Yammer Embraces Search
May 2, 2012
An enterprise social vendor is jumping into search: BrainyardNews announces, “Yammer Update Emphasizes Enterprise, Cloud Search.” Since search vendors are jumping into almost anything with the merest whiff of money, I guess it makes sense for enterprise social network provider Yammer to pursue search. BrainYard editor David F. Carr writes:
“Yammer is introducing ‘universal search,’ along with an option for project or interest groups within a Yammer enterprise social network to sign up for services without necessarily enlisting the company as a whole. . . . To Yammer, universal search makes it possible to search across connections to both enterprise and cloud-based systems integrated with a Yammer network. For example, a search by customer name might turn up automated updates from Salesforce.com, SAP, and a Microsoft SharePoint site, as well as posts by users about that company.”
Uniquely, Yammer saves space by indexing only the metadata coming into a feed, rather than the underlying data, though full-text indexing may appear in the future. The basic social network service is free, and a la carte pricing for premium options gives customers some flexibility.
The new features are part of the spring update Yammer released this month. Other components include: a new tagging method; a Web part that integrates with MS Office 365; updated mobile apps; and the Yammer Embed feature, now moving up from its beta existence.
Launched in 2008, Yammer pioneered the use of secure, private social networks for the purpose of collaboration. More than 80% of Fortune 500 companies currently use the company’s services.
Cynthia Murrell, May 2, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Foursquare Helps Businesses Stay Connected with Their Customers
April 28, 2012
Review sites like Yelp and Urbanspoon become incredibly important when determining the success or failure of a local business. But how can you make reviewing your business fun and easy? Search Engine Journal recently reported on the location based social networking site Foursquare in the article “How to Use Foursquare to Get Reviews for Your Local Business.”
According to the article, 76% of consumers use online reviews to determine which local business they will patronize. Unlike other review sites, Foursquare has a free check in feature that gives your business instant promotion. It also has two added benefits that further distinguish your business:
“First, because it’s integrated with Twitter, it gives you direct access to your customers. Second, by nature of who’s most likely to actually check in, it more specifically gives you access to your most loyal brand advocates. After all, if a customer goes as far as to publicly announce that he or she’s visiting your storefront, it’s pretty safe to assume that they had a positive experience. These are the people you want to leave reviews!”
Foursquare also makes it easy to set up notifications that allow you to see what your customers are saying about your business. Having direct access with your customers allows you to create a dialogue with them that will make them feel appreciated and want to return.
Jasmine Ashton, April 29, 2012
Sponsored by Ikanow
Smaller, Closed Social Networks Gain Popularity
April 27, 2012
The Guardian recently reported, “Facebook, Google Must Adapt as Users Embrace ‘Unsocial’ Networks,” claiming the need and desire for social networks that go beyond the giants.
According to the article, smaller, closed networks are gaining popularity by giving users more control over what they share and who they are sharing with. These new social media outlets also set limits on who you listen to; for example, social network Path restricts you to 150 friends and Pair builds bonds between only two users. The article asserts:
“This growing interest in smaller, ego-boosting, privacy-controllable networks was inevitable, as social media reached mass scale. Two-thirds of Americans now use social platforms, according to Pew, and the majority say ‘staying in touch with current friends and family’ is the main reason why. Only 9 percent of respondents told Pew, when asked, that “making new friends” was a motivation.
For marketers, of course, this is a challenge. Word-of-mouth messaging spreads more slowly if audiences are closing off digital circles. For this reason, only Facebook has succeeded among social networks in generating significant advertising revenue—$3.1 billion in 2011—because it has resorted to old-school ad formats.”
We are cheering for the numerous alternatives to Facebook and Google and we applaud those that respect the need for privacy and intimacy. Although it presents a challenge for marketers, they may have to try something a bit more aggressive.
Andrea Hayden, April 27, 2012
Sponsored by Ikanow
Conversation? I Think Not
April 23, 2012
In my dead tree edition of the New York Times, I read “The Flight from Conversation” by an MIT professor and author. The newspaper put the story on page one of the Sunday Review section with a jump to pages six and seven. The online version was visible to me this morning (April 23, 2012) as “Opinion. The Flight from Conversation.” I am never sure which New York Times story will be available to whom or for how long, so you are on your own if you get a 404 or a begging for dollars screen.
What I know is that “conversation” is idealized in today’s thumb typing world. Defining conversation is useful. Holding a conversation is getting to be an exercise in human interaction archaeology.
