Twitter Influential but a Poor Driver of News Traffic
June 20, 2016
A recent report from social analytics firm Parse.ly examined the relationship between Twitter and digital publishers. NeimanLab shares a few details in, “Twitter Has Outsized Influence, but It Doesn’t Drive Much Traffic for Most News Orgs, a New Report Says.” Parse.ly tapped into data from a couple hundred of its clients, a group that includes digital publishers like Business Insider, the Daily Beast, Slate, and Upworthy.
Naturally, news sites that make the most of Twitter do so by knowing what their audience wants and supplying it. The study found there are two main types of Twitter news posts, conversational and breaking, and each drives traffic in its own way. While conversations can engage thousands of users over a period of time, breaking news produces traffic spikes.
Neither of those findings is unexpected, but some may be surprised that Twitter feeds are not inspiring more visits publishers’ sites. Writer Joseph Lichterman reports:
“Despite its conversational and breaking news value, Twitter remains a relatively small source of traffic for most publishers. According to Parse.ly, less than 5 percent of referrals in its network came from Twitter during January and February 2016. Twitter trails Facebook, Google, and even Yahoo as sources of traffic, the report said (though it does edge out Bing!)”
Still, publishers are unlikely to jettison their Twitter accounts anytime soon, because that platform offers a different sort of value. One that is, perhaps, more important for consumers. Lichterman quotes the report:
“Though Twitter may not be a huge overall source of traffic to news websites relative to Facebook and Google, it serves a unique place in the link economy. News really does ‘start’ on Twitter.”
And the earlier a news organization knows about a situation, the better. That is an advantage few publishers will want to relinquish.
Cynthia Murrell, June 20, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Data Wrangling Market Is Self-Aware and Growing, Study Finds
June 20, 2016
The article titled Self-Service Data Prep is the Next Big Thing for BI on Datanami digs into the quickly growing data preparation industry by reviewing the Dresner Advisory Services study. The article provides a list of the major insights from the study and paints a vivid picture of the current circumstances. Most companies often perform end-user data preparation, but only a small percentage (12%) find themselves to be proficient in the area. The article states,
“Data preparation is often challenging, with many organizations lacking the technical resources to devote to comprehensive data preparation. Choosing the right self-service data preparation software is an important step…Usability features, such as the ability to build/execute data transformation scripts without requiring technical expertise or programming skills, were considered “critical” or “very important” features by over 60% of respondents. As big data becomes decentralized and integrated into multiple facets of an organization, users of all abilities need to be able to wrangle data themselves.”
90% of respondents agreed on the importance of two key features: the capacity to aggregate and group data, and a straightforward interface for implementing structure on raw data. Trifacta earned the top vendor ranking of just under 30 options for the second year in a row. The article concludes by suggesting that many users are already aware that data preparation is not an independent activity, and data prep software must be integrated with other resources for success.
Chelsea Kerwin, June 20, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google Android: A Good Old Fashioned Conscious Monopoly
June 19, 2016
I read “Android Inventor Andy Rubin Thinks the Future of Smartphones Might Be a Single AI.” That is an efficient way to view a digital ecosystem. Now I have zero idea if the write up is accurate, but I like the idea of a smart monopoly. Hey, monopolies are good for those who have one. A smart monopoly is like the cherry on top of a hot fudge sundae made of money, power, and control.
The write up informs me:
Rubin said a combination of quantum computing and AI advancements could yield a conscious intelligence that would underpin every piece of technology. “If you have computing that is as powerful as this could be, you might only need one,” Rubin says. “It might not be something you carry around; it just has to be conscious.”
The write up includes this comment attributed to the Google wizard:
“You shouldn’t be worrying about Skynet coming online. You should be worrying about what it means to compute at these magnitudes.”
Very parental. I like the “should” and the coy reference to Skynet and robots. I love the Alphabet Google thing. Those silly folks yapping about skewed Clinton search results and the Trump-Hitler hits, the hassles with the EU, and the advertising focus are misunderstanding the value of a conscious, single artificial intelligence. I get it. Nothing to worry about.
Stephen E Arnold, June
Stephen E Arnold, June 19, 2016
Facial Recognition: A Work in Progress
June 18, 2016
Years ago I read “The FBI’s Next Generation Identification Program: Helping Law Enforcement Track and Share Suspect Information across State Lines.” That write up identified, probably semi accurately, Lockheed Martin as the “lead contractor” for the NGI IPS (Next Generation Identification Interstate Photo System). I mention this because the write up “FBI Has 411 Million Photos in Its Facial Recognition System, and a Federal Watchdog Isn’t Happy” does not dig into the contractor or contractors involved in this nine zero project. (An older list of some FBI contractors appears at this link.)
The GAO report about the program also lacks some details. If you are interested in what a government report of the controversial system offers, you can download for now a copy of the document at this link.
I realize that the marketing of smart systems which can make sense of images suggests three functions:
- High speed matching
- High precision
- High recall.
