This is an interesting article from MediaShift on digg’s evolution from a site mostly focused on technology stories to expanded issues, including their now most popular section–politics. The biggest complaint from some users is the liberal leanings of the posts (but maybe that just shows the organizing savvy and advanced use of technology by liberal media producers and their audiences? Hmmm?). Of course, there is also a nod to the tech-savvy of the “Ron Paulites.”

But the article also tells the story of AJ Wysocki, who was turned onto digg and social story sharing because of his affiliation to the liberal media outlet, The Young Turks. (Long quote from article, but I thought it was a great little case study. More below the excerpt…)

AJ Wysocki, 27, has only been a member and reader of Digg since June. He opened his account because a liberal political radio show he frequently listens to, The Young Turks, enlisted him as a “web soldier” and charged him with promoting the content of the show online.

“They were looking for people to do stuff on Digg and Facebook and MySpace,” he told me in a phone interview. “So I basically took Digg. What that meant is that every day I go on and submit video clips they do on Digg, and I also submit all the blog posts they write. That’s how I got started on the site really.”

Wysocki became a heavy listener of “The Young Turks” after the 2004 election; it was then that he grew increasingly interested in politics, and he followed the hosts as the program traveled from Sirius Satellite Radio to Air America and then later when it was dropped from the liberal radio network and became an independent entity. When they asked him to help them promote content on the social news site, he only had a vague idea of what it was.

“I’ve seen the little icon, because I read Huffington Post a lot, and I saw that little Digg icon but I never really looked at it,” Wysocki said. “And then I visited it and I thought this is a good idea because you can really build hype. If someone has an interesting story and you have enough friends to vote on it, it’s kind of like democracy. If you really like it then a lot of people see it and then it gets to the front page and a whole bunch more people see it.”

In the short time that he’s been a user of the site he has become a heavy reader, eventually expanding his submissions to include content not created by the Young Turks. In the process, a few of his submissions have ended up on the coveted front page.

Curious about how The Young Turks had engaged the young Wysocki to become their “web soldier”, I went on an investigation (i.e. visited their site) and saw that they had the specific link “Promote” that details out ways for their audience members to market and support the program through social networking and sharing. For example, they tell audience members what to do with Digg:

Digg our podcast and our video clips
Help get our podcast on the top of the news podcast page on Digg. Vote for our podcast on Digg here.
Don’t forget to Digg our daily clips, found on our Web site or YouTube.
Why stop at Digg? Don’t be shy. You can also support the show by ranking our clips, videos, and blogs through Google Trackback, Technorati Trackback, del.icio.us, and Reddit. So start clicking!

Now, for many of us in the media world, this is pretty elementary stuff. But how many of us explicitly ask and describe for our audience members how to share the info and what the result will be ? Most of us just have the little icons on the bottom of our posts. Maybe many of us think that our audience members already know what to do with these buttons and what the results will be, but if the story of A.J. is a good example, that’s clearly not the case. So the lesson is: If it seems so simple, it’s stupid to do–then it’s a probably a good idea.

So–oh yeah. If you’re reading–go digg this post! The little button is the first one on the left. And post to delicious and share on Facebook and, well… you get the point.

Two interesting posts at Advertising Age in the last 24 hours–both taking different angles on how to deal with the fracturing media and marketing markets. The first, looks at how media properties must create partnerships, specifically communication and marketing partnerships that have specific audience reach, that together can wrap and intersect across the collective audience.

This requires a well-organized set of partnerships with the collective experience to extend a brand idea across a spectrum of disciplines, audiences and media channels. And identifying the best way to strategically align all respective talent will require new ways of thinking about business integration, new ways to approach brand management and new ways to collaborate with marketing partners.

What do you think Obama did?

Political campaigns, for example, employ many strategists, each honing “brand” communications to resonate with the issues, values and social culture germane to a particular constituency. In a great collaborative effort, Barack Obama partnered with Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, to develop a web presence and better employ the social networking that helped engage younger voters and clinch the Democratic nomination. The campaign also had a very well-organized grassroots effort with first-hand knowledge of the political climate and voting protocol in each state and the expertise to resonate with local communities. The collective skills of these local partners helped the “Obama brand” connect with its audience and raise capital in record proportions.

Embedded in the article, is the notion that these partnerships might not be with expected national partners, but might be a niched interests: local partners, representatives of specific audience segments, etc.. And last but not least, technology is the major tool to support that effort.

The internet, social networking and related media technologies have introduced many new media channels that permit audiences to group according to their vertical interests and to share and react to information in real time. Marketers need to harness the same technologies to combine resources and form marketing partnerships that can develop engaging conversations with these very specific audiences and realign quickly to maintain the conversation as the target, media or subject change.

The second post is actually a three minute video podcast (did you know Advertising Age has those? I just found out!) containing reflective and future looking perspectives on the impact and opportunities of vertical advertising networks. Vertical advertising networks are a response to to the fragmenting business and advertising markets for advertisers, publishers and hey, even consumers.

Will Morrison of ThinkPanmure noted how the VAN space was already cluttering up in the last few years. “Back in 2000, 2001 there were roughly 15 to 20 ad networks. Latest count, this Spring, we have got over 300.” Morrison also noted he saw the creation of a new high end, secondary market in the form of mobile ad networks and video ad networks, making it a more complex and overwhelming market for marketers and publishers.

I won’t go back to transcribe the whole thing, but I can say, you won’t waste your three minutes watching/listening.

I’m looking for tools that will support syndication among The Media Consortium’s members. The goal is to leverage and share current content created by Media Consortium members (text, audio, photos, video, etc..) that builds upon our collective audiences and can reach new audiences. I’m told creating a searchable portal of MC members’ content and a widget (or a series of widgets) is technologically simple. I’m still doubtful (but maybe that’s because I’m a surface tech geek, not a hard core tech geek), but we shall see.

I’m envisioning a version of the AP wire–but instead of one company creating content that is distributed to all the other media outlets–all our members would syndicate to each other and pick each other up. And perhaps this content could be packaged and distributed to organizational allies, social network platforms, other types of media, etc. It makes no sense in this day and age of aggregators, portals and social networks to be proprietary about where your audience finds your news/message, whether its on Facebook, Digg, another news site, etc. And frankly, we can create a tool that will support the large base of progressive media, rather than focusing on the individual.

So at the moment, I’m gathering tools and ideas. Mochilla looks pretty interesting. I’m gathering more information as I write. Master of multi-tasking!

Ad Age had an interesting article a couple days ago about glossy magazines going green. There is also the point that they are trying “to mitigate their environmental impact before green consumer groups begin to demand they do something about it.”

The other important point here is that certain retailers/distributors are highlighting magazines that use recycled paper. “Barnes & Noble, for one, has begun specifically promoting magazines that use recycled paper, including Shape, Fast Company, Mother Jones, ReadyMade, Nickelodeon Magazine and Body & Soul. And an advocacy group, Co-op America, calculated that if the whole North American magazine business used just 30% post-consumer recycled paper, nearly 1.7 billion pounds of greenhouse gases would not be emitted into the atmosphere.”