All-time referral traffic to NEastPhilly.com, as reported by Google Analytics on March 3, 2012.

Quietly last fall, NEastPhilly.com, the hyperlocal news site for Northeast Philadelphia, marked three years since having been launched as a college project by now WHYY NewsWorks feed blogger Shannon McDonald.

Though I spent much of that time contributing coverage, I now play the role of web editor, helping keep the site up and functional. Shannon has had more than 20 contributors, a handful of them to date, and has done serious journalism and meaningful community coverage, on her own and with outreach from residents and readers.

Though an after-hours labor of love of hers, I’ve remained impressed with the relative impact of NEast Philly, so, three years later, I wanted to share some metrics.

Daily traffic for NEastPhilly.com, according to WordPress stats.

• As seen above, NEast averages better than 1300 hits every weekday, an impressive sum for a niche site of any kind (particularly one for a print-heavy community and without full-time staff) and often spiking far more than that for breaking news and big community coverage.
• The NEast Philly Facebook page, with more than 13,500 likes, is among the largest and most active social communities in Philadelphia, as seen below.
• More than 70 percent Referral traffic to NEastPhilly.com come from Google, Facebook and direct traffic, as seen at top.

I’m a fan of the fun collections of ideas, images and concepts that find their way onto personal Tumblr accounts, often driven by crowdsourcing contributions.

Recently a handful of ideas have come to mind that I wish were actively being created by someone. I’d happily contribute.

1. Ridiculous local TV lower thirds — As depicted above, the foolishness of TV news is often good for absurd, accidentally ironic or just downright idiotic messages and descriptions in text on news casts.
2. Vanity license plates — A few efforts have started and stumbled, but a collection of great vanity license plates is too good to be missed. This is probably one I’m most suited to start myself, considering I’ve exchanged picture messages of these with my family for years.
3. Fat men eating ice cream cones — Next time you’re downtheshore or at a vacation spot, you’ll find them. And it will make you smile.

I attend a lot of hackathons, considering either I’m organizing them or sponsoring them or covering them. Though I hope to slowly change that a bit, I’m no programmer.

Still, sitting around these events has led me to conceive of and, in some cases, suggest projects that never actually happen. Maybe they someday will. Here are some that have crossed my mind:

1. What Neighborhood am I in? — For Philadelphia, GIS shop Azavea has a map layer for Philly neighborhoods (which are not formal political boundaries) though I’m not yet sure I completely agree with them . Still, that’d be a good start to a tool that could (and should) easily be brought to other cities. Give an address, intersection or your current location to find out what city neighborhood you’re in. (I’d love for this to perhaps also combine other map layers like political representative, city services including trash days, neighborhood groups and other information) **There could be a tab breaking down zip code or neighborhood-specific Census information like rental/homeownership, crime, etc. (Other ‘hood lists exist)
2. Parking flow chart — I thought it might be cool to have a little yes/no web app that would help drivers to decide where they can park in given situations. The GPS tool could follow parking regulations and have yes/no functionality: “are you 25 feet from a fire hydrant,” “is a weekday,” or whatever.
3. ‘Fuck You’ world map — Translations and pronunciations of ‘Fuck You’ (or, OK, perhaps a few phrases) in as many global languages as humanly possible. Helps to see different native or national languages and learn a simple phrase.
4. Easy budget visualization tool — Lots of governments have PDFs or deep budget information. Some even offer some visualizations themselves, but I wonder if there could be some tool that could suck up some of that information and offer more interactive, variable and more easily updated online displays to be shared more readily.
5. Neighborhood news tool — For specific-enough neighborhoods or parts of the city (i.e. “West Oak Lane” or “Southwest Philadelphia” we could create RSS feeds pulling from a variety of sources.
6. School approval heat map — Erika will know this better than I do, but I’d bet there’s a map layer of school locations (or one could be created), though catchment is less available and more interesting, and the AYP or perhaps test school averages could be used to visualize the success of schools in different neighborhoods.
7. Transit black holes — A visualization of SEPTA bus/train/trolley routes (and/or frequency) and display what areas are least served.

The groundwork of privacy, anonymity and free speech is being set now with evolving jurisprudence and legislation surrounding the concept of social networking.

That is the overarching theme, as I read it, in I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did:  Social Networks and the Death of Privacy, a new book from Lori Andrews, law professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Ahead of moderating a panel at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia featuring the author and two other esteemed panelists, I read an advanced copy of book.

Details of Thursday night’s event here.

It’s a book worth reading, dense with stories and examples of the gray line of privacy and the constitutionality of the social web. Below, I share some of my favorites bits.

• The Internet is in need of a Social Network Constitution, a concept Andrews builds toward throughout the book, finally sharing a more detailed concept.
  
