Rebelmouse proclaims it can turn "social posts into a dynamic site in seconds", allowing you to pull together a variety of posts from social media sources into one place. In that sense, it's not to dissimilar from Storify.
There are different ways you can use it. The site's profile says it allows users to show what they care about by aggregating various forms of social media. Once you are logged on you will have a menu down the left-hand side which is accessed by clicking on the three lines in the top left-hand corner. You can see the menu below (which also gives an indication of my Rebelmouse's subject!).
To go to choose your social media sources click on 'Content Sources'. Once there the options are Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Tumblr, RSS, Pinterest, Stocktwits (not come across this one before - can have a look at that too) and Giphy (gifs).
This screenshot gives you an idea of how to add to social media pages to your Rebelmouse. When you add your choices of accounts/searches/#hashtags (and click save) it automatically sets to post. After clicking save I recommend changing the option to 'save to draft' (you can see that in the screenshot below). This means nothing is automatically published to your Rebelmouse, something I recommend - especially if you've got a lot of searches. This means you can select what's relevant and ensure you don't publish posts with swearing.
At first I found the response time to be slightly sluggish - it was a few minutes before my searches appeared in my draft posts.
Above is the drafts screen (again accessed in the menu on the left). Things do appear in chronological order and when you hover of the posts - a small menu appears in the top right hand corner with an option to post included in the list.
Posts on your Rebelmouse appear in the order you select them, not chronological order but - like Storify - you can drag the posts around rejig the order on your Rebelmouse page (accessed by clicking on your username in the top left-hand corner). However so far I haven't found an option to automatically reorder everything into chronological order like you can on Storify (although I may have just missed it).
Once it's completed, you go to 'embed' on the menu on the left-hand side to get the code.
The subject of mine is the Coventry Telegraph's #bringCityhome campaign, which I think proves that it can be used to cover an event/issue etc as well as being used as a profile for yourself. The draft page also replicates the format of your embedded Rebelmouse giving you a rough idea of how it will appear. It also has access to a wider range of social media sources than Storify while I also like the mutli-column embedded look (which you can see at the bottom) - allowing the user to take in more information.
I do also like the ability to look for multiple accounts/search terms and pulls them all together in one place for you to go through before deciding on what you post on your Rebelmouse. If you didn't want to focus it on a subject - this tool can also help pick out and how your social media posts on specific subjects helping you to create a profile. You can also have control over how it looks - there's a design option on the left and you can drag your posts around to decide on the order. Other options include posts (like an article where you can choose and goodies which include sending invites to people to follow you on Rebelmouse. I'm not sure how necessary this is and whether, from a journalist's point of view, useful. I think it's use in the media is as a Storify-like one.
At first I found it a bit clunky to use and it took a few seconds/minutes to respond to requests. Also - when I first joined I had my own profiles selected with a number of posts uploaded before changing to #bringCityhome/Coventry City searches for the subject of my Rebelmouse. However after I changed it and removed the posts, I kept finding posts from before I'd even joined Rebelmouse and I couldn't work out why that happened. So make sure you select your subject first!
Another thing it keeps doing, which is quite irritating, is it automatically generates tags of popular subjects you've mentioned in your social media. That isn't annoying, but what is, is it automatically generates some of them as sections/separate pages made up of posts containing those subjects (the links to which appear in the black toolbar when you're on your own Rebelmouse). Despite deleting the subjects, they keep reappearing. However if you wanted to create a number of Rebelmouse pages it can allow you to have a link to them and other relevant websites at the top of your profile. To access that, select 'sections' on the left-hand menu.
Finally, here is my embedded Rebelmouse for #bringCityhome:
No comments:
Post a Comment