But neither are people who disagree.

The Guardian projects that social media, driven in a big way by frictionless sharing, will overtake search as a source of traffic. To put it into perspective, search had accounted for 40 percent of traffic.

This morning, Jay Rosen posed this question:

A great question, and I’ll take a crack at it.

For one thing, I think the act of frictionless sharing is incredibly different from the more intentional sharing of clicking a button to tweet or share on Facebook, so I’ll note that I’m really responding to the question, “When frictionless sharing overtakes search….”

More apps, more traffic — but spread around

The first thing that seems to be a given is that we’ll see a lot more similar Facebook apps. Media companies will scramble to bring their own social readers online and before too long, people who like frictionless sharing may have several reader apps each — one for national/international, one for region, one or two for their niche interests.

I’m wondering now whether a lot more apps in the same space might dilute the traffic. That part depends on how Facebook handles it. But we know that the news feed doesn’t show all activity — just the stuff that Facebook (with your help) determines is most relevant to you.

A four-part pie

Hey, if sharing is the thing, you’ll be looking for “talkers” more than “What time does the Super Bowl start?”-type content. You might even be tempted to go easy on the SEO, until your boss starts asking why the search traffic is shrinking.

The days of the three-part pie (direct, referral and search as traffic sources) are dying or dead with social at least registering most places, but now editors will begin to expect to see a lot of 90-degree angles when they look at their traffic pie charts with social broken out of referrals to live on its own: 25 percent direct traffic, 25 percent referral, 25 percent search, 25 percent social. All part of a balanced breakfast.

More getting out of the way

Time to make sharing easier. | Photo: Jeffrey Beall

From the post about the Guardian’s numbers:

The “frictionless sharing” app works by readers opting in to share all articles they read with their Facebook friends, generating more traffic for the news site with “no editorial curation”.

That’s a pretty attractive offer to editors and digital media mavens: set it and forget it. And it’s something we  can strive to do in more ways. If social really shows us that our constituencies have the passion for reading and sharing, however passively, our content, we can do more to set people up to more easily navigate the vast quantities of content we produce.

For starters, we can take a really honest look at what we’re doing to actively get in the way. Are we erecting barriers (do we require an extra login or too many clicks)? Are we reinventing the wheel (are we trying to compete with Facebook)?

And we can actively think about ways to enable easier sharing, even if we can’t afford a fancy new social reader.

Are we making it stupefyingly easy to share from mobile? According to the new Pew State of the News Media report, we should. Are we following best practices on various social media — not a single set of best practices, but best practices ascribed to each different platform?

The bigger picture

If social beats search on a broader scale, I think it’s a victory for civilization. It means we’re better at talking to one another and exchanging ideas without going through an intermediary like Google (although they sure would like to be a bigger part of the social picture). At the moment, Google really does know what I want more than my friends do — or at least more than do the thoughts they broadcast. With frictionless sharing, and I think this some flavor of what Mark Zuckerberg said about it in the first place, you get a truer picture of your friends and their interests, which are theoretically why you like them in real life.

Are we all mature enough to handle seeing what everybody we know reads without judging? Obviously not. So there’s still that barrier. But plenty of us don’t care, so it’s time for more news organizations to move into the frictionless space.

More thoughts

A few things to explore if I’ve piqued your curiosity…

• Frictionless sharing 101 [Mashable]
• Five things to know before using Facebook timeline apps [cnet]
• Top trends of 2011: Frictionless sharing [rww]
• Balanced web traffic [Haden Interactive]

1. News consumers are increasingly mobile. “44% of adults own a smartphone, and the number of tablet owners grew by about 50% since the summer of 2011, to 18% of Americans over age 18.”

2. The mobile devices lead to a multiplatform news experience, which is to say that smartphones and tablets are additives to and not replacements for desktop and laptop computers in news consumption.

3. The behaviors of mobile and non-mobile digital consumers are different enough to warrant thinking of them as separate audiences:

“For those who get news on both the smartphone and tablet, social networking is a much more popular way to get news. Among that group (13% of all digital news consumers), fully two-thirds (67%) have ever gotten news recommendations from Facebook. That compares to 59% who get news on just one of those devices and 41% who only get digital news via the desktop/laptop. Similarly, 39% follow news recommendations on Twitter, compared with 24% who just use a smartphone or a tablet and 9% who use only the desktop/laptop.”

