Business Think and the Social Media
January 31, 2013
I read “Which Social Media Work?” I get the dead tree edition, which is getting thinner and thinner it seems, of the Wall Street Journal. The story appears on B8 in the January 31, 2013, issue. You may be able to find the story online at www.wsj.com.
The main point of the write up is that the Wall Street Journal’s professionals have researched the subject, done a survey I think, talked to gurus, and produced a league table. Big finding: Small business is sort of on the fence. The “working” social media service is LinkedIn. The Losers include Google’s properties and Pinterest. Stuck in nowhere land—that is, the middle—are Facebook and Twitter.
Okay. Let’s assume the ranking is correct. The write up asserts:
Six out of 10 small business owners say they believe social media tools are valuable to their company’s growth—but most aren’t impressed by Twitter Inc.
I am not particularly social. I think I pay a paralegal to be “me” on social media. I am not sure because, I don’t talk to the paralegal. Remember. I am not social.
My take on the social media angle pursued by the Wall Street Journal is that using it is probably less of a challenge than tapping phones or performing some other interesting actions to get information.
However, the league table raises some questions for me:
First, isn’t LinkedIn a haven for job seekers, consultants trying to build a footprint, and marketers who are pushing every possible button to make a sale? I find that the baloney which flows to my email from LinkedIn is essentially useless. If I don’t “participate” in a group, I get told, “Hey, goose, you aren’t using this service. You’re out.” I feel like Heidi Klum is saying, “You aus.” Free LinkedIn, I believe, is different from for fee LinkedIn. Since I don’t pay, I am not 100% certain of this difference, but I am not looking for a job nor am I trying to create an impression in the social snow bank.
Second, isn’t Twitter a gem for the 20 somethings who live in Silicon Alley and Silicon Valley. Twitter does not do too much here in Harrod’s Creek. Ergo: Perhaps the value or perceived value depends on the tweeters’ location? Just a thought.
Third, Google is in the process of requiring people to join Google Plus. YouTube is on the path to monetization. Will Google charge for premium social services? Will Google just buy LinkedIn and get it over with? My point is that in terms of utility, Google probably deserves to be in the vast wasteland of the middle of the pack. I am not sure small business knows what Google’s trajectory is. If small business owners were clued in, there might be a different perception. Until then, Google is a solid C according to the write up.
Fourth, Facebook is near the top. But Facebook is only “sort of” for small business or any business. Facebook wants to sell ads. I am not sure if Facebook wants to serve small business with anything other than an invoice for messages pumped to the 800 million or more Facebook users.
Net net: Silly stuff because Google and Facebook are the big dogs. The other outfits in the league table are biscuits to be eaten or ignored. Honk and quack.
Stephen E Arnold, January 31, 2013
Ten Twitter Types
January 31, 2013
As with any technology, different people use Twitter differently. Forbes breaks this diversity down into “The 10 Types of Twitterers and How to Tame Their Tweets.” To set the stage, writer Steve Faktor explains why it is a mistake to label Twitter a social network:
“Though it looks social, it’s more hyperactive than interactive. Of the billions of tweets sent, 71% get no response, only 36% are worth reading, and a majority is generated by a tiny fraction of users. Twitter is a personal announcement system that captures the collective pulse of a world screaming for attention – or revolution, or discounts, or Kanye. Twitter is a tiny, evolutionary step towards a ‘global mind’. Making sense of that mind has spurred a gold rush of mind-readers trying to sell you shovels, pans, and a donkey.”
With that, the article launches into the Twitter-type descriptors. On one end of the scale, you have what Faktor colorfully calls the “undead,” those 60 percent of accounts that were created but remain inactive. “Organizations,” large corporations that Faktor calls Twitter’s big spenders like Starbucks and Zappos, are at the other end. It seems that most businesses, though, have so far failed to recoup big bucks this way. In the middle are such characters as “chirpers,” “scouts,” and “stars.” It is worth reading through his astute descriptions.
The write-up also lists three types of incentives that motivate tweeters: The tangible, like discounts or job leads; the perceived, psychological rewards like respect or convenience; and the informational, actionable data that feels rewarding. Will other incentives manifest? Twitter is still an evolving medium, and its use is a continuing experiment. I wonder what a list of user types will look like five or ten years from now.
Cynthia Murrell, January 31, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
World Governments Manipulate Social Media to Impact Public Opinion
January 29, 2013
Capitalizing on recent marketing trends in the private sector, countries across the globe are utilizing bloggers as a tool for influencing public opinion. The article, “Vietnam Hires Bloggers to Influence Online Discussion,” from Techeye reveals that the Vietnamese government employs hundreds of bloggers to influence public perception of the regime both locally and globally.