The reality is a bit different. Please, keep in mind that the beliefs created by over inflated marketing claims and carefully staged demonstrations often are at odds with how the system actually performs in real life.
Government entities have to look to technology to help deal with the ever increasing and possibly unstoppable flood of digital information. The actual systems, whether the UK’s NHS systems or the US Army’s DCGS systems, are works in progress. In many cases, the progress is halting, and the work has unanticipated consequences.
I have pointed out that enterprise search, content management, and similar and smart software are not the slam dunks many managers think they are. Hope springs eternal, but that hope has to be gated with what happens in the real, disorganized, and time starved reality in which the magic is supposed to happen.
Stephen E Arnold, June 20, 2016
IBM Watson: Factoids and Perfect Haikus
June 18, 2016
I read “AI Will “Help Humans Make Better Decisions” Says IBM Watson General Manager.” I like it when smart software improves human decision making. Wait. If the software were able to help humans, wouldn’t IBM be the dominant company in artificial intelligence. Amazon, Facebook, Google, and the others in the AI game would be sucking wind and reporting financial headwinds? Hmmm. IBM seems to be the leader in AI talk and a bit of a laggard in the revenues department.
Here’s a factoid:
Watson can understand data at astonishing speeds and volumes. In fact, it reads 800 million pages per second. It can reason to form hypotheses, make considered arguments and prioritize recommendations to help humans make decisions.
Now that is an impressive number. I want to ask, “What is a page?” and “What happens when a page consists of an image and a table of data?” 800 million. Zippy indeed. Compared to what and at what cost for computing infrastructure?
And again with the factoid:
[IBM Watson] programmers trained InkWell with Watson’s Tone Analyzer and Personality Insights to analyze the words for emotion, word selection, personality and tone. The result is a perfect haiku that conveys emotion and tone, demonstrating how a cognitive system can understand language beyond statistics.
Does IBM Watson’s perfect haiku take this form?
What about the work of Basho, Buson, Shiki, and Issa. Consider this translation of Issa’s haiku:
The wren
Earns his living
Noiselessly.
Watson should be, in my opinion, able to answer the question, “How does IBM grow its revenues?” Issa might think of a run away horse. Is that whirring I hear the sound of Issa’s ducks quacking. Noiselessly, not likely. Weakly sounds the IBM marketing howls.
Stephen E Arnold, June 18, 2016
Google Springboard: The Shadow of Verity and Yahoo
June 17, 2016
I read “Google Launches Springboard Enterprise Search Tool, Revamps Sites.” Ah, thoughts flowed when I learned that a Google customer can search Google Docs and Google Drive soon.
Anyone remember Verity? What about Yahoo semantic search? No. The wizard influencing both of these outstanding services (well, outstanding might be too strong a word) is a person who has cast a shadow over information access for many years. I recall one great idea floated about 25 years ago. Users of the Verity system would pay for each cell of structured data a query “touched.” Yep, taxi meter pricing. Another great thought was offered when the individual told a BearStearns’ professional and me in no uncertain terms that Yahoo’s semantic search methods were better than Ramanathan Guha’s. Okay. Good assertion. Where are those thoughts now? Yes, searching Google services for one’s own content. Einstein, you have been aced.
The answer is Google Springboard. Yep, a service from the Alphabet Google thing which allows a Google services user to — hand on to your information access hat, gentle reader — to “will help them search more easily through and find information from Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Drive, Groups and other applications.”
I know that Alphabet Google is doing a bang up job in many technical disciplines. There is the “solving death” thing. There are the Loon balloons. There are self driving cars with sticky hoods. Oh, so much innovation.
The notion that the search function in Gmail will be extended to the goodies tucked into other Google cloud services is a bold move. For an advertising company, the shadow of Verity and Yahoo falls over precision and recall at Google.
Oh, wait. Google has not yet solved death. When the new service becomes available, perhaps finding an item in calendar or in a Google Doc will become a reality. Innovation never rests at the Alphabet Google thing.
Stephen E Arnold, June 18, 2016
The Value of Data: The Odd Isolation of Little Items
June 17, 2016
I read “Determining the Economic Value of Data.” The author is a chief technology officer, a dean of Big Data, and apparently a college professor training folks to be MBAs. The idea is that data are intangible. How does one value an intangible when writing from the perspective of a “dean”?
The answer is to seize on some applications of Big Data which can be converted to measurable entities. Examples include boosting the number of bank products a household “holds”, reducing of customer churn, and making folks happier. Happiness is a “good” and one can measure it; for example, “How happy are you with the health care plan?”
One can then collect data, do some Excel fiddling, and output numbers. The comparative figures (one hopes) provide a handle upon which to hang “value.”
This is the standard approach used to train business wizards in MBA programs based on my observations. We know the method works, just check out the economic performance of the US economy in the last quarter.
