How the TIME Social Media Editor Does Old Media

When we heard about a TIME social media editor using social media for an old media property, our first thought was “Won’t this just be #oldmediabias talking about what they are doing to get people back to ‘the way things should be”

TIME's Social Media Editor talks about new media for old media

In this Ebyline interview of social media editor Kelly Conniff by Susan Johnson, we see there’s more to it than that. Still, we have the paradox: the better she does at embracing the future, the harder it will be for TIME to pretend they can hold to the past?

Is there a future for magazine? Read this and let’s discuss in the comments below.

When news breaks, readers turn to social media to read and post updates, presenting opportunities for news outlets to engage with them and challenges in keeping up with multiple platforms and a 24/7 news cycle. Ebyline recently discussed these challenges and opportunities with Kelly Conniff, who started as social media editor at TIME in September after working as social media manager at the National Geographic Society since 2009. Excerpts from that interview follow.

What social media platforms does TIME focus on?

Really the number one platform we’re on is definitely Twitter. We actually just hit four million followers today, which was amazing. Beyond that we also are on Facebook, and we just actually hit 600,000 [Facebook likes]. We’re one of the biggest news ands on Google +, and we should be in the neighborhood of hitting two million next week, which is just amazing.

We’re also on Pinterest and Instagram. We actually have two Tumblr’s. One is TIME magazine proper, and it’s very much kind of our behind-the-scenes look at how the magazine is made, how we put together our amazing covers, and basically how we do what we do. We also have one for LightBox, which is our photography blog that is very popular in the industry. That one focuses a little bit more on the photo projects that we feature every day as well as kind of promoting what’s happening in the photography community.

See full story on ebyline.biz