Social media news and TV – Current.com Blog – Your guide to Current

Last week I laid out details about our editorial team and guidelines when it comes to finding and featuring content on Current.com. Today we’re launching a brand new community-based experiment built on top of our editorial practices which, for lack of a better name, I’m calling “Developing Stories.”

What is a Developing Story?

This doesn’t always hold true, but quite frequently we notice that stories we feature on Current.com actually speak to a larger, ongoing story in play. Sometimes these stories are stretched out over longer periods of time (e.g. the ongoing discussions around public options in healthcare reform, or the debates surrounding gay marriage), and other times these stories are developing rapidly over the course of hours (e.g. Elections 2009, Afghan presidential elections, or Michael Jackson’s death).

Starting today, we’ll begin identifying certain featured stories that we think have the opportunity to be “developed” further. These stories will be added to our Developing Stories group, and we’ll clearly mark it as such on both the story page and whichever image is picked to accompany the story.

What does it mean to have a story picked as a Developing Story?

This is the cool part. Getting your story featured as a Developing Story is like having the stage handed over to you. We’re looking to take a closer look at the underpinnings of these stories, and we’re giving you the opportunity to take on the role of online investigative journalist in the process. As long as things continue to progress in a relevant way, your story will remain featured on Current.com.

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L'écrivain by gilles chiroleu on Flickr

Earlier today one of our community members raised a question that immediately reminded me of a drafted post sitting in my to-do pile. So I dusted this sucker off and refreshed it with some new information for all to read.

Over on the announcement of our new submission tool, 02 commented:

“You guys never put my submissions up at all. It would seem as though a plan were afoot to force only designated providers – while the promise is held as Bullshit.”

This isn’t a anything new; in general people get a little confused when it comes to what gets featured on Current.com. It’s not uncommon to find out that people either don’t understand, or worse, their misunderstanding leads them to believe that there is a secret agenda conspiring against them behind-the-scenes.

Trust me, this is just not the case.

Our editorial team is relatively small on Current.com, especially in comparison with some of the more editorially driven sites out there. We see Current.com as a joint partnership between our internal team, and the community that frequents the site. While we produce content for TV, the amount of content we produce for the web is fairly small in comparison with what our community produces on a daily basis.

Here’s how things shake out:

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Remember our Make Common’s Day callout? Well Shana just announced Common’s pick on the Current Music Blog, take a look:

From the many amazing videos, Common hand-picked his favorite, ‘Common’s Make My Day Music Video: Clip Art’, by Josh Milowe, Elizabeth Casal and Mike Potter, collectively known as Wealthy Pictures.

Check out the video above, and look for its on-air premiere Wednesday, November 4 at 11/10c during Embedded featuring Common:

This is awesome news, and a hearty congratulations is due to all who submitted to this. Thanks!

It’s Monday, and while the wheels are slowly starting to pick up steam, here are the top 5 stories being discussed on Current.com:

1. California dreaming of full marijuana legalization
   

   Medical marijuana has become big business in California and the drug is approved for a range of conditions and for “any other illness for which marijuana provides relief”. In these straitened financial times, booming sales and healthy tax revenues mean that full legalisation of cannabis may be just around the corner.Across California there are an estimated 2,100 dispensaries, co-operatives, wellness clinics and taxi delivery services in the sector known as “cannabusiness”. That is more than all the Starbucks, McDonald’s and 7-Eleven outlets in the state put together.

2. Honeybees, Bumble Bees, and now Ladybugs– they’re all going on strike

   A citizens-science group is calling for children, adults, families, and educators to help native ladybugs.

   During the past two decades as invasive look-alike ladybugs expanded their territories and pollution and habitat loss have crowded them out, species of Native ladybugs began vanishing and the invasive species began increasing. These include the multicolored Asian ladybug, checkerboard ladybug and the seven-spotted ladybug.

   “This has happened very quickly and we don’t know how this shift happened, what impact it will have, and how we can prevent more native species from becoming so rare,” said John E. Losey, Cornell University entomologist.

3. McDonalds Density: Never more that 145 miles away

   Data can be truly eye-opening. Take a look at this visualization of McDonald’s locations across the United States, and take comfort (?) in knowing that the golden arches are always less than 145 miles away from wherever you are.

   

   This map was created by Stephen Von Worley, who used location data on the 13,000 plus MickeyD’s locations along with some coding-fu to generate the above map. What we see is as expected, a network of the franchises largely following the freeway and highway system and increasing in density in proportion to the population density.