The problem I have with this isolationist approach is that it ignores the context of any perceived value. I don’t want to hobble through the The Knowledge Value Revolution by Taichi Sakaiya. I would suggest that any analysis of value may want to acknowledge the approach taken by Sakaiya about four decades ago. One can find a copy of the book for one penny on good old Amazon. How’s that for knowledge value.
Old ideas are not exactly the fuel that fires the imaginations of some “deans” or MBAs. Research is the collection of data which one can actually locate. Forget about the accuracy of the data or the validity of the analyses of loosey goosey notions of “satisfaction”.
I would suggest that the “dean’s” approach is a bit wobbly. Consider Sakaiya, who seems to be less concerned with creating busy work and more with coming to grips why certain products and services command high prices and others are almost valueless.
I know that reading a book written in the 1980s is a drag. Perhaps it is better to ignore prescient thought and just go with whatever can be used to encourage the use of Excel and the conversion of numbers into nifty visualizations.
Stephen E Arnold, June 17, 2016
Public Opinion of Dark Web May Match Media Coverage
June 17, 2016
A new survey about the Dark Web was released recently. Wired published an article centered around the research, called Dark Web’s Got a Bad Rep: 7 in 10 People Want It Shut Down, Study Shows. Canada’s Center for International Governance Innovation surveyed 24,000 people in 24 countries about their opinion of the Dark Web. The majority of respondents, 71 percent across all countries and 72 percent of Americans, said they believed the “dark net” should be shut down. The article states,
“CIGI’s Jardine argues that recent media coverage, focusing on law enforcement takedowns of child porn sites and bitcoin drug markets like the Silk Road, haven’t improved public perception of the dark web. But he also points out that an immediate aversion to crimes like child abuse overrides mentions of how the dark web’s anonymity also has human rights applications. ‘There’s a knee-jerk reaction. You hear things about crime and its being used for that purpose, and you say, ‘let’s get rid of it,’’ Jardine says.”
We certainly can attest to the media coverage zoning in on the criminal connections with the Dark Web. We cast a wide net tracking what has been published in regards to the darknet but many stories, especially those in mainstream sources emphasize cybercrime. Don’t journalists have something to gain from also publishing features revealing the aspects the Dark Web that benefit investigation and circumvent censorship?
Megan Feil, June 17, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Amazon’s Alexa Popularizes Digital Assistants
June 17, 2016
Digital assistants are smarter than ever. I remember when PDAs were the wave of the future and meant to revolutionize lives, but they still relied on human input and did not have much in the ways of artificial intelligence. Now Cortana, Siri, and Alexa respond to vocal commands like an episode of Star Trek. Digital assistants are still limited in many ways, but according to Venture Beat Alexa might be changing how we interact with technology: “How Amazon’s Alexa Is Bringing Intelligent Assistance Into The Mainstream”.
Natural language processing teamed with artificial intelligence has made using digital assistants easier and more accepted. Predictive analytics specialist MindMeld commissioned a “user adoption survey” of voice-based intelligent assistants and the results show widespread adoption.
Amazon’s Echo teamed with the Alexa speech-enabled vocal device are not necessarily dominating the market, but Amazon is showing the potential for an intelligent system with added services like Uber, music-streaming, financial partners, and many more.
“Such routine and comfort will be here soon, as IA acceptance and use continue to accelerate. What started as a novelty and source of marketing differentiation from a smartphone manufacturer has become the most convenient user interface for the Internet of Things, as well as a plain-spoken yet empathetic controller of our digital existence.”
Amazon is on the right path as are other companies experimenting with the digital assistant. My biggest quip is that all of these digital assistants are limited and have a dollar sign attached to them greater than some people’s meal budgets. It is not worth investing in an intelligent assistant, unless needed. I say wait for better and cheaper technology that will be here soon.
Whitney Grace, June 17, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Statistical Translation: Dead Like Marley
June 16, 2016
I read “Facebook Says Statistical Machine Translation Has Reached End of Life.” Hey, it is Facebook. Truth for sure. I learned:
Scale is actually one reason Facebook has invested in its own MT technology. According to Packer [Facebook wizard’’], there are more than two trillion posts and comments, which grows by over a billion each day. “Pretty clearly, we’re not going to solve this problem with a roomful or even a building-full of human translators,” he quipped, adding that to have even “a hope of solving this problem, we need AI; we need automation.” The other reason is adaptability. “We tried that,” said Packer about using third-party MT, but it “did not work well enough for our needs.” The reason? The language of Facebook is different from what is on the rest of the Web. Packer described Facebook language as “extremely informal. It’s full of slang, it’s very regional.” He said it is also laden with metaphors, idiomatic expressions, and is riddled with misspellings (most of them intentional). Additionally, as in the rest of the world, there is a marked difference in the way different age groups communicate on Facebook.
I wonder if it is time to send death notices to the vendors who use statistical methods? Perhaps I should wait a bit. Predictions are often different from reality.
Stephen E Arnold, June 16, 2016
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