Just as her promotion to social editor was being announced this morning, Jennifer Preston posted her first tweet. She introduced herself and asked “How should @nytimes be using Twitter?” At that point, she had a few dozen followers, but by the end of the day, she had amassed more than 2,400. While she probably got many more suggestions than she knows what to do with, she did single out a few for responses, like @bewildia’s suggestion that NYTimes tweets should also “link to key source info, e.g., a link to [California] court’s ruling.” She also agreed with another respondent’s counsel and will use social media more for listening than tweeting her own views. Preston was not available for an interview; I would have liked to ask for her thoughts on the recent attention NYT staffers have gotten for posting details of a recent meeting on social media and whether she feels a strict policy governing employee blogging activities, like Bloomberg is doing, is something she’ll explore. But as to what approach she should take in her new role as social media editor, which in Preston’s case will involve behind-the-scenes coordinating with the newsroom as opposed to managing a new section, I solicited some thoughts from her counterparts at other publications, including BusinessWeek Online, LATimes.com and The Globe and Mail. While only a handful of pubs have someone to help navigate news outlets’ social media focus—such as the Austin American-Statesman’s Internet Editor Robert Quigley and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s arts writer Mary Schumacher—the job is likely to become a common news organization fixture. And so, Preston’s efforts will be closely watched at other news organizations, which are all trying to decide how open or restrictive to make their policies on staffers’ blogging and tweeting, as newspapers and magazines look for ways to better connect with their readers. More after the jump —Don’t fix what isn’t broken: A number of editors I spoke to commended the NYTimes’ Twitter army, including David Carr, (@Carr2n) and Jennifer 8. Lee (@jenny8lee. ) Shirley Brady, BW Online’s community editor, says Preston has a head start working with “some Twitter rock stars, including @BrianStelter and @palafo [City Room blogger/editor Patrick LaForge], so I’m sure her colleagues have already given her plenty of smart advice. I imagine Jennifer will be busy asking a lot of questions, listening & soaking it all in these first few weeks. She’ll need her reporter & editorial chops, in a sense, covering this space & bringing back dispatches from the frontlines to her colleagues.” Andrew Nystrom (@latimesnystrom), senior producer for Social + Emerging Media for LATimes.com, who has been in a similar role for about two years, told me he was given the chance to take a few months and research best practices at other papers. “I was able to take some time and compare what other papers were doing and that was really valuable,” Nystrom said. “We’re entering phase two and my main goal is to get the word out about our story-telling, content and multimedia. We’re looking to reach people beyond the website and I imagine that’s what [Preston] will be doing as well.” As for my advice, Preston should start by taking a look at Twitter & New York Times Reporters Ethnography, which is a study of the paper’s use of Twitter by a University of Wisconsin journalism student who started off skeptical of the mix between social media and reporters, but has become less averse to the idea. The author’s main fear was that reporters would lose credibility by divulging too much professional and personal information, though that seems to be balanced by the usefulness of finding new sources and ultimately improve the quality and breadth of their work. Additionally, the enthnography feels that NYT reporters spend too much time promoting their own work. At the same time, he applauds the humorous posts from reporters like Saul Hansell (@shansell), which allow readers to get a better sense of their personality and making it possible for a stronger connection between readers and journalists. —Keep control loose: Almost all the social-media editors I spoke to warned against the temptation to rein in reporters’ and editors’ urges to discuss what’s on their mind. As E&P noted last month, following the WSJ‘s order barring employees from “friending” sources, a number of other pubs have mostly been following the looser, “use your best judgment” approach taken by the LATimes.com. The site’s Andrew Nystrom explained the paper’s recently revised guidelines on acceptable social-media conduct: “We basically tell people to act the way they would at an industry cocktail party, where they’re representing the organization. Don’t do anything that would embarrass yourself or the paper. But we realize it’s an evolving area and you can’t have a strict policy.” —Understand the meaning of “engagement”:  Matthew Ingram, communities editor at The Globe and Mail, in an e-mail message, said that readers “don’t want to interact with brands, or with faceless entities or institutions, however vast and reputable they might be.  They like to interact with other human beings—and the benefits of that interaction can not only help journalists do their jobs, by providing feedback and input on stories, but the relationship that is created with readers can also have powerful spin-off benefits for media outlets that choose to engage using these kinds of tools.” In terms of what The Globe and Mail has done to try to bring readers into the tent, Ingram has high hopes for a new feature called the Public Policy Wiki, which is designed to let readers provide feedback about public policy issues covered online. Soliciting feedback, “means really engaging, not just pushing out links or promoting content—in other words, listening and responding as well as asking for attention.” —Keep the commenters, more attention for TimesPeople: One social-media editor who offered some thoughts anonymously provided an assessment on the NYT‘s efforts in this area. So far, there’s been a lot to be impressed by, with a few notable spots that desperately need fixing. Health blogger Tara Parker-Pope was singled out as someone who does a great job of responding to reader comments, while this same editor feels media columnist Virginia Heffernan [@page88] must rethink her mostly negative views of commenters (see her two separate posts here and here). But as a whole, NYTimes.com seems to have embraced commenters widely, even having done a few stories based on reader comments. “They aggregate others’ news and don’t pretend to be the final word; and just get it, even if it’s not saving their financial bacon,” one social-media editor told me. While this editor was not impressed with news sharing/recommendation tool TimesPeople, a rep for the company pointed out that the service has signed up 200,000 users since launching last fall as its debut sponsor Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO) has re-upped for another campaign.

