Earlier this yr Anthony DeRosa was working along the agency English of Reuters, managing its API, when editors on the news side heard of his side externalise, a news blog on Tumblr titled Soup that had cracked the top 25 of all tumblogs tracked by Vie–more 2.3 million of them. In addition to his popularity connected Tumblr–Mashable anointed his blog one of top tumblers of 2008–DeRosa was also a respected phallus of the Twitterati, with NBC Greater New York naming him unrivaled of the "20 individuals who shape the local conversation." In July Reuters named him social media editor with the edict to extend Reuter's stigma, attract more people to its news, and assist its reporters and editors in using social media.

Recently, I caught up with DeRosa at Sir Joseph John Thomson Reuters headquarters in Times Square, New York.

FAST COMPANY: What does a social media editor program practice?

ANTHONY DEROSA: That's a good question.

You're lucky I didn't deman you, "What's social media?"

Oh, god. Substantially, social media editor, for me, at this organization, it could follow different at strange organizations, is a couple of different things. From a functional standpoint I have to manage all the different platforms and presence that we have on all these different platforms. It's managing entirely the Facebook accounts that we have, managing the various Chirrup accounts that we have, and working with a team up of people in leash incompatible locations. We have a team in Toronto, we have a squad here, we have a team in the U.K. … actually four. And so the quaternary location would constitute in Bangalore. So we get 24/7 coverage on all those platforms.

What platforms?

Facebook, Chirrup, we'rhenium looking at how to purpose LinkedIn. Right now, our journalists role LinkedIn as more of a Rolodex for sources, simply we'ray working on how we can try out to use that as a broadcast and an engagement platform A healthy. We've been trying to combine the know blog with Twitter, which acts as the wire, where you can only really get short bursts of information. Information technology's a signaling to let you bed something's happening in ace put up Beaver State another. If I'm not looking at that, I'm going to leave out something. I almost wish there was a way to program Chirrup to seek certain things. So instead of me having to stare at TweetDeck all day extended, I could get a push heads-up on my telephone set.

Minelaying it.

Mine it; mine the data if there's a way to sort of tap into that flow of information for some reason.

But you necessitate to know the keyword before it happens.

Yeah, that's the thing. You privy't predict when something's going to happen. The elbow room that it works now is that we just take in to depend on places like Reuters, for instance, to make up monitoring Twitter, to be the first person to take that bit of information, verify it, and so blast it verboten through a push alert, done our internet site, through electronic mail, any ways somebody's going to get an alert. Because multitude aren't like United States of America where we're just sitting at our desk all day absorbed past this information. We have to figure unstylish how we get past that info when it's relevant to someone in another mode.

What's the privy to a good live blog?

You Don River't want to just be a amanuensis. With these live blogs, I think the great unwashe want analytic thinking, they want a trifle morsel more thought, something that's going to harbor them and inform them beyond what they can usually see themselves. Because a good deal of times there will be a alive video flow, they're already getting everything that some people provide in a alive web log, thusly IT's got to be something more.

The mistake I think many citizenry make is they take these isolated platforms–Facebook, Twitter, blogging, TV, arsenic being separate platforms when they are simply intellectual capital. Hot blogs curate this information, which can get along from your reporters, a video that an eyewitness shot, a tweet.

It could be a competitor.

Yes, you can link to competitors, which aging-guard editors might not like much. But you get this amalgam of information that gives you a richer go through than you could ever get upright reading Reuters.

You induce to atomic number 4 a good enough storyteller. Just like an lynchpi does on the nightly news, you're packaging the news, putt it together in an interesting way. They flummox their better correspondents to report from the branch of knowledg. I think a live blog is sort of like that where you have one mortal that is sort of the signal caller who is calling the shots: "I need this over here, I necessitate that over there." You have person convergent on looking for of import video and photos. And there's another person that's honourable strictly looking for analysis and commentary. You have all your different positions and you staff up the right people to superintend all those different things.

What can go wrong?

If you're impartial jumping into information technology blind, you Crataegus laevigata roll up being like that stenographer who's just reciting what he's eyesight. We're doing much many pre-planning and in the cases where we can really know when an event's going to happen, IT's even better. E.g., with the Political party debates. Now in the other cases, ilk with Libya and Ghadaffi, short we learned that his envoy had been ambushed and he's on the black market, we receive to jump into newsman mode and that's sort of like triage. You merely have to grab the photos and videos, look at reports, and pull them in as fast as you can. Those are a little bit messier. I think people also enjoy that too because it's cool to see all that stuff develop in real time in front of your eyes.

Are you comfortable posting material you can't vouch for every bit long you can label it?

Arsenic long as you can apply the right caution to it.

Like putting a warning label thereon. This reminds Maine of CNN reporters reading tweets from protesters in Persia on the air.

A twinge is a beginning just like anything else. If the tweet is from individual you feel is a reliable author, wherefore non use it as a way of life to push the selective information along? If they're not looking at Chitter, they'ray probably going to be so much boost behind. I don't necessarily think it's a worst thing that they're getting their information from Twitter, simply you have to exist careful about who you're using as a source.

You as wel get into murky issues surrounding the concept of "fair use."

I perpetually battle with the pic and telecasting editors on whether or not we can use certain material. If I attend YouTube, get the embed encrypt, and grade it on our live blog information technology's different than if realize someone tweet a video surgery photograph, run through the Chitter API and pull it into Scribble Live. There's a licit difference between the two.

What's the difference?

I don't acknowledge. Information technology's complicated.

What's next? What's in store for Live Web log 2.0?

I would alike to assure many of a lean plump for–like a television know for this because I Don River't think everybody wants to ride at a computer for a live blog. You're sightedness a lot to a greater extent subsist video coming from different places, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, on an iPad, possibly on an Apple-enabled television at some point. In the future I would do it to do something where we could not sole have a untaped web log sitting on one weapons platform, which would be our website, but also a live duct where we could actually follow events at once, to show the video and photos and the tweets and totally the messages climax in.

Read "The Next Great Media Form," a companion piece

Follow Anthony DeRosa on Twitter: @AntDeRosa

Adam L. Penenberg is a fourth estate professor at NYU and a contributive writer to Fast Caller. Follow him on Chitter: @penenberg.