The article states:
“[…] the Vietnamese government has hundreds of the bloggers on its pay roll, with at least 400 accounts spanning 20 different social media networks. The BBC says there is a noticeable number of bloggers on social media networks popular in the country, who mostly post positive comments and articles.”
This declaration comes just weeks after China was exposed for utilizing social media to achieve similar ends. Influencing opinions through social media is becoming common practice amongst many world governments. The article continues:
“The technique is not unique to Vietnam or China. In 2011, it emerged that the United States had been developing software to game popular social networks with fake profiles to influence conversations.”
The recent prominence in government-banked bloggers underscores the global pervasiveness of social media and mobile technology. The manipulation of social media networks has become standard practice for companies seeking to control their brand. It is interesting to see Vietnam’s Communist Party leveraging similar techniques to quell political dissent.
Michael Cole, January 29, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Social Norms on Social Media
January 22, 2013
It is no secret that social networking is growing rapidly and is here to stay. But now we can sit back and watch as the world tries to figure out the boundaries on conversational topics on social media. Social norms that are widely accepted, such as which topics you can or cannot bring up in certain situations, get foggy when it comes to discussions online. We learn in “Religion, Politics, Sports… What People Around the World Do and Do Not Talk About on Social Media” on Quartz that citizens of different countries are already appearing to set vastly different new rules.
We learn:
“Different countries are writing those rules differently. A recent survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center, shows how common it is in each of 20 countries to talk about politics, religion, sports, and music or movies on social media. There are some surprising differences.
Europeans generally talk politics online less than people in the Americas. Middle Easterners are the most voluble of all, which is no surprise given the recent Arab Spring.”
It also appears that religious discussions vary greatly all over the world and pop culture is popular everywhere. Now that we know what is popular, perhaps this will be a starting place for new social norms to be set regarding social networking. We wonder what Miss Manners would have to say about this.
Andrea Hayden, January 22, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Yandex Creates Powerful Facebook Search App
January 19, 2013
We know that Facebook is very protective of its services/ products and that their practices concerning user data are questionable. What will Facebook do, however, with Yandex’s new search app? Tech Crunch announced, “Russian Giant Yandex Has Secretly Built A Killer Facebook Search Engine App Codenamed ‘Wonder’.” The search engine app allows users to ask what content and businesses friends visited. Facebook prohibits search engines to use its data without permission. A spokesperson from Yandex was not able to comment on Wonder, but did confirm the company as interested in mining social data and building social products.
Wonder works by allowing its users to vocally search for information and it lists whether their friends have searched for it as well. Yandex so far has limited themselves to the Russian market, but Google and other competitors have eaten away at its revenue and so they are turning to other areas. Some areas are mobile, maps, and app discovery for services/products.
What does Facebook think about this? Facebook tried to allow its users to search friends’ content with Nearby. Also Wonder might use too much of Facebook’s user data and Facebook does not volunteer user information to search engines, which Wonder might do. Facebook is taking its own steps to get into search:
“CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself explained at TechCrunch Disrupt SF that Facebook is getting into search:
‘Search is interesting. I think search engines are really evolving to give you a set of answers’’ I have this specific question, answer this question for me.’ Facebook is pretty uniquely positioned to answer the questions people have. ; What sushi restaurants have my friends gone to in New York in the last six months and Liked?’ These are questions that you could potentially do at Facebook if we built out this system that you couldn’t do anywhere else. And at some point we’ll do it. We have a team working on search.’”
There are various options that Facebook could do with Wonder: buy it, make a joint partnership, grant permission, etc. but we will have to wait and see what will happen. We do know that users are demanding Facebook create a better search engine and Wonder is making them work faster to develop it.
Whitney Grace, January 19, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Social Search: Don Quixote Is Alive and Well
January 18, 2013
Here I float in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, an addled goose. I am interested in other geese in rural Kentucky. I log into Facebook, using a faux human alias (easier than one would imagine) and run a natural language query (human language, of course). I peck with my beak on my iPad using an app, “Geese hook up 40027.” What do I get? Nothing, Zip, zilch, nada.
Intrigued I query, “modern American drama.” What do I get? Nothing, Zip, zilch, nada.
I give up. Social search just does not work under my quite “normal” conditions.
First, I am a goose spoofing the world as a human. Not too many folks like this on Facebook, so my interests and my social graph is useless.
Second, the key words in my natural language query do not match the Facebook patterns, crafted by former Googlers and 20 somethings to deliver hook up heaven and links to the semi infamous Actor’s Theater or the Kentucky Center.