Just as her promotion to social editor was being announced this morning, Jennifer Preston posted her first tweet. She introduced herself and asked “How should @nytimes be using Twitter?” At that point, she had a few dozen followers, but by the end of the day, she had amassed more than 2,400. While she probably got many more suggestions than she knows what to do with, she did single out a few for responses, like @bewildia’s suggestion that NYTimes tweets should also “link to key source info, e.g., a link to [California] court’s ruling.” She also agreed with another respondent’s counsel and will use social media more for listening than tweeting her own views. Preston was not available for an interview; I would have liked to ask for her thoughts on the recent attention NYT staffers have gotten for posting details of a recent meeting on social media and whether she feels a strict policy governing employee blogging activities, like Bloomberg is doing, is something she’ll explore. But as to what approach she should take in her new role as social media editor, which in Preston’s case will involve behind-the-scenes coordinating with the newsroom as opposed to managing a new section, I solicited some thoughts from her counterparts at other publications, including BusinessWeek Online, LATimes.com and The Globe and Mail. While only a handful of pubs have someone to help navigate news outlets’ social media focus—such as the Austin American-Statesman’s Internet Editor Robert Quigley and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s arts writer Mary Schumacher—the job is likely to become a common news organization fixture. And so, Preston’s efforts will be closely watched at other news organizations, which are all trying to decide how open or restrictive to make their policies on staffers’ blogging and tweeting, as newspapers and magazines look for ways to better connect with their readers. More after the jump —Don’t fix what isn’t broken: A number of editors I spoke to commended the NYTimes’ Twitter army, including David Carr, (@Carr2n) and Jennifer 8. Lee (@jenny8lee. ) Shirley Brady, BW Online’s community editor, says Preston has a head start working with “some Twitter rock stars, including @BrianStelter and @palafo [City Room blogger/editor Patrick LaForge], so I’m sure her colleagues have already given her plenty of smart advice. I imagine Jennifer will be busy asking a lot of questions, listening & soaking it all in these first few weeks. She’ll need her reporter & editorial chops, in a sense, covering this space & bringing back dispatches from the frontlines to her colleagues.” Andrew Nystrom (@latimesnystrom), senior producer for Social + Emerging Media for LATimes.com, who has been in a similar role for about two years, told me he was given the chance to take a few months and research best practices at other papers. “I was able to take some time and compare what other papers were doing and that was really valuable,” Nystrom said. “We’re entering phase two and my main goal is to get the word out about our story-telling, content and multimedia. We’re looking to reach people beyond the website and I imagine that’s what [Preston] will be doing as well.” As for my advice, Preston should start by taking a look at Twitter & New York Times Reporters Ethnography, which is a study of the paper’s use of Twitter by a University of Wisconsin journalism student who started off skeptical of the mix between social media and reporters, but has become less averse to the idea. The author’s main fear was that reporters would lose credibility by divulging too much professional and personal information, though that seems to be balanced by the usefulness of finding new sources and ultimately improve the quality and breadth of their work. Additionally, the enthnography feels that NYT reporters spend too much time promoting their own work. At the same time, he applauds the humorous posts from reporters like Saul Hansell (@shansell), which allow readers to get a better sense of their personality and making it possible for a stronger connection between readers and journalists. —Keep control loose: Almost all the social-media editors I spoke to warned against the temptation to rein in reporters’ and editors’ urges to discuss what’s on their mind. As E&P noted last month, following the WSJ‘s order barring employees from “friending” sources, a number of other pubs have mostly been following the looser, “use your best judgment” approach taken by the LATimes.com. The site’s Andrew Nystrom explained the paper’s recently revised guidelines on acceptable social-media conduct: “We basically tell people to act the way they would at an industry cocktail party, where they’re representing the organization. Don’t do anything that would embarrass yourself or the paper. But we realize it’s an evolving area and you can’t have a strict policy.” —Understand the meaning of “engagement”:  Matthew Ingram, communities editor at The Globe and Mail, in an e-mail message, said that readers “don’t want to interact with brands, or with faceless entities or institutions, however vast and reputable they might be.  They like to interact with other human beings—and the benefits of that interaction can not only help journalists do their jobs, by providing feedback and input on stories, but the relationship that is created with readers can also have powerful spin-off benefits for media outlets that choose to engage using these kinds of tools.” In terms of what The Globe and Mail has done to try to bring readers into the tent, Ingram has high hopes for a new feature called the Public Policy Wiki, which is designed to let readers provide feedback about public policy issues covered online. Soliciting feedback, “means really engaging, not just pushing out links or promoting content—in other words, listening and responding as well as asking for attention.” —Keep the commenters, more attention for TimesPeople: One social-media editor who offered some thoughts anonymously provided an assessment on the NYT‘s efforts in this area. So far, there’s been a lot to be impressed by, with a few notable spots that desperately need fixing. Health blogger Tara Parker-Pope was singled out as someone who does a great job of responding to reader comments, while this same editor feels media columnist Virginia Heffernan must rethink her mostly negative views of commenters (see her two separate posts here and here). But as a whole, NYTimes.com seems to have embraced commenters widely, even having done a few stories based on reader comments. “They aggregate others’ news and don’t pretend to be the final word; and just get it, even if it’s not saving their financial bacon,” one social-media editor told me. While this editor was not impressed with news sharing/recommendation tool TimesPeople, a rep for the company pointed out that the service has signed up 200,000 users since launching last fall as its debut sponsor Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO) has re-upped for another campaign.