4. Community organizing for comprehensive immigration reform

   This video by allanfrieux is rather timely.

   The Center for Community Change and the Reform Immigration FOR America
   Campaign organized state-wide youth trainings in Colorado and Florida. This video takes an inside look at what happens at these trainings, it talks about what Comprehensive Immigration Reform is, and shows how the youth is organizing their communities to fight for C.I.R.

   
   Community organizing for comprehensive immigration reform

5. Sneak Attack at Oakland Whole Foods

   Personally, I’m a big fan of creative demonstrations. This sneak attack at an Oakland Whole Foods falls right into that category — complete with choreographed dancing and a backing band.

   In case you’re not keeping up like some of us are, Whole Foods’ CEO, John Mackey, recently penned an op-ed in the WSJ in which he opined that, because he is able to provide private health insurance benefits for his (mostly young and w/o pre-existing conditions, like arthritis or CAD or osteoporosis) workforce, he is opposed to health-care reform that would make health-care a “right” in America.

   He even (surprisingly) went so far as to call it “ObamaCare,” right in line with the nut-jobs who don’t want our government to mess with their MediCare.

   
   Sneak Attack at Oakland Whole Foods

The Current community received some pretty awful news this weekend, Jack Herer (notable advocate for the legalization of marijuana, author of ‘The Emperor Wears No Clothes,’ curator of the H.E.M.P. group on Current.com, and all around great guy) was reported to be in critical condition after suffering a heart attack shortly following an appearance on-stage at “Hempstalk” in Portland.

Updates have been scarce, filtering out via Facebook and Twitter. Hopefully community members of Jack’s H.E.M.P. group will keep the rest of the community updated.

Join Jack Herer’s H.E.M.P. group on Current.com

Hey Currentators,

Well, it’s Friday and before you all make a mad dash towards the weekend, let’s take a little time out for our final fastest growing group post for the week. In today’s top spot is lookmypix’s Organic group. Here’s the full list:

1. Organic (4 new members) — curated by lookatmypix

2. Stem Cells (3 new members) — curated by Pakistan

3. Tiffany Anne (3 new members) — curated by TiffanyAnneMusic

4. Babies vs. Pets (2 new members) — curated by Mel0dy

5. Comic Book Universe (2 new members) — curated by ThoughtNu

Way to go lookatmypix! If you haven’t already, give a join if you’re interested! This group is now officially featured in the “Current Stories” section of the Current.com homepage, as well our Groups homepage. Yay!

If you think your group has what it takes to get the top spot on the fastest growing groups list, polish off your social skills and get out there. Let people know about your group, and better yet, let them know why they should join! Give them a reason to click that button!

We’ll be back next week with all-new top 5 lists of the fastest growing groups on Current.com. See you then!

Greetings, Current!

Tuesday’s fastest growing groups give you a chance to watch some films, hang with superheroes and geek out, so grab some popcorn and check them out!

1. Indie Film (2 new members) — curated by Pericles_Lewnes

2. Progressive America (2 new members) — curated by Sumbodyswatchin

3. Animal Rights (2 new members) — curated by numinant

4. Geek Out Culture (2 new members) — curated by kid_amy

5. Superhero Central (2 new members) — curated by smurph25
Congrats to Indie Film for making it to the top of today’s fastest growing groups list! If you’re a fan of indie films, why not stop by and join up? Indie Film will be featured in Current Stories, and on the groups homepage. Hooray!

If you think you’ve got a group that deserves a spot on the list, dust off your address books and tell your friends all about your awesome new group. Better yet, why not suggest they join

We’ll be back tomorrow with a brand new top 5!

Steph

Last week we launched Facebook Connect integration on Current.com, and since the launch we’ve had a number of community members ask for more details around this feature. So, here is a deep dive into how Facebook integration works on Current.com.

One Facebook related question frequently sent our way asks, “Why would I want to connect my Facebook account to my Current account?” There are very good reasons, which I’ll get to in a moment, but first let me share a seemingly-unrelated-yet-equally-frequently-asked-question with you, “How do I get my group featured [in fastest growing groups]?”

Believe it or not, these two questions are interconnected. Fastest growing groups are determined by growth of membership. You grow your group in two significant steps: 1) curate creative content, and 2) get your group and it’s content in front of more people.

Facebook Connect gives you the means to accomplish the second step relatively easy. When you link your Facebook account to your Current account, you’re given an easy way to share your Current submissions and comments with your Facebook connections. Truth be told, Current.com is much smaller than Facebook. So chances are, a good number of your Facebook friends may have never even heard of Current, but might share common interests with you which could result in more members joining your group.

