly, Nielsen has just released a report claiming that two-thirds of the world’s population visit social networking or blogging sites.

The data was collected from December 2007 to December 2008 and even more rapid growth is expected since time spent on both social networking and blogging sites is increasing at three times the rate of overall internet growth.

In the beginning, social networking was primarily geared towards a younger audience but Facebook has played a prominent role with drawing in a much older audience. People ranging from 35 to 49 years old have given Facebook its biggest growth with 24.1 million new visitors while 50 to 64 year olds now number over 13.6 million. Rejoice, your parents are now probably on Facebook.