Just as her promotion to social editor was being announced this morning, Jennifer Preston posted her first tweet. She introduced herself and asked “How should @nytimes be using Twitter?” At that point, she had a few dozen followers, but by the end of the day, she had amassed more than 2,400. While she probably got many more suggestions than she knows what to do with, she did single out a few for responses, like @bewildia’s suggestion that NYTimes tweets should also “link to key source info, e.g., a link to [California] court’s ruling.” She also agreed with another respondent’s counsel and will use social media more for listening than tweeting her own views. Preston was not available for an interview; I would have liked to ask for her thoughts on the recent attention NYT staffers have gotten for posting details of a recent meeting on social media and whether she feels a strict policy governing employee blogging activities, like Bloomberg is doing, is something she’ll explore. But as to what approach she should take in her new role as social media editor, which in Preston’s case will involve behind-the-scenes coordinating with the newsroom as opposed to managing a new section, I solicited some thoughts from her counterparts at other publications, including BusinessWeek Online, LATimes.com and The Globe and Mail. While only a handful of pubs have someone to help navigate news outlets’ social media focus—such as the Austin American-Statesman’s Internet Editor Robert Quigley and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s arts writer Mary Schumacher—the job is likely to become a common news organization fixture. And so, Preston’s efforts will be closely watched at other news organizations, which are all trying to decide how open or restrictive to make their policies on staffers’ blogging and tweeting, as newspapers and magazines look for ways to better connect with their readers. More after the jump —Don’t fix what isn’t broken: A number of editors I spoke to commended the NYTimes’ Twitter army, including David Carr, (@Carr2n) and Jennifer 8. Lee (@jenny8lee. ) Shirley Brady, BW Online’s community editor, says Preston has a head start working with “some Twitter rock stars, including @BrianStelter and @palafo [City Room blogger/editor Patrick LaForge], so I’m sure her colleagues have already given her plenty of smart advice. I imagine Jennifer will be busy asking a lot of questions, listening & soaking it all in these first few weeks. She’ll need her reporter & editorial chops, in a sense, covering this space & bringing back dispatches from the frontlines to her colleagues.” Andrew Nystrom, senior producer for Social + Emerging Media for LATimes.com, who has been in a similar role for about two years, told me he was given the chance to take a few months and research best practices at other papers. “I was able to take some time and compare what other papers were doing and that was really valuable,” Nystrom said. “We’re entering phase two and my main goal is to get the word out about our story-telling, content and multimedia. We’re looking to reach people beyond the website and I imagine that’s what [Preston] will be doing as well.” As for my advice, Preston should start by taking a look at Twitter & New York Times Reporters Ethnography, which is a study of the paper’s use of Twitter by a University of Wisconsin journalism student who started off skeptical of the mix between social media and reporters, but has become less averse to the idea. The author’s main fear was that reporters would lose credibility by divulging too much professional and personal information, though that seems to be balanced by the usefulness of finding new sources and ultimately improve the quality and breadth of their work. Additionally, the enthnography feels that NYT reporters spend too much time promoting their own work. At the same time, he applauds the humorous posts from reporters like Saul Hansell (@shansell), which allow readers to get a better sense of their personality and making it possible for a stronger connection between readers and journalists. —Keep control loose: Almost all the social-media editors I spoke to warned against the temptation to rein in reporters’ and editors’ urges to discuss what’s on their mind. As E&P noted last month, following the WSJ‘s order barring employees from “friending” sources, a number of other pubs have mostly been following the looser, “use your best judgment” approach taken by the LATimes.com. The site’s Andrew Nystrom explained the paper’s recently revised guidelines on acceptable social-media conduct: “We basically tell people to act the way they would at an industry cocktail party, where they’re representing the organization. Don’t do anything that would embarrass yourself or the paper. But we realize it’s an evolving area and you can’t have a strict policy.” —Understand the meaning of “engagement”:  Matthew Ingram, communities editor at The Globe and Mail, in an e-mail message, said that readers “don’t want to interact with brands, or with faceless entities or institutions, however vast and reputable they might be.  They like to interact with other human beings—and the benefits of that interaction can not only help journalists do their jobs, by providing feedback and input on stories, but the relationship that is created with readers can also have powerful spin-off benefits for media outlets that choose to engage using these kinds of tools.” In terms of what The Globe and Mail has done to try to bring readers into the tent, Ingram has high hopes for a new feature called the Public Policy Wiki, which is designed to let readers provide feedback about public policy issues covered online. Soliciting feedback, “means really engaging, not just pushing out links or promoting content—in other words, listening and responding as well as asking for attention.” —Keep the commenters, more attention for TimesPeople: One social-media editor who offered some thoughts anonymously provided an assessment on the NYT‘s efforts in this area. So far, there’s been a lot to be impressed by, with a few notable spots that desperately need fixing. Health blogger Tara Parker-Pope was singled out as someone who does a great job of responding to reader comments, while this same editor feels media columnist Virginia Heffernan must rethink her mostly negative views of commenters (see her two separate posts here and here). But as a whole, NYTimes.com seems to have embraced commenters widely, even having done a few stories based on reader comments. “They aggregate others’ news and don’t pretend to be the final word; and just get it, even if it’s not saving their financial bacon,” one social-media editor told me. While this editor was not impressed with news sharing/recommendation tool TimesPeople, a rep for the company pointed out that the service has signed up 200,000 users since launching last fall as its debut sponsor Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO) has re-upped for another campaign.

