NiemanLabs reporting:
just hours after it rolled out its long-awaited social layer, Google launched another new feature that will affect its search returns — and journalists. In a pilot program, Google is now highlighting the individual people who created the content that shows up in returns — specifically, by placing a picture of those people to the right of the articles they’ve written, along with links to their Google Profiles. The feature, currently being used for a small group of authors (mostly tech bloggers), uses the new authorship markup language Google announced earlier this month “to help people,” it says, “find content from great authors in our search results.”
“Authorship is a great way to identify and highlight high-quality content,” Google’s Sagar Kamdar explained in a blog post. “Plus, the web is centered around people. People discovering content on the web often want to learn more about its author, see other content by that author, and even interact with the author.”
In the news-cycle context of Google, you know, Officially Taking On Facebook, its content-creators announcement isn’t a huge deal. But it’s worth noting nonetheless. There’s been a lot of renewed talk this week about journalists’ “personal brands,” thanks especially to the journalistic brand that is Gene Weingarten. And the discussion seems to solidify around the fact that, whether enthusiastically or grudgingly or something in between, journalists are embracing the reality that they are not just storytellers, not just truth-tellers, not just people, quirky and complicated — but, also, brands. With all that that implies. “If journalists are using social media to any extent (which they should be),” Mathew Ingram noted on Monday, “then they are in the process of becoming a brand whether they like it or not.”
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=8672091774752856243
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