Swine Flu Newsrooms Spreading To You

One of the great things about connecting with others online is the chance to be part of some interesting discussions. Such was the case of a conversation I recently had with Andrew Fowler, one of the principles at Newsvetter in Portland.

He was concerned about the lack of truly relevant information parents were getting about the spread of the H1N1 virus (swine flu) as the school year was to begin. Sure, outlets like the CDC have done an incredible job pumping out information, but as good as it is, it lacks local context. If the CDC tweets information about several regions and cities having an outbreak, what does that do to the psyche of those living elsewhere?

The fact is that in social networks, relevance is the multiplier that matters the most. I’ll read many things of general interest, but show me something in my back yard and you’ll get my attention.

With that in mind, Andrew and I hatched a framework for connecting health information resources at a local level – one that can be replicated in as many communities as are interested. It involves using Posterous.com as a central input hub for a number of agencies, then using the inherent routing of Posterous to spin that information into other social networks.

Andrew set up the backend of the Northwest Oregon Swine Flu Newsroom as a plain-vanilla Posterous blog. He then connected it to automatically spool feeds through a Twitter account and a Facebook page just for that purpose. Currently, the information is being provided by the Multnomah County Health Department and the Oregon Trail Chapter of the American Red Cross. As a result, residents in and around greater Portland can now quickly access a stream of information meant specifically for them.

Always be evaluating

I have long advocated for the use of WordPress blogs as online newsrooms, going back to the very first ones we set up at Red Cross for specific disaster operations. WordPress is fantastic in this regard, because of the use of static pages and especially category and tag-specific RSS feeds. If you check the Red Cross Online Disaster Newsroom, you’ll see how flexible that platform can be.

However, that also requires training many individuals on how to upload and produce in WordPress. Not that daunting a task, really – but when you will have subject matter coming from a consortium, you may not have the luxury of that mandated training.

The great advantage of using Posterous for projects like this one is the only interface is email. You can add several email addresses as authorized contributors, and everything they send in as attachments gets converted and prepared for consumption. Also, you can use the system as a router by specifying exactly where Posterous is to publish.

Additionally, the media is mixed in a fashion that plays well with other networks, too. If you take a video from your cell phone and email it to Posterous, when that video gets posted to your Facebook as a clickable embedded stream – not just a link.

The notion here is creating an easy machine where multiple agencies can add to an aggregate feed – and then make the output available in multiple formats for easy adoption and consumption. As a multi-input multi-output publishing engine – with a low-hurdle interface of email – the Posterous model deserves serious consideration for a variety of uses.

Add in the fact that as of this week you can skin and customize the look of a Posterous blog (like I have with mine) makes it even more attractive.