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has nearly $29 billion of cash on hand, a hoard exceeded by only one tech company—Cisco Systems (NSDQ: CSCO), reports Reuters. With that kind of capital in the bank, it’s no wonder that buyout rumors are rampant. At this stage, the rumors seem highly unlikely.The most ridiculous, according to Kara Swisher of All Things D, is Apple buying Twitter. She believes it to be untrue because both Twitter co-founders, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, are in New York today to attend the 2009 Time 100 dinner, as two of the magazine’s top picks for most influential people. How could they be negotiating a deal from 3,000 miles away?, she reasons. The second rumor is coming from FastMoney’s Guy Adami, who is claiming that there is “chatter” that Apple is eyeing an Electronic Arts (NSDQ: ERTS) takeover, reports MacRumors, which also quotes Kotaku, as calling the prediction “sketchy, at best.”  See full story here on our sister site mocoNews.net.

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has nearly $29 billion of cash on hand, a hoard exceeded by only one tech company—Cisco Systems (NSDQ: CSCO), reports Reuters. With that kind of capital in the bank, it’s no wonder that buy-out rumors are running rampant. At this stage, the rumors seem highly unlikely. The most ridiculous, according to Kara Swisher of All Things D, is Apple buying Twitter. She believes it to be untrue because both Twitter co-founders, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, are in New York today to attend the 2009 “Time 100? dinner, as two of the magazine’s top picks for most influential people. How could they be negotiating a deal from 3,000 miles away?, she reasons. The second rumor is coming from FastMoney’s Guy Adami, who is claiming that there is “chatter” that Apple is eyeing an Electronic Arts (NSDQ: ERTS) takeover, reports MacRumors, which also quotes Kotaku, as calling the prediction “sketchy, at best.” But if not acquisitions, what will Mac and iPhone-maker spend money on? Reuters quotes analysts as saying it’s not Apple’s style to distribute any of the money via dividends or through a share buy-back. They’ll contend that “being flush is never a bad thing, especially in an uncertain economy.” It may remain a mystery for now, but Apple may be obligated to do something soon. Scotia Capital analyst Gus Papageorgiou told Reuters: “I think the pressure is definitely mounting…It’s just too big a number…the cash belongs to the shareholders, the shareholders don’t need Apple to invest the cash, they need Apple to generate the cash.”

More Mobile-Ready Devices and Mobile Video to Fuel 39-Fold Global Growth from 2009-2014

Telenor Connexion M2M Network Improves Reliability and Efficiency for Connected Vehicles, Monitoring Devices, Smart Meters and More

End-to-End IP NGN Architecture Supercharges the Mobile Internet for Service Providers

New Cisco report says more mobile-ready devices and mobile video to fuel 39-fold global growth over the next four years.The Pentagon and broadcast networks can expect continuing pressure to turn over some of their spectrum to make more airwaves available to the private sector. According to Cisco's...

New Cisco report says more mobile-ready devices and mobile video to fuel 39-fold global growth over the next four years.The Pentagon and broadcast networks can expect continuing pressure to turn over some of their spectrum to make more airwaves available to the private sector. According to Cisco's...

