Social Intelligence a Nice Addition to Analytics, but Not Necessary
August 9, 2017
Social media is an ever-evolving tricky beast to tame when it comes to analytics which is why most companies do the best they can with the resources appointed to the job. Social intelligence gurus, however, are constantly pushing more ways to make sense of the mounting social data.
A recent CIO article exploring the growing field of social intelligence highlighted the role of Sally-Anne Kaminski, Global Social Media Strategy Manager, at Zebra Technologies. Her job was explained as:
When the sales enablement team approaches her about prospective clients, Kaminski taps Oracle’s Social Cloud, a social relationship management tool, to build a comprehensive dashboard to help the sales representative nail the sale. Kaminski loads Social Cloud’s Boolean search with keywords, phrases and topics to discover in conversations across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as message boards and blogs.
Is it effective though? Even Kaminski admits there is no data showing her role analyzing social media data (beyond what analytics alone can do) is benefiting anyone. At the end of the day, social intelligence is reliant on the human touch (think more money) and we must question the operational value it provides.
Catherine Lamsfuss, August 9, 2017
After Voice, Visual Search Is next Frontier for Search
August 9, 2017
From text to voice, search business has come a long way. If Pinterest co-founder is to be believed, the future of search is visual.
In an interview to BBC Correspondent and published as the video titled Pinterest Co-Founder Says Photos Hold the Future of Search, co-founder Evan Sharp says:
There are billions of ideas on Pinterest and users search an equal number of them on Pinterest. Our primary source of revenue is advertising wherein we help business promote their products and services through Pins
There might be some substance to what Sharp is saying. Google recently revealed Google Lens and Google Deep Dream. While Google Lens helps users to identify and search objects around them, Deep Dream is a creative tool used for creating composite images using various sources. The intent is to encourage users to use visual tools that the company is building.
VR and AR are the buzzwords now and soon marketers will be placing virtual ads within these visual mediums to promote their products. Though Google Goggles failed to take off, it was probably because the product was ahead of its time. How about a second take now?
Vishal Ingole, August 9, 2017
HonkinNews for 8 August 2017 Now Available
August 8, 2017
The HonkinNews for August 8, 2017, is now available. Censorship caught the attention of the Beyond Search goose in early August. Virtual private networks are not faves of the authorities in China or Russia. Apple put money before principles, and Russia just took action without fooling around with mere commercial enterprises. Indonesia nixed encrypted message apps, and in Harrod’s Creek, incomplete information means happy information. Don Quixote is now on horseback, eager to slay the enterprise search dragon. The effort is an incomplete one. Important vendors are omitted from the study, and the promise of search provider revenues is a disappointment. Those search windmills remain formidable. Do we mention that the six key vendors are interesting to the good Don, but not to vendors like Elastic and more innovative next-generation findability companies? Yes, we do. Microsoft and LinkedIn may deliver information to Word users which can have some unintended consequences. For example, Bertin, the owner of the Ami Albert search technology, looks as if it is getting smaller, not growing. In addition, the look at Bertin Ami staffing, if accurate, says, “Sales is the main job as staff size shrinks.” IBM’s WKS warrants a comment. There is some naming confusion for liberal arts majors who paid attention in sociology and psychology classes. The main point is that Watson Knowledge Studio makes clear how much manual work is required to get Watson tuned up and ready to deliver useful outputs. Put on that IBM WKS happy face and get cracking. The program also includes a reference to Dark Web Notebook and captures a barn sign in Harrod’s Creek highlighting the book. You can view the program at this link.
Free Content Destroying Print Media
August 8, 2017
Today’s generation has no concept of having to wait for the day’s top stories till the newspaper is delivered. If they want to know something (or even they don’t) they simply turn on their Smart phone, tablet or even watch! With news stories available 24/7 with automatic alerts, most people under thirty can’t possibly fathom paying for it.
It almost wasn’t that way. According to Poynter,
In the 1990s, a cantankerous, bottom-line-obsessed and visionary Tribune Company executive named Charles Brumback pushed something that was called The New Century News Network. The top print news organizations, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Times-Mirror would form a network in which they’d house their content online and charge for it. Members would get paid based on usage. They even started a newswire that was similar to what we know as Google News.
Unfortunately, the heads of print media couldn’t see the future and how their pockets would be deflated due to the giving away of their content to online giants such as Facebook and Yahoo and Google.
Now, these same short-sighted network bigwigs are wanting Congress to intervene on their behalf. As the article points out, “running to Congress seems belated and impotent.”
Catherine Lamsfuss, August 8, 2017
Big Data Can Reveal Darkest Secrets
August 8, 2017
Surveys for long have been used by social and commercial organizations for collecting data. However, with easy access to Big Data, it seems people while responding to surveys, lie more than thought about earlier.