• “Reasonable expectation of privacy” is the key phrase that turned a case in which Charles Katz was arrested for illegal betting when a public phone was tapped. Regardless of whether the event takes place in the house or not, personal details cannot be leveraged if there is a sensible reason for an individual to expect privacy and a court of law has not given authority to override that due to probable cause of illegal activity. [p. 52]
• Online privacy and speech concerns have not be regularly upheld by courts as they have in the past analog world. Andrews argues that a lack of understanding of the fast-changing landscape has caused poor recognition of similarities between, say, the 1988 Bork Supreme Court justice nominee video rental list disclosure to social network attributes being used against individuals in hiring processes. [p. 57]
• If we are simply early in these technologies, we still need to move quickly in establishing rights, because while it has been less than a decade since Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, social norms are changing rapidly. [p. 57]
• “Facebook describes itself as a ‘social utility,’” which is important to convey the frustration with the defense of eroding privacy being that those who don’t like it can go elsewhere. [p. 58]
• Internet Service Providers have the only real internet kill switch, and because Egypt has only five and Libya has only one, it is easier to control the internet in those countries. For comparison, there are as many as 4,000 in the United States, though the top five account for half of the U.S. market. American legislation has sought to create a mechanism to turn off internet access in an act of national security. [p. 63]
• Right to anonymity and Freedom of Speech at the heart of these issues, like the dark story of William Francis Melchert-Dinkel who, posing as a female online, allegedly encouraged a Canadian girl to kill herself, which she did. [p. 93]
• Are social networks publishers or communities?, which is important because they are being treated as the latter, in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which suggests in serving as a pass-through of information, the content cannot be blamed on the site. Examples like wide-ranging message board AutoAdmit, which was co-founded by a Penn law student, have faced legal action because of a lack of moderation. [p. 105]
• Passive publishers rights, like craigslist, earn a right of protection only by setting up reasonable efforts to reduce liability, so Roommates.com was liable for discrimination because by having a drop-down option for users to choose ‘No Minorities’ in roommate choice, it was encouraging illegal, discriminatory behavior. [p. 108]
• Lower Merion webcam controversy showed lack of legislation protecting technology-driven privacy, supplemented by the 2010 case of a Rutgers student who used video conferencing software to spy on his gay roommate. [p. 116]
• ‘You have zero privacy anyway, get over it,” said Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems, a sentiment Andrews questions with the above mentioned examples. [p. 117]
• Context may matter a lot in the placement of public information but perhaps not in court, which is made clear when personal information from a 17-year-old’s MySpace page were placed as a sexually-suggestive post on craigslist. However the 40-year-old woman charged with doing that act was found not-guilty in 2011 for cyber-harassment because the information was already publicly available. [p. 118]
• 81 percent of divorce attorneys have used an increase in evidence from social networks, including 66 percent using Facebook. [p. 138]
• An unsettling lack of due process is used in sharing changes in privacy from social networks, including a host of examples from changes in Facebook and efforts by Google+ to sell on privacy. [p. 175]

From this very compelling TED video from former MoveOn.org Executive Director Eli Pariser on ‘filter bubbles’ happening online due to personalized algorithms (i.e., in truth there is no one Google search, as nearly 60 filters dictate results)

“We may have the story of the internet wrong. This is how the founding mythology goes: in a broadcast society, there were these gatekeepers, the editors, and they controlled the flows of information. And along came the internet, and it swept them out of the way and allowed all of us to connect together and it was awesome. But that’s not actually what’s happening right now. What we’re seeing is more of a passing of the torch, from human gatekeepers to algorithmic ones. And the thing is, the algorithms don’t yet have the kind of embedded ethics that the editors did. So if algorithms are going to curate the world for us, if they’re going to decide what we get to see and what we don’t get to see, then we need to make sure that they’re not just keyed to relevance, but that they also show us things that are uncomfortable or challenging or important…”

It’s a small, though clever, effort, and I appreciate being called among a select group of people locally highlighted as worth following on Twitter.

It’s a diverse group that is still changing, but the list is an interesting way to curate a list of people following, sharing and commenting on the goings-on of the city. I’ve always hoped to offer real value online and plan to keep doing just that.

It also helps that it’s a built-in community of people with communities online to share and drive traffic, audience and, perhaps, action.

On the 20 portion of its site, NBC 10 will use tweets from the list members to add perspective to local events, yes, like my amusement at the national conference of the International Cat Association. I’ll strive to offer some relatively more valuable information too.

I appreciate greatly the notoriety and impressive company.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Jim MacMillan hiding from Daniel Victor's iPhone camera to my enjoyment at the August 2011 ONA Philly meetup at Nodding Head.

Sometimes you need that kick in the pants from an outsider.

There is a new Philadelphia chapter of the Online News Association, something of a trade organization founded in 1999 for journalism innovation that hosts a popular annual national conference I attended last year and regional events across the country. (I’ll be attending the national 2011 ONA conference, this year in Boston in October, too.)