Getting data traffic off increasingly crowded 3G networks will be a key topic next week in sunny Spain

Juniper Networks will demonstrate some fruits of its Project Falcon mobile push announced in late 2009, while Cisco will burn its brand on a 4G LTE gateway obtained from its $2.9bn purchase of Starent Networks made around that same time.The ever-increasing use of wireless devices to access the web is...

Juniper Networks will demonstrate some fruits of its Project Falcon mobile push announced in late 2009, while Cisco will burn its brand on a 4G LTE gateway obtained from its $2.9bn purchase of Starent Networks made around that same time.The ever-increasing use of wireless devices to access the web is...

New York, Feb 9th (TradersHuddle.com) - Shares of Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) are trading very close to calculated resistance at $24.89 with the current price action closing at just $23.89 placing the stock near levels that make it difficult to buy.

Cisco Systems, Inc. supplies data networking products for the Internet. The Company'. Read More --

Video is driving the projected increase in both mobile and wired broadband, but it's not only the proliferation of video that's the problem for mobile operators, it's the relative ease that consumers now have accessing it. And that's causing mobile operators to rethink their pricing plans.

The Switched Digital Video (SDV) technology is likely to boom in near future as more and more large cable MSOs in the U.S. are gradually moving towards overall services convergence. SDV technology distributes digital video content through cable network in a cost-effective manner so that additional uses can be made using the free bandwidth. Cable [...]

(TWC) Switched Digital Video is Thriving

The Switched Digital Video (SDV) technology is likely to boom in near future as more and more large cable MSOs in the U.S. are gradually moving towards overall services convergence. SDV technology distributes digital video content through cable network in a cost-effective manner so that additional uses can be made using the free bandwidth. Cable ...

Cisco forecasts that by 2014 we will be using 3.6 exabytes per month on mobile networks worldwide, according to its Visual Networking Index figures released today. For those pondering an exabyte, it's equal to 1 billion gigabytes or half a trillion MP3 files.

Schaeffer's analyst Morgan Searcy takes a look at news on the Street before the market open

Tom Dorsey and Tammy DeRosier - Self Dicipline and Charting Your Weight

We own Atwood Oceanics (ATW) as we found the fundamentals to be gaining momentum and the technicals continuation to hold the uptrend. What we like is their execution and portability as well as their ability to adjust to market conditions. Key Fundamentals: EPS Growth Rate: 96% P/E Ratio: 10 ROE: 30 Debt: 20%Institutional Ownership: Moderately Strong Yield: Nil For the latest quarter [...] Related posts:

1. Google Blows out numbers (again)
2. Cisco (CSCO) Buys Starent (STAR) – Did You See This?
3. Potash (POT) Seeing Unrelenting Price Squeeze

Schaeffer's analyst Morgan Searcy takes a look at news on the Street before the market open.

Tammy DeRosier and Paul Keeton - Ah or Uh-Oh September