Does this Thomas Kinkade painting represent a real place? Does discourse today provide “conversation” or an idealized notion of give and take among and between individuals?
Straight away let me say that I found the write up interesting because it was chock full of “hooks”. I had a boss at Booz, Allen & Hamilton in the days when the firm had a pretty good reputation for management and technology consultant. This particular manager collected “hook phrases,” which he hoped to use in his reports, speeches, and his various writings. On my first pass through the Flight article I noted these keepers:
- Devices change what we do and who we are
- Turn desks into cockpits
- The Goldilocks [sic] effect
- Put ourselves on cable news
- Automatic listeners
- Confuse conversation with connection
- Illusion of companionship without the demands of relationship
- New devices have turned being alone into a problem that can be solved
- Device free zones
- Casual Fridays and conversational Thursdays
Quite a payload. Upon reviewing my collection of hooks from the essay, the author should be working for CNN or CNBC.
The key point of the write up is that instead of engaging in conversation, the thumb typing generation likes being with people and being online. I agree. The notion of checking email in the middle of a face to face conversation with a person at KY Fry or lunch chatter at a trade show often warrants some digital supplements. I get paid to attend to trade shows, but not even money can cut through the marketing blather, the pitches from consultants looking for work, and speakers who are nervous about giving a talk which will avoid controversy, make a good impression, and sell someone something.
My concern is not about the essay. The anomie of modern society has been an idea kicking around since I experienced college lectures from razor sharp academics. I started thinking about the assumptions on which the essay rests. For example, how easy is it at MIT or any big name university focused on funding, start ups, and getting faculty to function as magnets which pull cash for chairs to get faculty to make themselves available for students who want a conversation? Are those office hours real or the academic equivalent of vaporware?
Gartner Pushes Enterprise Social Network Integration
April 21, 2012
The regulators and project managers of certain government work will enjoy figuring out how the next big Gartner thing affects their day–to-day work.
Gartner has been quiet in the search sector. It is tough to make money in a space where open source and low cost or baked in solutions are widely available. But quite a few azure chip consultants have discovered social networks, which might be viewed as “search under a different name.”
Gartner’s blog expounds on “Search and the Enterprise Social Network.” There are some new buzzwords like “enterprise frictionless sharing” and some spice like “notifications,” but the message is that corporations have to figure out how to make social networks work for them.
Notifications do feature prominently in blogger Larry Cannell’s concerns. If an opportunity or problem arises regarding a client or project, interested parties can be automatically notified so they can take action quickly. Also, Cannell stresses the value of building a company knowledge base that integrates information from multiple applications. I think most will agree that these are meaningful issues which may support some fresh consulting revenues for the firm.
The write up follows the consultant’s middle path by stating:
“As multiple business applications become integrated with a social network site, a significant challenge will be the normalization of business entities across applications. For example, aligning a customer record in a CRM system with the same customer record in a warranty claims system. Without this alignment, cross-business application relationships cannot be captured within the site’s social graph and workers participating in the network will see duplicate customer profiles (one from the CRM system, the other from the warranty claims system).”
Yes, I can see how that could be a valuable tool. The article also points out some areas where for-fee expertise may be useful:
“Another important question regarding these types of integrations will be the role of security semantics managed by the originating business applications. Should the social network site enforce the same access control specified in the business application or should a different set of controls apply to this information? In other words, should revoking a worker’s view permission to a customer’s record automatically revoke this access to the entity’s shadowed social network profile? Replicating a single business application’s security semantics with the social network site may be difficult. A more daunting task will be normalizing security semantics across multiple business applications feeding the social network site.”
Yes, such security reconciliation could be a challenge, but it seems like a fundamental function. Again, this all comes down to the message that organizations must figure out how to make social networks work for them. The assumption is that social networks are here to stay.
Look, most “companies” are small, fewer than 50 employees. The big outfits can afford to experiment, though, if they desire. What we have here is solid azure chip output aimed at generating revenue.
We keep thinking about the interesting intersection of social networks and government contract requirements, regulatory requirements for compliance, and plain old trade secret common sense.
When it comes down to it, aren’t social networks little more than amplifications of traditional communication methods? Oh well, lashing the social hobby horse to search may be one way to keep senior management sufficiently nervous to seek outside wisdom. Gartner caters to large organizations in 85 countries and has been in business since 1979 which is longer than most of the companies offering expertise in social media, networks, and analytics.
Cynthia Murrell, April 21, 2012
Sponsored by OpenSearchNews.com
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Algorithms Can Deliver Skewed Results
April 18, 2012
After two days of lectures about the power of social media analytics, Stephen E Arnold raised doubts about the reliability of certain analytics outputs. He opined: “Faith in analytics may be misplaced.”
