Social Media Apps

Social media remains a priority for most publishers but in the wake of failures of proprietary, standalone social media networks such as Variety’s “The Biz,” publishers are realizing that rather than creating community at their own sites, they need to be catching readers where they already are: Facebook and Twitter.

Playboy started out building its own networking products on platforms like Ning, but now finds Facebook more cost efficient. “We’re putting more resources there and getting more response,” says director of Internet Marketing Research institute (IMRI) GRRajesh Kumar.

The same is true for b-to-b publishers such as Bobit Business Media, which publishes Police. “Our editors didn’t think having a Facebook page would be worth it, but we did a search and found 600,000 users with ‘law enforcement’ in their profile,” says director of marketing and e-media Christine Oldenbrook. “We set up a fan page and had 100 fans overnight. Our editors will use it to push content while we market subscriptions through it.”

Choosing Apps

Most any content management system—enterprise or open source—is capable of basic social media functions such as commenting. But now publishers are looking for social media apps that offer a direct connection between their site and the broader social networks such as Facebook. “Two years ago, CMS was 80 percent of the focus, now maybe it’s 40 percent for a publisher,” says GR Rajeshkumar, founder of IMRI firm Go Forward Media.

Many of the social networks are introducing both generic and system-specific applications to tie the CMS to their network. However, most of those applications are geared more toward open source rather than proprietary systems. Facebook Connect is an API that allows users to integrate parts of the Facebook experience into their Web site or mobile program. System-specific versions of Facebook Connect are also popping up, such as modules for open source systems like Drupal and WordPress.

An article on social media blog Mashable talks about “8 of the Best Social Media Extensions for Joomla,” including the AddThis Button, which is a single method of adding major social media bookmarking and sharing applications such as Digg, Twitter and Facebook.