Thank you, Online Citizen, for linking to my previous post. Yes, I read The Online Citizen from time to time to get a different view from what appears in the Straits Times. And another Singapore blog I like is My Apple Menu. Why? Just visit the site and click on the Reader and Tomorrow tabs. On any day, it’s more interesting than the Straits Times because there are links to the most exciting posts from publications such as Slate, Salon, New Yorker and the New York Times. This is the kind of competition the Straits Times faces on the Net.
And MyAppleMenu is just one of the myriad choices readers have on the Net. On delicious today I was reading Polymeme, a memetracker covering a range of topics and issues like any newspaper. The difference is while newspapers publish their own and syndicated content, memetrackers and social media sites like delicious, Digg, Reddit, Wikio and memeorandum post links to various publications. The reader still ends up visiting the original publication if he is interested in the story and everybody gains. The reader gets his story and the publication gets more traffic.
The importance of memetrackers, social media sites and news readers like FeedDemon and Google Reader can’t be overstated. I have been shy of social media sites like Facebook so far because I need some privacy, but if anyone is serious about getting attention online, he or she can’t have a walled garden. No website is an island to adapt John Donne’s famous line; it has to open up. Even CNN runs comments from other blogs through Sphere. I know. I have seen my posts appear once or twice. And I am just a flea on the Net, hardly noticed at all.
The Straits Times is the authoritative source of news about Singapore. It has good journalists whom we have come to trust and respect. But it has to raise the bar online. Today I read a fiendishly clever piece on morality which appeared in the New York Times’ magazine. On delicious, I saw a post from ReadWrite Web on the future of blogs and an article from BusinessWeek on cloud computing. The Straits Times could still do what it does best: provide authoritative news and views about Singapore. But Internet users are spoilt for choice. I certainly expect more.
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