What Publishing in the Social Age Looks Like

digiday reporting:
Paul Berry knows a thing or two about content on the Web. As the CTO at The Huffington Post, Berry was credited with developing the company’s SEO and social network tools. Now he’s trying to replicate his success at RebelMouse, a content-management system built for the social world.
RebelMouse connects your social networks to create a dynamic homepage that changes as you add tweets, status updates, Instagram pictures, Tumblr reblogs. It takes the content from your feeds but also lets you publish straight from the platform. In a way, it’s like a social aggregator, but you can add content, edit headlines and position stories where you want them to reside.
What’s the biggest challenge publishers face in today’s landscape?
Tech is a difficult one to get right. Publishers are struggling more than they need to or should be. The future is that, and this is where RebelMouse falls into place; you should be able to work on your voice, work on your writing and community and engagement. I don’t think you should work so hard on failing on your tech. There are more solutions to make level ground. People are dying to read and engage on the voice. Publishers that are doing well are the ones finding and expressing their voice. The ones that struggle struggle with tech and being objective built in their DNA. The world isn’t more interested in being objective and more interested in being clear about their voice.
Why is being objective bad for a social era?
The way we consume news is changing drastically and we are accustomed to getting to the source of any story almost if not literally at the same time as we get to the story itself (photos from the Hudson crash, etc). So the reporting of the factual events has been commoditized and crowd sourced. What people want now is to follow voices that resonate with their world view to enjoy and engage with the events that are happening in a way they like. This is part of why blogging was and is so vital to The Huffington Post, because it was someone’s voice that they could attach a name to. Very small groups of reporters in big news organizations are gaining more followers on social networks than the organizations themselves. I believe a larger “objective” is possible and perfect for a social world where strong views and voices from opposing sides are curated together to show as many views of the object through as many quality lenses possible.
How does a publisher find the balance between creating its own technology and using a third party?
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