Introduction to Services
NewsCloud offers a variety of consulting and services specializing in Facebook and social media:
- Set up and hosting of your Facebook news publication and community application
- Build a presence in Facebook: run a news community for your company, organization, city, neighborhood or university
- End to end management of social media solutions
- Hosting
- Custom software development
- Editorial management
- Community moderation
- Support of academic research in new media and university news publications
- Technical support of academic new media programs
- Technical consulting on open source development
- General Facebook and social media consulting
Please contact us for more information or read our FAQ below for typical pricing and common questions.
Portfolio of Facebook applications
Please visit some of our current and past work:
* Hot Dish, a climate change news publication on Facebook with eco-challenges and rewards. Grist.org is our editorial partner on HotDish. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation provided funding for Hot Dish.
* MnDaily, a Facebook publication of the University of Minnesota student news site. Also funded by the Knight Foundation.
* GenOmics, an educational news community for nonprofit Genome Alberta. Includes send a gene feature.
* In:Site, an Arts & Culture publication for Seattle published by University of Washington journalism students. NewsCloud worked in the classroom with the students to help them launch their publication in Facebook.
* The Needle, a community publication covering general news for Seattle.
Read about our applications in the news and stay tuned! More news communities are coming soon!
Slideshow of Facebook community news applications
Frequently Asked Questions
* How much does it cost? Our rates vary based on the alignment of a particular project with our ongoing mission and for mission-driven nonprofit organizations. Please contact us to discuss your project.* What's included in your managed monthly services? First, we work with Seattle's EyeLevel to customize the graphic design of your application. Then, we set up your news community and provide basic training for your team to manage the necessary community features such as posting and featuring stories, contacting members and reviewing your statistics. We provide basic monthly hosting (suitable for most communities). We also provide technical support and troubleshooting if questions or problems arise. In certain circumstances, we can provide more hands-on services such as editorial support and community management or community marketing. We also deploy updates and improvements to the application code base on a regular basis to all of our clients.
* Why Facebook? Facebook has over 200 million users with an average of 120 friends each. It's an incredibly viral environment to reach your community and their friends. More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day and more than 3.5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day worldwide. Read more about Facebook Statistics.
* How long does it take to launch an application? The time from initial design consultation to site launch an be as little as 2 weeks, sometimes less if there is a need for a rush.
* What if I want additional customization or new features? We can provide custom development on an hourly basis for any extended customization or feature enhancements that you wish to add to your application.
* Is the source code available for download? Yes, the source code for Hot Dish and MnDaily can be downloaded here. Running a Facebook application of this size can be fairly complex and will likely require technology capacity within your organization. If you are interested in hiring us for development or technical support, please email us.
Please contact us if you have additional questions.
Facebook Application Feature Summary
Our application provides the following features:
- Front page news summary
- Community team page showcasing recent activity, point leaders, et al.
- Optional action team with off-line challenges and rewards
- Reading stories, text and video comments
- Posting stories, blog entries and videos
- Discussion forums
- Resources page of links
- Facebook Invitations
- Push Facebook notifications, email and SMS Text Messages
- Integration with Facebook mini-feeds, publisher and profile boxes
- Advertising integration
- RSS
- Automated Twitter publishing
- Statistics and membership analysis
About NewsCloud
Launched in 2005, NewsCloud is a community-driven news aggregator and solutions provider for social media. NewsCloud is based in Seattle, Washington in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.
About Jeff Reifman
Jeff is an experienced technical project manager and software architect. As Group Program Manager at Microsoft, he helped launch MSN News and MSNBC.com in 1995-1996. In 1997, Jeff founded Habitat Espresso, a not for profit coffee house in Seattle. In 1999, he left Microsoft to found GiftSpot.com, later acquired by GiftCertificates.com. In 2001, Jeff founded ActionStudio.org, later funded by The Omidyar Foundation and acquired by Groundspring.org. In 2004, he wrote three cover stories for the Seattle Weekly on Microsoft and Social Investing. In 2005, he founded NewsCloud.com, formerly known as CommonTimes. Jeff has also managed Facebook application development for BC Hydro (Green Gifts) and Genome Alberta (Genomics). In December 2008, Jeff received a $249,529 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to study the engagement of young readers in news publications in social networks.
