Regu­lar read­ers know that Socialmedia.biz cov­ers not just social media but also cit­i­zen media — and it’s all meld­ing together any­way into one giant con­ver­sa­tional media ecosys­tem, right?

So I was glad­dened to hear that Google and YouTube have taken another ten­ta­tive step for­ward into the realm of cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism with Monday’s launch of the YouTube Reporters’ Cen­ter. Above is one of the fea­tured videos: NPR’s Scott Simon on How to Tell a Story.

YouTube has done some great work in the space with its pio­neer­ing Ask the pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates a ques­tion in the CNN YouTube Debates and with its cit­i­zen­tube project cur­rently doc­u­ment­ing the tur­moil in streets of Iraq.

While the pleas of some in the news pro­fes­sion for Google to step in and “save” the U.S. news­pa­pers indus­try are down­right silly, Google and YouTube are doing the smart thing by focus­ing on the jour­nal­ism, not the under­ly­ing pub­lish­ing plat­form, and by under­scor­ing the need to uphold jour­nal­ism val­ues and stan­dards instead of throw­ing it all on the scrapheap and start­ing from scratch, as all too many blog­gers want to do.

Here’s a guest post by my friend Oliva Ma of YouTube’s News & Pol­i­tics team announc­ing the new Center:

Help­ing you report the news

Ever cap­tured a nat­ural dis­as­ter or a crime on your cell-phone cam­era? Filmed a polit­i­cal rally or protest, and then inter­viewed the par­tic­i­pants after­ward? Pro­duced a story about a local issue in your com­mu­nity? If you’ve done any of these things or aspire to, then you’re part of the enor­mous com­mu­nity of cit­i­zen reporters on YouTube — and now we’re launch­ing a new resource to help you learn more about how to report the news.

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The Intel Insid­ers pro­gram just marked its first anniver­sary, so it’s worth men­tion­ing a few high­lights over the past year. We advise Intel on social media mat­ters. (I wrote about the pro­gram at its launch a year ago and posted this dis­clo­sure state­ment.)

I’m glad to see Intel tak­ing out an even greater pub­lic pres­ence this year, with its co-sponsorship of PBS’s New­sHour and its deep­en­ing com­mit­ment to edu­ca­tional and char­i­ta­ble efforts around the globe. Some high­lights for me:

• Trad­ing ideas and com­par­ing notes with some of the other Insid­ers, includ­ing Tom Forem­ski and Sarah Austin (both of whom will be part of the Trav­el­ing Geeks trip to Lon­don July 4–11), Cathy Brooks, Jus­tine Ezarik, Brian Solis, Frank Gru­ber, Adri­ana Gas­coigne and oth­ers. Intel is the chief under­writer of the Trav­el­ing Geeks trip, and I hope to post a few dis­patches on their site dur­ing the trip.

• Our inter­view with Intel chair­man and for­mer CEO Craig Bar­rett. Here’s our video inter­view with him at the Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show ear­lier this year where he talks about cor­po­rate social rep­son­si­bil­ity. The fol­low­ing day he announced a wide-ranging new ini­tia­tive by Intel to sup­port the phil­an­thropic micro-lending efforts of Kiva.org and the non­profit char­ity Save the Chil­dren all across the globe.

• Here’s my one-minute Ani­moto remix of my photo gallery of CES, set to a wicked sound­track. (Intel paid for my trip to CES.) Which reminds me … I need to use Ani­moto more often!

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I heart Face­book. This morn­ing I awoke to Yet Another Face­book Inno­va­tion (YAFI). Face­book amazes me because they are dri­ven to make things eas­ier for me — or at least give it a go. Face­book is will­ing to suf­fer con­stant back­lash in order to improve usabil­ity and efficiency.

Case in point below:

In this par­tic­u­lar case, the inno­va­tion is what I call a “Twit­ter­ish” inno­va­tion — steal­ing some­thing directly from Twit­ter. A cou­ple weeks ago, I stayed up until 12:01AM to secure another hype-drenched Twit­ter­ish inno­va­tion: van­ity URLS: facebook.com/chrisabraham — I am such a sucker!

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Murphy-Goode Win­ery becomes the talk of the Twitterverse

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AqKRvFFH_E[/youtube]

I’m not going to lie. It’s hard to work in PR and brand­ing these days. You are bom­barded with all sorts of expert infor­ma­tion and advice. Peo­ple are con­stantly sug­gest­ing you try this strat­egy, plat­form, or net­work. Your brand is not only expected to sus­tain a sta­ble pres­ence on old media chan­nels but rein­vent itself and strive under new media expectations.

All day I read arti­cles, blogs, case stud­ies about brands that tried some­thing — usu­ally — missed the boat, and are now enjoy­ing the not always pos­i­tive feed­back we are all so ready to give.

But then again, every once and a while a com­pany comes along and really hits the nail on the head. Today’s gold star for Social Media Dom­i­na­tor goes to: The Murphy-Goode Win­ery. Their lat­est social hir­ing strat­egy and con­test has all the com­po­nents of a suc­cess­ful online media ini­tia­tive: pur­pose, vision, viral poten­tial, rich media good­ness, and more.

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NBC News’ Ann Curry on Twit­ter from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Ann Curry, news anchor of NBC’s “Today” show, spoke ani­mat­edly at the 140 Char­ac­ter Con­fer­ence in New York last Mon­day about the impor­tance of news and jour­nal­ism as a pub­lic ser­vice rather than a busi­ness and the grow­ing impact of social media ser­vices like Twit­ter.

I caught up with her as she was leav­ing and did a 3-minute video inter­view before her han­dlers ush­ered her away.

