In March, I wrote about Gawker’s new quantity-over-quality experiment. Each day, one Gawker staffer was tasked with pageview-chasing duty, a quest to post enough cat videos, Miley Cyrus pics, and local news ephemera to keep the clicks coming en masse. That staffer’s work would free up others to work on longer, more involved pieces. Pageview duty rotated, because — who could stare too long into the Internet’s bright raw id and not go blind?

Neetzan Zimmerman, apparently. Editor A.J. Daulerio hired him two months ago to focus exclusively on viral content. Zimmerman’s title at Gawker is Editor, The Internet. He is assigned to cover the Internet.

This machine-like person has generated more than 300 bylines for Gawker since he started on April 9. These are not lengthy tomes, usually; nearly every post is just a funny photo or video, with body text barely longer than a caption. The average word count of a sampling of his recent stories is about 200.

Zimmerman sits comfortably atop Gawker’s leaderboard, garnering two to five times more pageviews than his highest-performing colleagues. Zimmerman is so prolific, his posts so magnetic, that Daulerio has now relieved all 10 full-time Gawker staffers of their pageview chores.

via What makes something go viral? The Internet according to Gawker’s Neetzan Zimmerman » Nieman Journalism Lab.

We know professional journalists on Twitter. Over the past several years, the Muck Rack team has gained many insights into some of the best practices for how PR professionals can use Twitter to maximize their interactions with journalists.

Twitter has become an efficient way for journalists to find sources and cover news in real-time. One thing hasn’t changed, though: They still hate receiving irrelevant pitches.

via – Muck Rack.

But when I ask a P.R. person to boil down a pitch to 300 characters, it often turns out that they’re actually pitching something cool: “This new app shows you, on your phone’s screen, everything you need to know about a potential romantic partner: Time since last breakup, hygiene standards, emotional stability score and more.”

via A Few Good Ideas for Products – NYTimes.com.

Building from their strengths as places where millions of people connect with friends and family, Facebook and Twitter have taken evolutionary steps to become publishing platforms for news, video, photos and entertainment content. “Users are learning that the more they share, the more they discover,” said eMarketer senior analyst Paul Verna in his new eMarketer report, “Facebook and Twitter as Media Platforms: News, Video, Music and Games.” “And the more they discover, the more likely they are to turn first to Facebook for content they used to get elsewhere.”

via Facebook, Twitter Help Publishers Find Their Audience – eMarketer.

An annual global survey of journalists by public relations firm Oriella finds that more than half now use social media as a source of story ideas, and nearly half use blogs to find angles and ideas.Among journalists in North America, the rates were even higher — 62 percent said they draw news from trusted sources on Twitter or Facebook, while 64 percent rely on well-known blogs as a source of story ideas. However, journalists said they were much less inclined to use information from an unfamiliar social media user or blog.

via Most journalists now get story ideas from social media sources, survey says | Poynter..

Do you know FOMO? That’s not some fancy latte — it’s Fear Of Missing Out, and something that’s become a recognized thing by many social media users these days.

You’re probably familiar with the concept, if not the name. Here’s an example: It’s been a long workweek and you really just want to spend Friday night at home watching a movie. But then that old familiar urge hits, and you can’t resist grabbing your smartphone for a jolty fix of quick-burst information. One friend’s Twitter post mentions an awesome concert. On Facebook, someone else put up photos of a raging house party.

via Do You Suffer From Social Media FOMO? [INFOGRAPHIC].

Sharing is the basis of social media, and it can be a beautiful thing. Keeping up with family and friends as kids grow, relationships become marriages and adventures are had — social media can be tons of fun and helps us feel connected to one another.But when does all that sharing become too much? And when can what you share online actually become dangerous?A recent study commissioned by Intel found that 90% of American adults think people share too much, and nearly half of adults find the deluge of information to be overwhelming.The abundance of information isn’t just annoying — it can also make overeager posters targets for scams and other crimes. According to a recent Consumer Reports study — albeit one with some potential flaws — 20.4 million people among Facebook‘s North American base of approximately 190 million users reveal their full birth date online.

via Do You Share Too Much on Social Media? [INFOGRAPHIC].

But could social networking have an adverse effect on our quality of life?

Consider this: 24% of respondents to one survey said they’ve missed out on enjoying special moments in person because — ironically enough — they were too busy trying to document their experiences for online sharing. Many of us have had to remind ourselves to “live in the now” — instead of worry about composing the perfect tweet or angling for just the right Instagram shot.

Worldwide, Facebook users spend 10.5 billion minutes each day surfing the site — and that doesn’t even include mobile use, according to the company’s IPO filing. Collectively, that’s nearly 20 years per day that people spend living online instead of offline.

via Is Social Media Destroying Real World Relationships? [INFOGRAPHIC].

allstate-trust-in-information-sources-june2012.pngTraditional media reign supreme when it comes to Americans’ trust in information sources, according to [pdf] a survey released in June 2012 by Allstate, in association with National Journal. Three-quarters of the survey respondents said they trust information from public TV and radio either some or a great deal, more than double those who could same the same about social networks (30%). In general, a greater amount of respondents displayed trust in traditional media information sources than in online channels. For example, trust in newspapers (71%), cable news networks (70%), and network news (64%) outstripped trust in company websites (51%) and blogs and online forums (34%).

via Americans Trust Traditional Info Sources Most; Wary of SocNets.