The first time you get one you are not quite sure what to do with it. It generally shows up in Twitter. It looks like electronic junk mail. I don't think I will ever get to the point of swearing by them, but the truth is social media newspapers have a lot of potential. It's all about niche.
I'm referencing the self-publishing newspapers from paper.li. I like the concept of a newspaper that aggregates information from social media sources. It is an idea that needs perfecting, but currently it has plenty of utility with still a long way to go. Here is how I use it now:
1. I publish a handful of papers just for my use on topics I am keenly interested in just to see what people are saying.
2. I publish one for an organization I am in and it is so far very popular. I shifted from daily to weekly and the interest increased because the content improves at a longer publication interval.
3. I sometimes create temporary newspapers for a hot topic in the news. It may be for as short as 1 week. You don't have to publish a paper forever. Judge it by the type of content you're pulling in.
I believe the biggest change that needs to happen with this technology now is that it must improve the relevance factor. Whatever aggregator is being used to create these electronic papers obviously needs perfection. Too often, papers publish with three or four totally irrelevant articles. I am sure this is being adressed. It is too obvious.
This really is a promising technology.