But it’s not the first ONA chapter here. As recent as summer 2008, an ONA Philly chapter, led by then Inquirer online editor Chris Krewson and Philly.com editor Wendy Warren, held a big regional conference. But it was a time of heavy contraction and stress over at 400 North Broad Street. The workload wasn’t spread enough and that iteration fizzled. (Credit to Krewson and Warren for first bringing the group here — and setting up the first Facebook group.)

Fortunately a newcomer has taken up the cause. (And has a new Facebook group up, in addition to a Twitter account to follow news.)

Young sage Daniel Victor, who took a gig at Philly.com under Warren earlier this year after the collapse at TBD, has taken up the cause. Enlisting the Technically Philly crew and local AP editor Amy Fiscus, Victor is bringing the show back.

We had small 20-30 person meetups in July and August and now are moving forward. On Sept. 15, NewsWorks is hosting a show and tell on their near one-year anniversary of work from WHYY, details above at right in sidebar.

From what I know, there’s never been a national ONA conference in Philadelphia. That’s something I’d like to see changed.

I tried out the Tweroid service. [Updated: I also tried the service for @TechnicallyPHL]

The value proposition is to sign in, wait an hour or so, get an assessment of when your followers are most active online. The ask might be to then starting tweeting at those times to have the biggest impact.

So, according to this, for maximum audience, I should be tweeting at noon and in the 4pm hour on weekdays

I’m left wondering if that’s the value of social media — directing your gaze to the biggest crowd, or if it should be more spontaneously. As metrics can continue to deploy

1. Signing off initials — If you have multiple people using your organization’s account, sign off with initials for transparency, personal connection and ease.
2. Do create regular content — Part of my schtick is having a lunchtime regular feature, like Noontime Number for Technically Philly and Running News at Noon for Back on My Feet. It’s something followers come to expect and helps you be sure to fill content.
3. Do take the RSS feed from your blog and then do a second (or third) tweet later for ifferent audience — It helps feed the beast, but also means your next tweet will hit for a new audience. Note, though, that some feel Twitter should be all engagement, so sending an RSS feed is somewhat looked down on. Still, I think as long as an RSS feed doesn’t dominate your Twitter conversation, it’s an added value.
4. Do tweet your content more than once — Yes, as a follow up to the item above, keep in mind that Twitter users tend to focus in at different times, from the morning to lunch to the evening or something like it, so by tweeting a story a few times (without getting spammy), you have a better chance of hitting an interested party.
5. Do use CoTweet to manage multiple accounts with multiple user — the former central Pennsylvania startup has a lot of good features for archiving messages, assigning followup and forward posting tweets.
6. Instead of just responding, RT a meaningful message — When you reply to someone, RT her message and add your own when space allows. This gets other people into the conversation. If no one is interested, then take it to DM or email.
7. Do more often have a call to action — (usually a link) but don’t be afraid to offer meaning in words. It’s a push media, so what are you pushing? Don’t take that to mean you should always be pushing your stuff, but conversation, engagement, sharing, linking, etc. are all good calls to action.
8. Do be able to share a specific point in those 140 characters — So, ‘Man speaks at classroom’ is a whole lot less effective than ‘this is how we can make homework suck less, man says,’ which can inspire conversation or thought or response or, even better, a click.
9. Tweet strong quotes or (even better) hard numbers – I’ve always found pushing clear information and statistics travels better than something less actionable or more vague.
10. Break quick news on Twitter — When you’re reporting on something, feed good, interesting, independent content on Twitter. When possible, sure, having a link of yours can help you capture the clicks, but ultimately, you’re trying to create an audience and you do that with content, so Twitter needs its own material.

Facebook pushes traffic and helps build an online community.

We’re over that. Joining Facebook and learning lessons from it is in the distant past. It’s time to have that next conversation.

I’m interested in moving to the next step, creating more compelling Facebook pages that keep people coming back, attract more eyeballs, develop brands, help create communication and, of course, help push eyeballs.

I’ve been moving through some conversations, trying to pull out the best lessons. I’m not behind anything compelling yet, but I’d love to do something fun with NEast Philly’s incredibly active Facebook page.

Some worthy reading below:

• Data lessons on journalists using Facebook
• So you want a Facebook Fan Page for Your Nonprofit? Here’s the Scoop! –
• 8 Essential Apps for Your Brand’s Facebook Page –
• Is Your Target Audience On Twitter, Facebook, Or LinkedIn? — Because you should only focus energies where it makes sense. This has been a focus of a NEast Philly BarCamp presentation.
• 5 Easy Steps To A Great Facebook Fan Page — Biggest take aways: You have to vary the types of content and be willing to strike up debate yourself. That means effort, but it will grow awareness and use. That’s a big first step.
• How To Build A Customized Facebook Page For Your Business –
• Facebook pages wih static FBML application
• Wiki on FBML development Facebook static FBML problems and solutions
  
• How to customize Facebook fan page with Facebook static FBML application
• A Facebook Page is probably what you want, but compare them with Facebook groups and get more about that fight with Mashable here.
• Want an RSS feed of a Facebook group? There’s a Yahoo Pipes mock up for that.