Which fits into another familiar finding:

4. There is a greater hunger for news — and less money for it.

5. Search is roughly equal to a site’s homepage in importance to traffic.

6. For people who get their news from social sites, Facebook is No. 1.

These things should be pretty familiar concepts, although some of the mobile news will be relatively controversial in meetings, I think. Great report. Check it out.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to pull together a few quick useful resources to which I can refer.

Before we get to them, a couple of rules:

1. Don’t ever say anything along the lines of “I don’t use Twitter because I don’t care about what somebody in Abu Dhabi is having for lunch.” This is one of those strange cliches that gets passed around. It’s annoying and it shows just how ignorant you are of the power and uses of social media. So just stifle it. Trust me, nobody thinks it’s funny, nobody hasn’t heard it before.

2. Unless you’re really great at branding or already have a great brand built up, your username should be your real name (or close to it) and your user photo should be a photo of your face.

3. The basic basics: A really short guide to Twitter | SreeTips – CNET News

4. Pros and cons of Twitter for journalists – Craig Kanalley’s Twitter Journalism

5. One simple tip from each of a slew of experienced Twitterers — including “Reply! Reply to people and start conversations that often become relationships.” — Teresa Gorman

6. How to verify a tweet — Craig Kanalley’s Twitter Journalism

7. Tweeting as the news brand — Mandy Jenkins

8. Suggestions (but not standards) for live tweeting an event — Steve Buttry

9. Twitter for Journalists — Knight Digital Media Center. In case you want to delve into a deeper tutorial.

Feeling confident? Maybe it’s time to move on to my Storify tutorial!

WordPress for Android. Yes! Clean, easy and familiar. Check your stats, moderate comments, create and edit posts — it’s all here.

My wishlist for it: smoother scrolling in the edit window and the ability to add a link by search rather than just copy-pasting into the URL field. Oh, and I’ve discovered it’s not super easy to manipulate images here. Maybe better for making drafts or adding updates and moderating comments.

Social

Andmade Share. Once you’ve got a few apps on your phone, your default share list gets pretty long, and invariably there are some things you won’t use very often. Andshare allows you not only to reorganize that share list, but also to share via multiple apps simultaneously, like if you wanted to both tweet and text something, or post to Facebook and save to Evernote. Found this one on Lifehacker.

Twitter, Tweetdeck and Twicca. There are many Twitter clients out there, so you’ll have to play with them and see which you like best, but among the most well liked around the web are these three. I’ll contrast them very briefly:

If you like your social media simple, the official Twitter for Android app is really quite good these days. It has everything you need, if not everything you want, and it’s pretty attractive.

Tweetdeck is what I use on my personal computer, so I’m comfortable with it and have set up columns I like to follow. In addition to my main feed, I can easily scan my coworkers’ latest tweets, local influencers’ latest tweets and #Boulder and #CUBoulder hashtags, which are my paper’s coverage areas. And of course you can manage Facebook and Foursquare from Tweetdeck as well.

Twicca‘s the hip choice at the moment for power nerds. It’s probably the most visually attractive Twitter app and can be customized with plug-ins. Here’s Lifehacker’s ode to Twicca and here’s an Android Market Play Store search for plugins (which, as always, you should use with caution).

Foursquare, Tumblr and/or Instagram (when it’s eventually released). With any of them, you can include text, a photo or video, a link and some geographic information. Depending on your social media philosophy, you might want to make one of these well known apps your phone’s HQ. I’m not a big fan of syncing up all of your social accounts, but I don’t get annoyed by reporters having sort of a message of the day — maybe one main photo or link that they send out across several platforms.

For example, if I’m reporting on a presidential debate in Denver, I might take a photo of setup at the venue (or, if I’m lucky, a candidate or subject of the story) and post it to Instagram or a Foursquare check-in that I also tweet. This is sort of the announcement that I’m starting to cover the event, then I’d call it quits on Foursquare for the rest of the evening and focus on Twitter, where people expect a higher volume of content. For my money, it makes sense to pick just one of these three — Foursquare, Tumblr or Instagram — and supplement it with Twitter.

