YouTube Launches YouTube Newswire, A Feed Dedicated to Eyewitness Video

As more people turn to eyewitness video to keep up with breaking news events as they happen, YouTube has launched a site to help people follow this kind of content more closely. In partnership with social news agency Storyful, YouTube has launched YouTube Newswire — a curated feed of newsworthy eyewitness videos of the day, vetted by Storyful’s editorial team and embeddable from the original sources.

YouTube Newswire will contain global and regional feeds containing the most relevant videos in different parts of the world. In addition, YouTube has introduced two new resources specifically for journalists: The First Draft Coalition and The WITNESS Media Lab. The First Draft Coalition is a new site with educational resources for verification and ethics training, tools, research, and case studies around the biggest news stories of the moment.

The First Draft Coalition is said to launch this fall. The WITNESS Media Lab is a new site focused on tackling pressing human rights issues by analyzing eyewitness video. This site will contain a series of in-depth projects focusing on human rights struggles from the eyewitness perspective of real people who live, witness, and experience them.

YouTube Newswire and the WITNESS Media Lab are live as of today, with the First Draft Coalition to follow in the coming months.

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Google Launches Google News Lab, A New Home on the Web for Reporters

Google announced the launch of a new site called Google News Lab, which is designed to be a home on the web for reporter resources.

With this initiative, Google explains that by working directly with journalists it hope to have a lasting effect on future media:

“That’s why we’ve created the News Lab, a new effort at Google to empower innovation at the intersection of technology and media. Our mission is to collaborate with journalists and entrepreneurs to help build the future of media.”

Google hopes to accomplish this lofty goal in three distinct ways:

Easy access to the tools journalists need

Providing Google data to journalists everywhere, and

Launching programs to take advantage of the opportunities that exist in today’s media industry

The tools which Google is referencing were actually rolled out in a series of announcements last week. They include YouTube Newswire, which also includes WITNESS Media Lab and The First Draft Collection, and the update to Google Trends.

All of the above mentioned tools will be linked to from the News Lab, which can be found at http://newslab.withgoogle.com.

Google has also forged new partnerships focused on re-imagining the future of news and information while empowering new voices in media. Currently, this includes partnerships with Matter, a media accelerator in San Francisco, and Hacks/Hackers, a global community group for developers and journalists.

The News Lab is not just US-based, it also includes teams in the UK, France, and Germany to start with. The overarching goal of this initiative is to keep the world more informed by having technologists and journalists work together.

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Facebook’s News Reader App, Paper, Launches Today on iOS in the US

Facebook Creative Labs have launched their first ever product, a curated visual news reader app called Paper. If you live in the US and own an iPhone, you can download it now from the App Store. Paper is already being lauded by the tech and mobile app community, receiving rave reviews and high praise for its design and user experience.

Most are saying its unlike anything Facebook has done before. What sets Paper apart from other news reader apps out there is its distraction-free, full screen design that completely immerses its users. Paper is made up of sections that you can customize yourself, pulling in stories from your News Feed and external sources including authoritative publications across the web. Each section in Paper uses a combination of human and machine curation.

The Paper algorithm curates stories, pictures and videos that have been posted publicly to Facebook, while human editors will throw in interesting content from lesser known sources. With Paper, Facebook wants to surprise and delight its users by showing them content they may have missed, or content from sources and authors they never would have sought out on their own. Another great feature of Paper is that it doesn’t completely separate you from the Facebook experience, it adds to it.

You can share content, or compose your own content to be shared on Facebook right from within Paper. You will also be able to access Facebook notifications and messages without having to leave the app. If you have had a chance to download and use Paper, what do you think of it so far? I really want to know because I’m an Android user living in Canada, so it might be a while before I get to use it myself. Let me know what I’m missing out on!

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Google to Provide Instant Information on Over 900 Health Conditions

Google has added support for the health conditions feature of its Knowledge Graph, now providing instant information on over 900 health conditions.

When you Google a health condition, like “Legionnaires’ disease”, Google will give you a snippet of information with the important details.

Google worked with a team of medical doctors in curating this information, the information has also been reviewed by medical doctors at Google and the Mayo Clinic for accuracy.

In addition to more than doubling the amount of health conditions it provides information on, Google has added visual design improvements to these Knowledge Graph panels, as well as the ability to download the information as a PDF.

Google points out it has added information about neglected tropical diseases — a set of infections that affect over 1.5 billion people including 500 million children in poorer regions.

Health conditions in Google’s Knowledge Graph are still only available to english-speakers searchers in the US, but the company says it plans to expand the feature to more languages and regions.

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Supercharge Your Citation Campaigns using CitationTracker

                                       This post was sponsored by BrightLocal.com.

Auditing and cleaning up local directory listings is critical to performing well in local search.

In fact, 55% of local experts say accurate citations are ‘critical’ to local search ranking.

However, the actual process of finding and fixing your local listings is tricky, time-consuming, and often full of frustrations.

But, help is close at hand!

There are a few online tools that can help you. The most powerful & feature-rich of these is CitationTracker from BrightLocal.com

CitationTracker is just 1 of 7 unique tools within BrightLocal’s suite of local search tools which is used by over 15,000 SEOs and agencies.

This powerful tool solves 5 of the biggest challenges that SEOs and business owners face when it comes to managing their local directory listings.

1. Tracking Down All Existing Citations

CitationTracker scours the web and identifies where your business details are displayed on thousands of sites from Google+ Local right down to hyper-local and niche directories. In your report, you can see the Domain Authority score as well as BrightLocal’s unique ‘Citation Value’ score for each site so you can order them by importance.

2. Completing a Detailed a NAP Audit

CitationTracker runs a full NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) audit on the most important 50 local sites such as Google+ Local, Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, and many others. All NAP issues are highlighted so you can quickly spot any discrepancies and fix them.

3. Identifying Troublesome Duplicate Listings

This is a new feature in CitationTracker that searches for duplicate listings, which display the same or similar NAP details to your main profile. CitationTracker reports on suspected “dupe” listings so you can quickly manage them.

4. Discovering High-Value Citation Opportunities

Other than fixing your current citations, it’s also important to build new citations to boost your local ranking. CitationTracker audits high-ranking local competitors and tells you where they’re listed, but you are not. The tool also displays the Domain Authority of each site, tells you the type of site is it (e.g. a Local Directory), and if the site offers a free listing. These offer a great insight to help you prioritize which new sites to get listed in.

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Instagram Improves Direct Messaging With Threaded Convos and Enhanced Emojis

Instagram has announced a set of improvements to its direct messaging feature, which included threaded conversations and enhanced emojis Instagram Direct has garnered 85 million monthly users since launching in 2013, but the service was never on par with direct messaging offered by competitors like Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter. Today,

Instagram is introducing much needed threaded conversations. That means you don’t have to create a new conversation with someone every time you want to DM them a new photo. Now you can just drop in a photo as though you were sending a text message and keep the conversation going. In addition, Direct now has a quick camera feature for replying with a selfie, and there is a new ability for sending gigantic emojis.

An update to the main feed will allow you to send content from your timeline as a direct message. This feature was inspired by the growing trend of users tagging other users in comments as a way to share a photo with them. According to the company, nearly 40% of comments include an @-mention.

Users can now share content directly with others by tapping on the new arrow that appears next to the like and comment buttons. This will allow you to share the post as a DM. These updates to Instagram are now available on both iOS and Android. Editorial Credit: 10 FACE / Shutterstock.com

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