Social search is not search. Social search is group centric. Social search is an outstanding system for monitoring and surveillance. For information retrieval, social search is a subset of information retrieval. How do semantic methods improve the validity of the information retrieved? I am not exactly sure. Perhaps the vendors will explain and provide documented examples?
Third, without context, my natural language queries shoot through the holes in the Swiss Cheese of the Facebook database.
After I read “The Future of Social Search,” I assumed that information was available at the peck of my beak. How misguided was I? Well, one more “next big thing” in search demonstrated that baloney production is surging in a ailing economy. Optimism is good. Crazy predictions about search are not so good. Look at the sad state of enterprise search, Web search, and email search. Nothing works exactly as I hope. The dust up between Hewlett Packard and Autonomy suggests that “meaning based computing” is a point of contention.
If social search does not work for an addled goose, for whom does it work? According to the wild and crazy write up:
Are social networks (or information networks) the new search engine? Or, as Steve Jobs would argue, is the mobile app the new search engine? Or, is the question-and-answer formula of Quora the real search 2.0? The answer is most likely all of the above, because search is being redefined by all of these factors. Because search is changing, so too is the still maturing notion of social search, and we should certainly think about it as something much grander than socially-enhanced search results.
Yep, Search 2.0.
But the bit of plastic floating in my pond is semantic search. Here’s what the Search 2.0 social crowd asserts:
Let’s embrace the notion that social search should be effortless on the part of the user and exist within a familiar experience — mobile, social or search. What this foretells is a future in which semantic analysis, machine learning, natural language processing and artificial intelligence will digest our every web action and organically spit out a social search experience. This social search future is already unfolding before our very eyes. Foursquare now taps its massive check in database to churn out recommendations personalized by relationships and activities. My6sense prioritizes tweets, RSS feeds and Facebook updates, and it’s working to personalize the web through semantic analysis. Even Flipboard offers a fresh form of social search and helps the user find content through their social relationships. Of course, there’s the obvious implementations of Facebook Instant Personalization: Rotten Tomatoes, Clicker and Yelp offer Facebook-personalized experiences, essentially using your social graph to return better “search” results.
Semantics. Better search results. How does that work on Facebook images and Twitter messages?
My view is that when one looks for information, there are some old fashioned yardsticks; for example, precision, recall, editorial policy, corpus provenance, etc.
When a clueless person asks about pop culture, I am not sure that traditional reference sources will provide an answer. But as information access is trivialized, the need for knowledge about the accuracy and comprehensiveness of content, the metrics of precision and recall, and the editorial policy or degree of manipulation baked into the system decreases.
See Advantech.com for details of a surveillance system.
Search has not become better. Search has become subject to self referential mechanisms. That’s why my goose queries disappoint. If I were looking for pizza or Lady Gaga information, I would have hit pay dirt with a social search system. When I look for information based on an idiosyncratic social fingerprint or when I look for hard information to answer difficult questions related to client work, social search is not going to deliver the input which keeps this goose happy.
What is interesting is that so many are embracing a surveillance based system as the next big thing in search. I am glad I am old. I am delighted my old fashioned approach to obtaining information is working just fine without the special advantages a social graph delivers.
Will today’s social search users understand the old fashioned methods of obtaining information? In my opinion, nope. Does it matter? Not to me. I hope some of these social searchers do more than run a Facebook query to study for their electrical engineering certification or to pass board certification for brain surgery.
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2013
Google Pushes into Enterprise Market
January 9, 2013
Google is about to tackle the enterprise market head on, particularly targeting the areas of the cloud, social media, and mobile software. Could this have anything to do with softening ad revenues? Not sure; that is one topic not mentioned in the informative interview from Computer Business Review, “Q&A with Thomas Davies, Head of Google Enterprise UK and Ireland.”
Journalist Steve Evans spoke to Davies about Google’s enterprise push. Davies names three trends, cloud, social, and mobile, that his division focuses on, and specifies mobile as the most influential. Because smartphones and tablets are becoming important tools to many businesses, Google plans to seize the day with Android for the enterprise.
There are those who question whether the security and management capabilities of Android are up to the task. Davies assures us, though, that his team has been communicating with business leaders and is tailoring the OS to meet their specifications. Furthermore, he says, Android is now pushing out updates the way Chrome does, so companies won’t have to contend with different stages. The chaotic way Android versions have historically been distributed, though, suggests that every worker would have to have the same iteration of the same device for that to work; not ideal.
