Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar » *** UPDATED x2 *** Today’s Poll

Thursday, Dec 15, 2011 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Politico’s Ben Smith has taken a new job with BuzzFeed. He had this to say about the rise of Twitter not long ago…

Since the early days of the 2008 campaign, Smith has distinguished himself by being first to the news. Having a jump on the competition of even just five minutes has made all the difference, he says. But a lot has changed since 2008. Twitter, Smith says, is “sort of draining the life from the blog.”

“Where people were hitting refresh on my blog because they wanted to see what my latest newsbreak was, now they’ll just be on Twitter, and I’ll tweet it out and they’ll see it there,” he says. “What I’m doing right now is just incredibly old school. I might as well have ink all over my fingers and be setting type.”

Buzzfeed is basically just a headline and Twitter feed aggregation site, but it’s done so in a way that attracts the type of people who like to see what everybody else is being distracted by on the Interwebtubes. Smith is hiring some reporters, so it appears that the site will soon be breaking news itself.

Despite Ben’s praise, Twitter is only good for a sentence or two. There is no room for thought, analysis and debate with that product. I like to drill down, and most of you do as well.

Besides, there simply aren’t as many hot, breaking political news stories day in and day out in Illinois as there are in DC. Twitter and headline aggregation alone aren’t enough for us.

Even so, there’s no doubt that Twitter has become an indispensable news tool. We were all glued to the Twitterverse during Rod Blagojevich’s recent sentencing hearing, for example.

* And that’s a big reason why I became so interested in ScribbleLive. Their program is so awesome that Tweets usually appear on ScribbleLive before they appear on Twitter itself. Twitter went down in my part of the world yesterday for about a half an hour, but ScribbleLive was still up and running and kicking out the Tweets.

Also, website owners like myself can’t monetize Twitter. To me, anyway, there’s no sense in allowing some faceless corporation to make money off of me if I don’t get a piece of the action as well. The idea is to use Twitter to bring people here, not the other way around. ScribbleLive allows me to do that by aggregating Tweets from numerous sources on my own site, along with news story excerpts, photos, video, audio and my own commentary/reporting. It’s almost a perfect platform for me, and it’s incredibly easy to update posts when I’m not in the office.

* The new system appears to be working. The live session posts are getting more popular with every passing session day. People are watching the House debate while sitting in the gallery, for instance, and following Senate action via ScribbleLive right here. We not only had tons of views for the Blagojevich sentencing hearing, the automatic updating benefits of ScribbleLive took a huge load off our servers. On a day when we might have been in danger of crashing from too much traffic, we had no problems at all. It’s just a very cool thing.

I’ve also come up with a way to monetize the ScribbleLive feeds without taking away from their value by adding too much clutter. I’m still working on pricing and frequency, but I should be launching it sometime soon.

* Anyway, you’ll notice this morning that I’ve moved the daily ScribbleLive news feed from its own post to the middle column. I’ve done this for a couple of reasons. The feed is getting a huge amount of views throughout the day, but it’s getting lost in the clutter in - and adding to the clutter of - the main section of the blog. I decided to put it in the center column to increase the value and usefulness of that column, which hopefully will then draw even more eyeballs to the same column as the advertising. Hey, if you think I wanna do all this for free, you’re insane.

But I couldn’t decide what to do about the icons in the ScribbleLive feed. I turned them off and on last night. Turning them off allows more stories to be seen before you have to scroll down. Turning them on makes the feed “pop” better.

…Adding… For BlackBerry users, just click the icon above the ScribbleLive feed. It’ll take you to a separate page.

*** UPDATE 1 *** OK, even though the poll is heavily in favor of leaving the icons “on,” I’ve turned them off for a while so you can see what the feed looks like without them.

*** UPDATE 2 *** I’ve turned the icons back on for those who didn’t see the blog earlier today.

* So, here’s a poll…

Online Surveys & Market Research

Thanks.

35 Comments

- tubbfan - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 8:31 am:
I like the icons, because I can quickly determine whether the story is from a source I wish to read.

- Cassiopeia - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 8:35 am:
Use icons so that we can know which ones to ignore like SJ-R and The Dome.

- What planet is he from again? - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 8:43 am:
I don’t like icons because I don’t like the extra space they take up on the screen. But then I’m a techno-nerd.

- ChicagoJ - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 8:44 am:
I like the icons, they make identifying the source easier. Keep ‘em.

- wordslinger - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 8:46 am:
I like the icons for a more interesting page layout.

- Dirty Red - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 8:51 am:
I don’t think they are necessary. The column makes the feed narrower. That plus the icons means you’re getting less text “above the fold.”

Why not put the ScribbleLive feed in the far-right column atop the RSS feeds? You may need even fewer RSS feeds if ScribbleLive is going to be a permanent thing.

- Pat Collins - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 8:54 am:
I like the icons, but can do without them if they become a performance drag.