Photo & video

As I write this, there’s a pretty fair amount of speculation that Instagram will be released for Android during South By Southwest Interactive this week or sometime very soon, Instagram for Android was on display at SXSW this week, but it’s still not quite available for public consumption. In the meantime, there are a perfectly good Instagram-like apps for Android users. I just use the default camera and share to various networks from there, but if you’re looking for a separate app, I hear PicPlz is the frontrunner (at least until Instagram, with its large community, branches out). Additionally, Jeanne Brooks, of the Online News Association, has compiled a list of other apps that approximate the functionality of Instagram for Android users.

For video, I see people using both Qik, for short videos and live streaming and Tout, which markets itself as the one-click, 15-second video option handled much like Tumblr or Twitter — with “retouting” and all. Here’s a clip on Tout.

Productivity

Evernote for Android. If you don’t already know about Evernote, it’s basically a great information capture system. Take notes, record audio, take a photo and tag it all for easy finding later. Right now, for example, I’m gathering online comment policies, so when I come across one I want to look at later, I hit my menu button and share it to Evermore, tagging it “comment policy.” When I’m ready to write that post, I’ll go into Evernote and pull up that tag and have everything I’ve saved so far.

Great for gathering string in the digital age.

If This Then That. This isn’t an Android app, but a service that can turn you into a power user. Automate an endless number of tasks — like every time you take a photo with your phone, save it to your Dropbox. Or get a save your Foursquare checkins to Google Calendar to keep a log of where you reported. Automatically saved favorited tweets to your Read It Later account. Or automatically tweet weather advisories in your area as they’re announced:

News

Reader. Google Reader continues to be a great RSS reader — and using a widget or two on your phone’s home screen is a great way to stay up-to-the-minute.

Scanner Radio. Don’t have a scanner? Now you do.

More resources

• Mobile journalism apps for Android [TNW]
• Android journalism apps [Quora]
• Mobile apps journalists should have [Mediactive]

Oh, and one more useful item from the inimitable Alex Leo — a tip she wrote for iPhone users that applies to all mobile journalists, too, especially if you’re running all these apps: Always Be Charging.

Seems like a good start. What did I miss?

Question for you... | Photo: flickr user rjhuttondfw

Online comments break down a lot of barriers — people who once had little or no voice have, for a decade or more now, been able to add their viewpoints, questions, facts or, often, attacks and asides to stories written by professionals.

This no-longer-new relationship asks a lot of questions that media types still aren’t prepared to answer just yet. Here’s one that just occurred to me during the course of my workday: What’s the etiquette on a contributor commenting on a story posted by a staffer? And, to broaden the question, what’s the etiquette on commenting on a colleague’s post?

Camera science and environment reporter Laura Snider wrote a story about two massive solar flares. Here it is, in its entirety, as it appeared at 3:20 p.m. today. As an employee of parent company Prairie Mountain Publishing using it for educational/analytical purposes, I’m hoping nobody gets mad at me for it, but you know where to find me if you want it truncated or removed:

–

A pair of massive solar flares that erupted from the sun’s surface Tuesday at about 5 p.m. Colorado time are expected to slam into the Earth early Thursday morning, possibly affecting communications and power, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder.

The two X-class flares erupted within about an hour of each other, and they’re now screaming toward Earth at speeds of at least 1,100 miles per second, according to NASA. When the flares arrive, they’re expected to further agitate Earth’s magnetic field, which is already being affected by a solar flare that occurred Sunday.

“Things are already disturbed, and we’re going to pound on them some more with another shot from the sun,” said Joe Kunches, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, where the Space Weather Prediction Center is housed.

The resulting geomagnetic storm has the potential to disrupt high frequency radio communications, global positioning systems and power grids.

–

Not long after it was posted, there were the usual wise-cracking comments — as well as this one, from Dave Taylor, who writes a weekly approximately monthly (see comments) column for the Camera (in addition to a plethora of other things).

Dave Taylor's comment, posted about an hour after Laura's story went live.

Aside from the fact that Dave uses his real name and a mugshot, it’s got the usual hallmarks of a snarky online comment, right? And who doesn’t enjoy a bit of snark?

I happen to disagree with Dave, and think that writing science stories, especially for general consumption, calls for approachable, active language. My disagreeing with something in a comment isn’t what’s interesting, though.

The interesting part is that Dave’s work appears in the same space as Laura’s, albeit on a different topic, so you’d think he’d be less quick than most to compare her writing about scientific phenomena to tabloid journalism. I’m a big believer in tweeting at colleagues — often even if they’re in the same room. And I think there are great opportunities for colleagues commenting on each other’s stories, you know, collegially.