Arnold’s lecture focused on four gaps in social media analytics. He pointed out that many users were unaware of the trade offs in algorithm selection made by vendors’ programmers. Speaking at the Social Media Analytics Summit, he said:
Many companies purchase social media analytics reports without understanding that the questions answered by algorithms may not answer the customer’s actual question.
He continued:
The talk about big data leaves the impression that every item is analyzed and processed. The reality is that sampling methods, like the selection of numerical recipes can have a significant impact on what results become available.
The third gap, he added, “is that smart algorithms display persistence. With smart software, some methods predict a behavior and then look for that behavior because the brute force approach is computationally expensive and adds latency to a system.” He said:
Users assume results are near real time and comprehensive. The reality is that results are unlikely to be real time and built around mathematical methods which value efficiency and cleverness at the expense of more robust analytic methods. The characteristic is more pronounced in user friendly, click here type of systems than those which require to specify a method using SAS or SPSS syntax.”
The final gap is the distortion that affects outputs from “near term, throw forward biases.” Arnold said:
Modern systems are overly sensitive to certain short term content events. This bias is most pronounced when looking for emerging trend data. In these types of outputs the “now” data respond to spikes and users act on identified trends often without appropriate context.
The implication of these gaps is that outputs from some quite sophisticated systems can be misleading or present information as fact when that information has been shaped to a marketer’s purpose.
The Social Media Analytics conference was held in San Francisco, April 17 and 18, 2012. More information about the implications of these gaps may be found at the Augmentext.com Web site.
Donald C Anderson, April 18, 2012,
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Conflicting Facebook Studies Should Be Taken With a Grain of Salt
April 17, 2012
Search Engine Watch’s Miranda Miller recently reported on some interesting brand trends resulting from Facebook’s switch to the Timeline in the article “Conflicting Facebook Brand Page Studies Highlight Universal Truths in Online Marketing.”
According to the article, there have been conflicting reports regarding fan engagement with the new Facebook timeline. Simply Measured’s study found that fan engagement increased 14 percent; content engagement was up 46 percent; and interactive content engagement skyrocketed 65 percent. EdgeRank Checker, on the other hand, concluded that brand pages are seeing a drop in engagement, regardless of whether they’ve switched to Timeline. Plus they had a much larger sample group of 3,500 pages compared with Simply Measured’s measly 15.
After sitting several other conflicting studies that are bound to make your head spin, Miller encourages readers not to drink the Kool-Aid:
“We can use their data not at face value as the be-all-that-ends-all or cornerstone of our own strategy, but as a benchmark for our own pages. It could mean as much to you as the catalyst for a full audit of your own accounts, or as little as a piece you skimmed over in 30 seconds and might only recall as, “I heard something, somewhere about that… 190 percent or something, what was that…”
Okay, Facebook helps reveal “universal strategies”. We’re believers in universal strategies from the commons, are you?
Jasmine Ashton, April 17, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Is Google Anchored in Social Reality?
April 16, 2012
In the article, “Google CEO Page: Social Networking Service Surpassing Predictions,” Larry Page shares his positive thoughts regarding Google’s social networking future. However, ComScore http://www.comscore.com/ presents some statistics that challenge the validation of his optimistic outlook.
“Google, the leading Web-search provider, is playing catch- up with Facebook Inc., which has more than 845 million users versus more than 100 million for Google+. U.S. users spent an average 3.3 minutes on Google’s social network in January 2012, compared with 7.5 hours for Facebook, according to ComScore Inc. Page said his company’s early focus on Web search came at the expense of helping people socialize.”
Ironically, Google+ is the fourth attempt by Google to rival Facebook. They created Orkut in 2004. Orkut was a hit with the Brazilians. It was followed in 2008 by Google Friend Connect which was retired in March 2012. Google Buzz was their third disappointment. Launched in 2010, the service was terminated in 2011.
The history of Google’s failed attempts to compete clearly shows they’ve lost this popularity contest. Facebook firmly takes the lead in both user numbers and time spent online by an overwhelming margin. This makes it difficult to understand how Mr. Page can rationalize gaining ground against the Facebook behemoth in the social networking industry. My question, “Is Google realistic about its social networking options?”