Being able to monetize your web page, and ruthlessly avoiding what you can’t is the new key skill today.

- Rich Miller - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 8:55 am:
===Why not put the ScribbleLive feed in the far-right column atop the RSS feeds? ===

I tried that, but then I looked at the site on my iPhone. Since there is no scrollbar on iPhones, the iPhone renders the entire first page of ScribbleLive, meaning you have to scroll way down to get to the first news feed. It was too much.

- Way Way Down Here - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:03 am:
Keep ‘em for visual interest.

- Cincinnatus - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:03 am:
No icons, more text room to make them easier to read. Two suggestions, can the new feed be moved to the top of the middle column without advertisers going nuts (perhaps moving adds to column three) and can the default sound setting for those clicks be set to OFF?

- Cincinnatus - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:04 am:
*ads

- Mountain man - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:05 am:
I like the icons simply because the source is so easily identifiable.

- Draznnl - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:07 am:
I read this on my computer, so I like the icons on. They provide a quick way to distinguish ScribbleLive from the rest of the page’s content. If I were using a smartphone, I’d say no icons because I would want as little extraneous information as possible slowing me down.

- Anonymous - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:08 am:
The incons are nice. What it really needs is a time stamp on the posts.

- Rich Miller - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:13 am:
The ads are staying right where they are.

- downstate commissioner - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:23 am:
No icons! Learn to read! You might find something interesting you didn’t expect to learn about, regardless of source.

- McLean Farmboy - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:25 am:
Don’t know anything about ScribbleLive’s technical capabilities, but I think the best answer would be icons above the text. If that is not possible, I would vote to keep them.

- What's in a name? - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:33 am:
I like the icons as it helps identify the source quickly (I still need to earn a living). At fist look the column seems a bit skinny. I may be used to your previous incarnation. Not a big deal. It is a neat technology.

- Responsa - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:37 am:
Can the icons be smaller? Would still be informational but less distracting if smaller, IMO. As is, they create lots of wasted space on the screen.

- walkinfool - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:37 am:
Icons YES. I like to scan down and only read who I like.

- PublicServant - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:40 am:
Reducing the width of the left bar slightly might help. Also, allowing people to open the feed in a separate window or tab might be a nice option. I like the icons by the way.

- CircularFiringSquad - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:45 am:
NO Icons unless they can figure a way to slide Capt Fax a little loot or other stuff of value
We were hoping the QOTD was to pick Blagoof’s drug of choice — something edgy like Meth or just stuff he got from RxRon types?

- haverford - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:49 am:
I’m not that fussed about the icons, but can I put my hand up for having “mute” be the default when new tweets come in? I definitely refresh the blog less often when the scribble is up because it resets the notification to “flick”, and I don’t want to have to scroll down and fix it every time.

Think of the pageviews (and the children, of course).

- Wensicia - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:51 am:
You can open feed in a separate window by clicking on the scribblelive at the top.

Keep the icons

- PublicServant - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 10:02 am:
You can automatically enable a separate window or tab with a link to the appropriate javascript. Probably better than the current left click which just moves the user off the cap fax website.

- Rich Miller - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 10:03 am:
No popups. Ever.

- Dirty Red - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 10:09 am:
Even with the icons off you can still see who is posting. Can you change the color scheme so we can see the time stamp?

- Rayne of Terror - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 10:16 am:
I like icons because it’s easier for me to identify who I want to read, and I wonder if without icons people will assume the tweets are all yours. But the icons were pretty large before and I like how streamlined the look is without icons.

- Been There - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 10:18 am:
I voted to keep the icons but agree with Responsa that they could be smaller, if possible. Definitely like moving it from the main column to where it is at. Is there anyway to let the columns scroll separately from each other so that I can scroll down on a post but the scribble thing would stay?

- YossarianLives - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 10:33 am:
Thanks for turning them off so we can see what it looks like without them. This confirms my opinion that the icons should stay. I agree with Responsa - can the icons be made smaller?

- Rich Miller - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 10:54 am:
===can the icons be made smaller? ===

I’ve sent the company a link to this post, so hopefully they’ll get the message. I’ll talk to them about it as well. Thanks.

- Cincinnatus - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 11:37 am:
- Wensicia - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 9:51 am:

“You can open feed in a separate window by clicking on the scribblelive at the top.”

Thanks for that tip.

- Wensicia - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 12:11 pm:
I could live without the icons, but hope the site will find a way to shrink them, instead. I wish the time stamp was more visible, too.

Cincy, your welcome.

- Wensicia - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 12:12 pm:
I meant you’re welcome, duh.

- Timmeh - Thursday, Dec 15, 11 @ 3:39 pm:
Is it possible to have a dedicated page with a ScribbleLive feed? Such as capitolfax.com/livenewsfeed or something along those lines?

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