“But isn’t that just spamming your Facebook account with Current content?”

Like anything in life, moderation is key. You won’t likely want to share every single comment you make on one Current.com thread, so we’ve put the option to “post to Facebook” in place when submitting or commenting on Current.com. This way you can easily check, or uncheck, if you feel like you’ve sent too much (or too little) to your Facebook account.

If you take a close look at how items get posted to your Facebook feed, you’ll see that items in groups that you own/moderate will actually promote your group as well (take a look at the way my post from an item in the LOST group appears in my Facebook feed).

“OK, but I don’t care about groups. Don’t own one, don’t want one.”

No worries. We find that many of our community members use Current.com to try and create awareness around a cause, or to tell a story that is otherwise being ignored via other informational outlets. If you find yourself in this category, then Facebook Connect still has something to offer. Connecting your accounts will still give you the opportunity to share stories with a larger group of people connected to you on Facebook.

“OK, sounds good. How do I do it?”

Connecting your accounts is easy, and there are several ways to do it. You can click login and select “Connect with Facebook.” If you choose this route, you’ll be asked to log into Facebook, and then you’ll be given the opportunity to connect to an existing Current.com account.

If you’re already logged in, just edit your profile and click on the “external accounts” tab, then click on “Connect with Facebook.”

You’ll be asked to login to your Facebook account, and afterwards you’ll be taken back to “external accounts” and the tab will now offer some customizable settings.

If you check the box to “Publish my activity on Current.com to my Facebook Stream” the “Publish to Facebook” button (found in the comment and item submission workflows) will be checked by default. When you post comments or items on Current you can always uncheck this box to prevent over-posting to Facebook.

If you check the box next to “Current can send me email through Facebook” you will be able to receive Current activity notifications in your Facebook inbox.

Both of these options will prompt an additional Facebook verifications box.

Once you’ve connected your accounts, you will be free to login to Current via your Facebook login, and you’ll be able to publish your Current.com activity on Facebook.

Try it out, and as always send us feedback!

Yo Current,

Monday. Fastest growing groups. Go!

1. Comic Book Universe (5 new members) — curated by ThoughtNu

2. Indie Music (4 new members) — curated by Mike_Johnston

3. H.E.M.P. (3 new members) — curated by JackHerer

4. Condom (2 new members) — curated by condomelite1

5. Progressive America (2 new members) — curated by Sumbodyswatchin

Check out Comic Book Universe and give it a join if you’re interested! I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to see a comic book related group on Current. ThoughtNu’s group is now officially featured in the “Current Stories” section of the Current.com homepage, as well our Groups homepage. Yay!

If you think your group has what it takes to get the top spot on the fastest growing groups list, polish off your social skills and get out there. Let people know about your group, and better yet, let them know why they should join! Give them a reason to click that button!

I’ll be back tomorrow with a new top 5. See you then!

Hey Currentians,

It’s Friday. It’s a little after 5pm. It’s time for the top 5 fastest growing groups on Current. Today’s top spot goes to Indie Music, curated by Mike_Johnston. Here’s the full list:

1. Indie Music (4 new members) — curated by Mike_Johnston

2. Progressive America (12 new members) — curated by Sumbodyswatchin

3. H.E.M.P. (2 new members) — curated by JackHerer

4. Drug News (2 new members) — curated by WTFitsMeSarah

5. Organic (2 new members) — curated by lookatmypix

So a big huzzah! for Indie Music, which is now featured in the “Current Stories” section of the Current.com homepage, as well our Groups homepage. Keep it up!

For the rest of you, why not check out Indie Music for yourselves, and if you like what you see consider joining the Indie Music group.

I just wanted to clear up a question asked by Hunzedog re: our Fastest Growing Groups posts — what are the rules and frequency of the post?

The rules are simple:

- Each day at around 3pm, I pull together a list of groups that have had the most new members in the past 24 hours.

- This is about the groups you guys create, so I exclude groups for our franchises like SuperNews!, Vanguard, infoMania, Max and Jason: Still Up, etc.

- After a top spot placement, a group must cycle out for a full 7 days before being back in the running. So for example, Indie Music will not be eligible for a top spot again until next Friday.

- Sometimes things come up preventing the post. We don’t anticipate this happening often, but we also can’t promise that it won’t happen. Apologies in advance for these.

Well, I hope that clears things up. It’s time for the weekend, so spend some time with your groups, try to grow them as best you can, but be sure to take some time out for sunshine and fresh air.

See you next Monday with a new top 5!