Thought I'd look at how major media on this side of the pond stacked up, starting with the main TV network news operations .
CNN's iReport.com is probably the strongest contender for a full fledged American based mainstream participatory model, featuring raw material by users with a layer of social networking features on top such as ranking, profiles, comments etc. Best American intiative so far. I also like their "Impact Your World" page, where you can interact with various charitable initiatives vetted by CNN. However, India's IBN goes a step further by directly showcasing viewer impact in their Citizen Journalism Impact video piece, rather than simply facilitating a passive connection to good works ( see previous post). Thats great, no doubt, but IBN really closes the gap between news , people, and platform.
http://ugv.abcnews.go.com/ ABC's I-Caught is reasonably robust for an American news site,featuring user content in several channels such as news, weather, "out of control", "red-handed", politics, etc., adding a little more depth of purpose than the usual pet and vacation viewer photos.
Fox has uAsk/uReport , again a rather standard-issue application of viewer photos and videos, but not well promoted or capitalized.
MSNBC has these as well, but the Newsvine feature is an interesting user application, where people can "seed" links to other stories they find of interest.
I didn't see any opportunity for user engagement at CBS, but perhaps I missed it.
Anything else I missed or should know about? Give a comment, share your favorites. I'll peruse what other network and print operations are up to in a later post.
I was wondering if you had stayed on top of the iReport and then I pop over to your blog and you've not only followed CNN's developments, but others as well. I should have surmised as much.
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