Distribution process
I use publish2, (Stopped using in June, 2010 - see note below) delicious, diigo, pixelpipe and hellotxt to publish across 50+ sites. The real work comes in later when I try to cultivate communities of interested people across all these sites - seeing which ones work and which ones are maybe best ditched. This is slowly coming together on twitter with 226 297 367 484 768 996 1018 1575 over 4,000 followers as of May, 2012, most of whom are highly interested in African issues.
Publishing links
I use publish2 to post links to publish2, del.icio.us and twitter. The RSS feed from del.icio.us.com/kigaliwire diigo.com/user/kigaliwire automatically feeds into the “Breaking News” section of kigaliwire.com
I then go back to the original news item and shorten the link using bit.ly and use pixelpipe to publish the link as a “tweet” across the following sites:
- evernote
- jaiku
- plurk
- tumblr
- friendfeed
- youare
- identi.ca
- koornk
- plerb
- brightkite
- pixelpipe
- kwippy
- numpa
- meemi
- myspace
- skyrock
- irl connect
- my opera
- dipity - news items posted to delicious mirror here
I could probably ditch the Publish2 part of this process and use ping.fm or hellotxt to pick up the del.icio.us and twitter posting duties. However, I’m quite fond of publish2 and like the people behind it, so I’ll stick with them for the time being.
UPDATE June 18, 2010: Publish2 has changed the way it works. It no longer incorporates delicious and editorialising tweets is more cumbersome. I have bypassed publish2 entirely now and use the post to twitter function on the delicious bookmarklet. here are some other possible workarounds.
UPDATE March 19, 2011: There is speculation about the future of Delicious. I have moved to Diigo, which allowed me to import all old bookmarks. I now use the Diigolet to publish to Diigo, the RSS feed from Diigo goes to kigaliwire and I can tweet simultaneously as I bookmark if appropriate. Diigo also sends the bookmark to Delicious which is still mirrored as a tag roll in the News Archive.
UPDATE May 08, 2012: I’ve been using dlvr.it for a few months now - more on that over here - and it has some useful little tools up its sleeve, like an embeddable widget which shows most clicked links from your Twitter account in real time. I recommend.
Publishing blog posts
I generally publish to kigaliwire.com first and then post a bit.ly link to the post on the services above. I then use pixelpipe to post a “snippet post” to the blogging services below - making sure to link back to kigaliwire.com and adding the specific link to the individual post where necessary:
- posterous
- vox
- windows live spaces - struggling to get this one working. Horrible site.
- livejournal
- xanga
Publishing photos
I generally post the best photos to kigaliwire.com with a link to one of the sites where the original is hosted. I use pixelpipe to send photos, with a text link back to kigaliwire.com and the specific post if possible, to the following accounts (click the links to see the kigaliwire account on each most of these sites:
- 23hq
- photobucket
- evernote
- 72photos
- box
- fototime
- zooomr
- picasa
- ourdoings
radar- hyves
- ipernity
- nokia ovi
- picturetrail
- pikchur
- pikeo
- posterous
- shutterfly
- snapmylife
- webshots
- zoomin
- flickr
- dropshots
- expono
- mobypicture
- myspace
- tinypic
- fotki
- pic.im
- photobox
- photoservice
- friendster
- imageshack
- vox
- irl connect
- my opera
- jpgmag
- woophy
- fotovisura
- dipity
Photos tagged with kigaliwirewidget in flickr also feed into (the fledgling) Ning network (UPDATE: June 17 - ning went to a pay model and I never had time/found a decent use for it. There are active Rwanda discussion groups already out there on facebook and YahooGroups) And I try to add the photos to relevant Africa-focussed groups when and where I can.
Publishing video
I haven’t started posting video yet, but when I do I will be using tubemogul and pixelpipe to post to the following accounts:
Publishing audio
Same with audio: II haven’t started posting audio yet, but I hope to especially once the networks speed up in Kigali, and I’ll be using an iPhone and pixelpipe to post to these outlets
Online forums and communities
- I intend to get involved with a number of Africa focussed online forums, at least those discussing Rwanda. I’ll be using a Kigali Wire signature so that anybody who reads any comments I end making know where I’m coming from and what I do.
- I’ll probably talk about this process of distribution a bit on the Wired Journalists network and maybe on other journalism forums and on Twitter.
- I’m thinking of adding bits of the blog to the Guardian Weekly forum.
- And I’ll possibly filter content into the Frontline Club social network.
Early days though. I’ll update this as and when I figure out where best to add content and get involved in discussions.