“Jour­nal­ism is an act of faith in the future, and it is a war,” she said. “Often­times I feel blood­ied with a sword unsheathed. That’s because you’re fight­ing for sto­ries that you want covered.”

Curry smartly uses Twit­ter as a sort of elec­tronic news­pa­per to spread the word about sto­ries that didn’t make it on air. (She tweets almost daily at @AnnCurry.) She points to the fact that many impor­tant sto­ries don’t get a lot of atten­tion — in both tra­di­tional media and on Twit­ter. View­ers and users “want to watch some­thing more sala­cious and that makes me crazy,” and dur­ing the panel she bemoaned the items that often receive the most atten­tion on sites like Twitter.

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Tools don’t mat­ter, and the best ones get out of the way, allow­ing peo­ple to con­nect more eas­ily and effec­tively. That was my big take­away from last Friday’s second-annual Blog Potomac.

Obsess­ing about “what’s next” in online ser­vices and tech­nol­ogy saps too much valu­able atten­tion away from what’s really impor­tant: con­nect­ing with peo­ple. We need to stop obsess­ing on what comes after Twit­ter and focus instead on how best to con­nect to, com­mu­ni­cate with and relate to our clients, col­leagues and consumers.

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When old-school adver­tis­ing and PR bump up against mod­ern media realities

Earlier this year Grey Ger­many put out three con­dom ads for Doc Mor­ris phar­ma­cies. They were attempts to wit­tily imply that the human race could have been spared three uber-butchers of the past cen­tury (Mao Tze-Tung, Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden), and the hor­ror and suf­fer­ing they brought, by a sim­ple con­dom (a Doc Mor­ris con­dom, natch). The hum­ble rub­ber as a super­hero and sav­ior of human­ity — there def­i­nitely is poten­tial for some won­der­ful, dark, absur­dist humor in that idea.

I can totally see how a cer­tain young, urbane sec­tor of Ger­man soci­ety could find these ads really quite funny and com­pelling — as they did the suicide-themed Pepsi One ads done last year that offended so many out­side the tar­get demographic.

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We’ve said from the begin­ning that this would not just be a busi­ness blog but also a news blog about inter­est­ing things we’re involved with.

So here are some ous­tand­ing pho­tos I man­aged to cap­ture this past week­end at the Santa Clara Inter­na­tional Grand Prix swim tour­na­ment down the road in Sil­i­con Val­ley. It was my third straight year with a photographer’s media cre­den­tials, and I have to say I got some shots that were bet­ter than what I’ve seen from the Asso­ci­ated Press and Getty Images.

I’m releas­ing them all under a Cre­ative Com­mons Non­com­mer­cial Attri­bu­tion license — some­thing you won’t see from AP or Getty. :~)

Among those on hand: Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, Leisel Jones, Sum­mer Sanders, Ricky Berens, Kirsty Coven­try, Stephanie Rice (Olympians all) and an amaz­ing crop of tal­ented up-and-comers from Cal, Stan­ford and around the world.

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Per­sonal News Net­work from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Here’s an 8-minute video inter­view with Leigh Behrens, pres­i­dent and editor-in-chief of PNN.com. The Per­sonal News Net­work is a com­mu­nity site and blog plat­forms that tar­gets mostly women, “the fastest-growing seg­ment of user-generated con­tent cre­ators,” Leigh says.

PNN allows you to eas­ily get up and run­ning with a blog and add your own voice and “to begin to grow your own social con­tent on the site,” she says.

“The feed­back we keep get­ting is that there’s really a kind of an inti­mate, per­sonal and sup­port­ive feel­ing that goes back to our name — Per­sonal News Net­work. Peo­ple like the idea that they can share their thoughts and ideas in an envi­ron­ment that’s really supportive.”

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Every­one wants to be more effi­cient, pro­duc­tive, and suc­cess­ful. We’re con­stantly seek­ing advice on Life­hacker. We grav­i­tate toward any post enti­tled “How to …” or “Top tips to …” And we’re feed­ing self-help book pub­lish­ers who dom­i­nate 25 per­cent of the pub­lish­ing market.

Rarely, though, do we get an oppor­tu­nity to see one per­son or one orga­ni­za­tion com­pletely open up the kimono and show us step by step how they deploy all of these time and cost sav­ing tech­niques to actu­ally run their business.

Last week, Stephen Jag­ger (@sjagger), CEO of Uber­tor (web pages for real estate pro­fes­sion­als), Reachd (web mar­ket­ing train­ing courses) and Out­sourc­ing Things Done (high level vir­tual assis­tants), spoke to a group of entre­pre­neurs of the San Fran­cisco Entre­pre­neurs Orga­ni­za­tion (EO) at Samovar Tea House at the Metreon in San Fran­cisco. Here’s a sum­mary of his pre­sen­ta­tion in which he talks about each of the tools he uses and pro­vides an expla­na­tion of the value it brings to his business.

While I had used all but one tech­nol­ogy Jag­ger men­tioned, it was really eye open­ing to see an orga­ni­za­tion deploy all of these tools and demon­strate the busi­ness value they pro­vided in terms of con­nec­tiv­ity, pro­duc­tiv­ity, and cost savings.

Step one: Lose the offices — Jag­ger used to have office space that his com­pa­nies were spend­ing thou­sands of dol­lars a month to main­tain. An oppor­tu­nity arose where some­one wanted to take over their lease. Instead of search­ing for some new office space, Jag­ger and team all decided to go vir­tual. While they saved a for­tune on rent and main­te­nance, they needed to adopt some Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies in order to stay in touch and con­duct business.

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