Jennifer Shockley, April 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Woola Economics for Social Media
April 2, 2012
I admire some azure chip consultants. Now I understand that hiring of middle school teachers and home economics majors have fallen on hard times. Even people with juco degrees in information technology are struggling to find purchase on today’s economic ice hills. Enter Woola economics: fun, fanciful, and better than a job at Kentucky Fried Chicken doing inventory.
It stands to reason that the more motivated college grads and the progeny of helicopter parents would turn to mathematical pursuits. A good example is the story in Virtual Strategy, a heck of a title, but I don’t know what virtual strategy has to do with paying for petrol or retiring one of those pesky education loans. The story “Social Media Advertising Revenue to Show Steep Growth, Reaching $25 Billion by 2015 and $114 Billion by 2020” caught my attention.
Those are decent numbers, particularly the $114 billion. Here’s the best part in my opinion:
Further the Worldwide Social Media revenue is forecast for consistent growth with 2012 revenue totaling $14.9Bn, and the market is projected to reach $29.1Bn in 2014, $58.1Bn in 2016, will touch magical mark of $100Bn towards early part of 2018 and by the end of 2020 it will grow substantially closing at around $233bn.
Note the $233 billion.
Let’s assume that this estimate is accurate, give or take a few billion. Among the azure chip crowd involved in virtual strategy, what’s the risk?
Consider the Google. Replete with mathematicians and stats savvy, socially adjusted wizards, Google would look at these numbers and ask, “What can we do to get as much of this money as possible?? The answers to this question have in our exercise in virtual strategy concluded that Google must dominate social media. We can see the outcome of this type of thinking in Google’s efforts in social media and making everything from colanders to clicking on a Web page a social experience.
The problem, of course, is that social media has some established outfits like Facebook. There are quasi social operations which seem to appeal to specific demographics like Pinterest. And there are giants like Microsoft who want to convert making a phone call into a sharing opportunity.
Are these companies really social? Nah, these outfits are trying to make a buck. The social thing is the current hobby horse. The azure chip crowd knows that wild and crazy estimates are like charcoal starter fluid on dry wood shavings. The bigger the number, the more the frenzy.
A Road Map for Censorship
March 31, 2012
David Bamman, Brendan O’Connor, Noah A. Smith present some interesting facts based on a study they wrote about in their article, Censorship and Deletion Practices in Chinese Social Media. Their study touches on a variety of different aspects regarding how China allegedly controls the intake and outflow of information.
The Chinese government methods are far different from the United States’ approach. My understanding of the situation is that China takes censorship to extremes and infringes on the freedom of their citizens using the GFW (Great Firewall of China) , which filters key phrases and words, preventing access to sites like America’s Facebook and Google. However, Sina Weibo is the Chinese equivalent of Facebook where bloggers post and pass information presumably in a way the officials perceive as more suitable for the Middle Kingdom.
Sina Weibo is monitored and as long as members stay within the boundaries or disguise their information, posts go unnoticed. If any of the outlawed phrases are entered, the user’s post is deleted and anyone searching for the information is met with the phrase ‘Target weibo does not exist’. If the user properly masks the phrase or words used, the information will get through, showing that there is the possibility of future change regarding the censorship practices in China.
The GFW will catch obvious outgoing information such as political figures, which was monitored during the study. The article asserted:
In late June/early July 2011, rumors began circulating in the Chinese media that Jiang Zemin, general secretary of the Communist Party of China from 1989 to 2002, had died. These rumors reached their height on 6 July, with reports in the Wall Street Journal, Guardian and other Western media sources that Jiang’s name had been blocked in searches on Sina Weibo (Chin, 2011; Branigan, 2011). If we look at all 532 messages published during this time period that contain the name Jiang Zemin, we note a striking pattern of deletion: on 6 July, the height of the rumor, 64 of the 83 messages containing that name were deleted (77.1 percent); on 7 July, 29 of 31 (93.5 percent) were deleted.
No firewall is perfect, but according to the studies done on searches, blogs and texts containing prohibited information, China has a pretty impressive figure. It may not seem reasonable by American standards, but by filtering anything they deem as politically sensitive, China protects the privacy of their country, preventing global rumors and interference.
On one level, censorship makes sense, in particular regarding the business world. The Chinese government makes its corporations responsible for their employees, meaning if an employee is blogging instead of working and puts in illegal information, the company itself is fined, or worst case scenario, shut down. Thus Chinese factories have a high rate of productivity because their workers are actually doing their job.
How is China’s alleged position relevant to the US? There may be little relevance, but to officials in other countries, the article’s information may be just what one needs to check into a Holiday Inn of censorship.
Jennifer Shockley, March 31, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