As for social media, Google anticipates that it will soon melt into collaboration tools, rather than remain a standalone destination application. Oh, but make no mistake– Google+ will remain a destination app. They have a lot invested in that project, Davies says. Evans presses that point, asking why Google + is different from failed attempts like Wave and Buzz. Because Google learns from mistakes, of course. Well, that’s good.
Regarding the cloud, Evans notes that it’s a big step for companies. Davies replies that it’s all about the money. Businesses have now been hard pressed for years- years!- to reduce costs, and there’s only so much you can cut. According to him, porting to the cloud can save on operational costs by 30 to 50 percent—a reduction many companies find well worth the bother.
So, it seems that now is the time for Google to aggressively push into the enterprise market. Financial pressure and technical advancement have come together to create the perfect opportunity, and they are not about to let the moment escape them. Davies concludes:
“People want to change. I think the time for personal productivity – going to the office, filling in your spreadsheets and sending them to someone else – is going. There was a standard, monolithic build; SAP in the background, Office and IE on the desktop and BlackBerry. That’s changing and I think the speed of that change has caught IT departments by surprise.
“That plays nicely into our hands. I think where we will win, and where we are winning, is when it comes to the three main benefits: business benefits, technical benefits and cultural transformation. That’s how you change an entire company.”
Cocky, isn’t he? But the man has a point. I predict the company will succeed spectacularly in this venture.
Cynthia Murrell, January 09, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Data Intelligence
January 2, 2013
Helping to keep people safe is a large part of what the analysis specialist firm Data Intelligence does. The company serves organizations in the realms of defense, intelligence, cyber security, and law enforcement. They don’t stop there, though; the outfit also supplies tools for social media analysis, financial intelligence, recruiting, business intelligence, marketing, and business integration. Software consulting is also on their sizable plate.
Data Intelligence has a nifty video for potential customers who would like to get an idea of their offerings. Their central product is the Entity Analytical Platform, which emphasizes collaboration and information linking and displays results in a unique knowledge graph. Their site describes the software:
“Social collaboration tool for linking together Big Knowledge Graphs combined with Search & Discovery at Cloud Scale
- Link together custom networks that relate to your business model
- Collaborate among your team and follow areas of interest
- Search smarter: ‘Who worked with James at Data Intelligence in 2012’
- Discover business insights as data is transformed into intelligence”
Data Intelligence was formed by James Kraemer, and is located in Washington, DC.
Cynthia Murrell, January 02, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Save Time and Automate Some IT Tasks
January 1, 2013
Here is a new buzzword for you: “awareness automation.” It refers to how It organizations are unaware about the ability to automate some redundant and time-consuming tasks. IT News Online discusses some of these tasks in “Business Productivity Stifled Due to Lack of Awareness of Automation Opportunities According to IPsoft.” IPSoft found that the following tasks could increase productivity and create a basis for more complex functions to be automated in the future: predictive incident management, requesting permission, running diagnostics, password management, and application checks.
The advice is too practical to ignore:
“Truly expert systems can be used to automate not just some of the simple tasks of your 1st or even 2nd line IT support staff, but all the low level tasks IT managers are stuck with on a day-to-day basis. Even when the problem can’t be solved through automation the system is smart enough to replicate the processes one would expect a qualified support engineer to follow including seeking out the relevant information, gathering the documentation, and providing the approving party with the right information in order that they can make an informed and rapid decision to resolve the problem.”
The only thing holding automation awareness back is its ambiguity. It is not a concept that many people think about. The best thing to do would be to start an AA campaign with a Facebook, Tumbler, etc. pages, and use the social media advertising power.
Whitney Grace, January 01, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
New Offering from Attensity Poised to Blow Up ROI
December 21, 2012
Analytics tools from social-minded vendors are now using text analytics technology to report on market perception and consumer preferences before the product launch. BtoB reported on this new offering in the article, “Attensity Releases Analytics Tools for Product Introductions.”
Now, businesses will be able to monitor product introductions with this new tool from Attensity. It is only a matter of time before we start seeing specific technology solutions to evaluate and analyze every specific phase of the product development cycle.
Both new insights for further developments and opportunities to avoid risk will be possible with New Product Introduction.
The article states:
“The tool uses text analytics technology to report on market perception and preferences before roll out, uncovering areas of risk and opportunity, according to the company. It then tracks customer reception upon and after the launch to determine the impact of initial marketing efforts. Attensity said the New Product Introduction tool is one in a series of planned social text-analytics applications devoted to customer care, branding, and campaign and competitive analytics.”
Many organizations will be chomping at the bit to utilize this technology since it offers an easy way to improve ROI.
Megan Feil, December 21, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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