But the “National Enquirer” thing distracts from any point he hopes to make about Laura’s word choice. From my point of view, this is not a particularly useful piece of criticism — just a slightly mean-spirited bon mot. Again, exactly what you’d expect to see in comments, but the fact that Dave is a contributor makes it sort of a fascinating dynamic (to me, at least).

I hear this kind of lightly barbed criticism of voice — only occasionally — within the newsroom. Good-natured ribbing, to use the cliche. As far as I know, Dave isn’t close with Laura, so that sort of rules that out.

So here are my questions for you, some of which are inspired by Dave’s comment today:

• Do or should colleagues hold themselves to a different standard than the everyman commenter?
• Is there a place for publicly commenting on a colleague’s style?
• Is there a place for publicly commenting on a colleague’s accuracy?
• Does it serve journalists better to be asked these questions publicly? 
• Does it serve news consumers better? 

She’d know — Grace is a food blogger, too — and when you look at Cafe Aion‘s full feed of Instagram photos and what they send to Twitter, it’s hard to argue otherwise.

Images from @cafeaion on Twitter.

It’s easier and easier for people to browse through images for online content, whether it’s with image-heavy Tumblrs, loaded Pinterest selections or, as Grace shows Cafe Aion is doing, on Instagram. If you’re not already thinking about telling your stories visually — at times nearly exclusively visually — it’s time to get there. This is not only a way that people look at content online, but also an incredibly popular and accessible way to consume information on mobile devices.

At the Daily, CU campus reporter Whitney Bryen has been doing a great job of making her reporting day pretty transparent and teasing upcoming stories with photos distributed through her social feeds.

Seems like the next step is to loop back to the places where those photos are taken and include a link to the finished story, in case somebody comes across it after the fact.

I’m looking forward to that CU student wedding story, Whitney!

A note for people without Instagram — you can use Tumblr or Twitter just fine for these purposes! I don’t have Instagram, myself, because it’s not available on Android (yet).

“The blog world has become accustomed to the participation of those for whom anonymity provides courage, that is those who find the blog an instrument of vituperation, anger, and bitter ad hominem revenge on the world. No one has yet devised a proper method of shunting anger into a more productive project. For those who are bitter, we must have sympathy but no respect.”

Find it on the left side of his homepage.

Today, she’s livetweeting the murder trial of Kevin McGregor, and one of my favorite topics — online comments — came up.

It’s great stuff, and the full feed is a wonderful example of courts coverage that reminded me of Steve Buttry’s (lengthy) guide to digital-first reporting. Here, too, is another example of live court reporting with Steve’s commentary — and another post with a sample court reporter’s workflow.

Here are a few samples from Erica’s feed today:

Quickly create custom CSS with web-friendly type with csstypeset.com.

I’m a big believer in learning by doing. But I’m also a believer in deadlines, so sometimes you don’t have time to learn. Well, here’s a pretty cool tool that strikes a balance:

csstypeset.com

Use a very user-friendly control panel with sliders to get the type effects you desire, copy the code and slap it into your stylesheet and you’re off and running. It requires a basic understanding of CSS — and if you want, you can watch as the code changes to learn more as you go.

Very
nice!

Code Year achievements

I recently fired off an email to my staff announcing some CSS (very simple stuff – a drop cap, a few types of subheads, a shiny new pullquote) I wrote to create a few new styles for our website. In doing so, I wrote a brief explanation of CSS.

I love doing that stuff and I think that to be an interesting journalist right now you have to be a little curious about code of all kinds. That’s why I’ve been really excited about Code Year, which is a year’s worth of free code tutorials from Codecademy. They’ve started it off with JavaScript, which I’d taken a crack at learning a little while ago. The Codecademy approach is really fun and I highly recommend it.

It is free, after all, and it’ll tickle the Foursquare part of your brain, if you need additional motivation.

Got other favorite methods of learning such things? I’m also a fan of w3schools.com — though that’s got substantially less hand-holding and is better for folks who are great at motivating themselves. That was my original resource for JavaScript (along with Eloquent JavaScript, which sort of reads like JavaScript for English majors and is available on your Kindle) and continues to be a nice resource for CSS and plenty of other things.