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May 4, 2006

'Share this story' explainer

The "share this story" has been featured on the story pages of roanoke.com for a number of weeks now, but I feel it deserves a more lenghly explaination about its use and potential.

The thinking behind the feature comes from the social-web concept in recent Web development, commonly referred to as "Web 2.0". Sites such as del.icio.us, Magnolia, Digg, Newsvine and many others are the front-runners of this movement.

So where does The Roanoke Times fit in? In many ways, we're what makes this whole network work.

Newspapers, blogs (maybe even this one) and other information providers drive this social network by providing the content to be shared among users. Person "A" reads a story, likes it, and seeds it to Newsvine (or any number of other social Web sites) for others to enjoy.

By adding the "share this story" function to every story page and blog entry, we've streamlined this process. If you read a story on roanoke.com you think other's would enjoy, simply hover your cursor over the "share..." button and pick the service you prefer to use.

And if you stumble across another service that we should be using with this feature, please let us know.

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The "404 Not Found" blog will discuss features and development of The Roanoke Times' Web site, Roanoke.com. Content will come from the online and multimedia staff with occasional contributions from other departments.

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