LatinaLista — It’s often said that we live in a society of information overload. Drop social media into that mix and the statement becomes an understatement.
For example, Twitter is packed with bytes of information ranging from the useful to the useless but most always interesting to the people following it. Yet, because something new is being tweeted, literally every microsecond, it’s hard to keep up.
Somebody realized this and created a way for people to keep up with the tweets they’re following. It’s called paper.li and described as a way to organize links shared on Twitter into an “easy-to-read newspaper style.”
This concept makes especially good sense to groups that have formed on Twitter. One such group that is taking advantage of it is Latinos in Social Media, otherwise known by the hashtag # latism.
LATISM has created their newspaper of members’ tweets and it’s already drawing attention. Latina Lista posed a few questions, via Facebook, to Elianne Ramos, vice-chair of communications and public relations for LATISM about this new way to connect with Twitter followers/members. (Editor’s note: Latina Lista is a member of Latinos in Social Media)
Latina Lista: What made you decide to create this paper?
LATISM: One of our goals as an organization is to be an open platform for our members, a forum that accurately reflects the rich diversity of thought, heritage and culture in our changing society.
Everyday on our #Latism Twitter hashtag, people share an unbelievable amount of Latino-related news as well as content they have created themselves. As you know, things on Twitter move very fast, so unless you are on it 24 hours a day, you may lose some of the valuable information that is shared every day.
Given the volume of information that traffics on #latism everyday, trying to maintain a database of all the items shared on a daily basis was becoming a daunting task. So we saw the opportunity to develop this paper as a way to index those links for future reference but also as a service to our members who may not be on Twitter at all times.
Latina Lista: How do you choose which items to include?
LATISM: The beauty of paper.li is that it automatically organizes all the links [and links only] shared on a given Twitter hashtag into a newspaper-style format and allows you to promote it automatically whenever it is updated.
Basically, items that appear on the front page are those that have gotten the most retweets or whose source is most influential, but you can find every single link that has been tweeted under “See all articles”.
The reason it works so well for our hashtag is because the information shared there is always of interest for Latinos.
Latina Lista: How has the initial response been so far?
LATISM: So far, people are loving it! Not only do we get lots of retweets whenever it comes out, but people are recommending it to their own followers and posting it on their own Facebook pages. I also get a lot of amazing comments from people on how much they love it.
Latina Lista: Is there a conscious effort to keep it bilingual?
LATISM: Since it is an automatic index of links, we don’t necessarily have control over the language or the nature of what people share, but such is social media, right?
Latina Lista: What do you hope readers get out of it?
LATISM: The paper is a great way to showcase the amazing work that some of our members are producing to a whole new audience, so this is our way to help amplify that content for them.
Judging by comments from the people who read it, this is also becoming a very useful resource. For example, we have our LATISM Twitter parties every Thursday at 9pm EST, and those who miss it are always asking me for a transcript of it. Now they have a place to come back to at the end of the day and access the items discussed and shared during the party and throughout the day.
For our members who are on Facebook and LinkedIn but not on Twitter, it is a way to stay connected to what their fellow members are discussing in this platform.
So for us, the paper is a great way to building cross-platform connection between members of our community while keeping our #latism hashtag as the open forum it is meant to be.