In an article by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz published by The Guardian and titled Everybody Lies: How Google Search Reveals Our Darkest Secrets, the author says:
The power in Google data is that people tell the giant search engine things they might not tell anyone else. Google was invented so that people could learn about the world, not so researchers could learn about people, but it turns out the trails we leave as we seek knowledge on the internet are tremendously revealing.
As per the author, impersonal and anonymity of Internet and ease of access is one of the primary reasons why Internet users reveal their darkest secrets to Google (in form of queries).
Big Data which is a form of data scourged from various sources can be a reliable source of information. For instance, surveys say that around 10% of American men are gay. Big Data, however, reveals that only 2-3% of men are actually gay. To know more about interesting insights on Big Data, courtesy Google, read the article here.
Vishal Ingole, August 8, 2017
Google: The Diversity Mix Up
August 7, 2017
Update August 8, 2017: The alleged author of the alleged essay about the alleged anti-diversity in the alleged area of the US known as “Silicon Valley” has allegedly been terminated. The alleged action means that the alleged individual is available for alleged “work”. None of that “rest and vest” malarky. See “Google Fires Author of Divisive Memo an Gender Differences.” Alleged gender differences do not allegedly exist. Allegedly that’s good to know before writing an essay and posting it so that alleged management practices are allegedly committed to a distribution system. This alleged activity is allegedly “real” news. Ah, science clubs. Ever entertaining.
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Update 2 August 8, 2017: Sundar Pichai, the fellow who is handling assorted hot tater tots for the Alphabet Google thing issued a memo called “Note to Employees from Sundar Pichai.” The write up said:
“This has been a very difficult time.”
Hey, great insight. That’s what makes Google a smart company. Well, sort of smart if one discounts the dust up in the European Union, the solving of death thing, and telling China it had to change. The point of the write up is that suggesting anyone who is biologically disadvantaged when a colleague is a bad thing. I noted this statement because I am stupid and I have to be told things multiple times. (Right, mom? Right, dad?)
“The pas few days have been very difficult for many at the company, and we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree—while doing so in line with our Code of Conduct.”
There is nothing like a Code of Conduct? I wonder if Margrethe Vestager has a copy of that document?
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Beyond Search noted the diversity excitement at Alphabet Google, the legions of Google users, and the handful of folks who dare to take a stance against Google. Beyond Search has characterized Google-type companies as semi-adult science clubs. None of the write ups listed below reference this prescient and accurate parallel:
The Motherboard story about “Internal Viral.
The screed itself
The write up wanting empathy, just not for the author of the screed.
News flash. The likelihood of change is like a calculus problem with a student who is not into zero but not zero.
Our view in Harrod’s Creek is that one who does not comprehend the value of the Google-type of approach to actual practice and the subsequent PR infused activity may want to steer clear of a Google-type of company.
What is interesting is that this is another example of the increasing vulnerability of Alphabet Google. I could be like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and count the ways, but I will not. Ms. Barrett Browning was secretive and I thought that she might have been interested in laudanum. If true, she might have lifted a languorous hand to add to the Google diversity discussion.
But maybe not. She was into whipping up excitement for Italian politics, which may have been a comparatively more important topic.
The science club like thinker will reject Ms. Barrett-Browning’s interest. One cannot count, measure, or weigh passion. Interesting but not scientific. Talking is not counting, calculating, or analyzing real things, is it? Consider addomg emotional intellingence to screed’s about Google-like management methods and staff selection processes? Nah.
Stephen E Arnold, August 7, 2017
Google: A Me Too from Mountain View
August 7, 2017
It is a tough world out there for a seller of online ads. From my point of view, the concentration of online advertising in the hands of Facebook and Google is a natural consequence of digital disintermediation. He who is most like the old Bell Telephone wins.
What does one do when an upstart comes up with a better idea? If one is a giant company’s chief innovator, the answer is obvious: Imitate, then use the power of scale to take lots of money.
I thought about this characteristic of online when I read “Google Reportedly Building Its Own Snapchat Competitor.” I would have used the word “killer,” not competitor, but that’s why I am a 74 year old retired person in rural Kentucky.
The write up (which may be a recycled variant of another real journalism effort) said:
Google is working on its answer to Snapchat. It’s called Stamp — a portmanteau of “stories” and “AMP,” the acronym for Accelerated Mobile Pages …The new platform would be similar to Snapchat’s Discover feature, where publishers create and share made-for-Snapchat (or repurposed-for-Snapchat) content.
Didn’t Google try to buy Snap when it was just Snapchat?
Moral of the story:
The model and wife of Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel has historically not been too thrilled about other tech companies ripping off her husband’s product. “Do they have to steal all of my partner’s ideas? I’m so appalled by that … When you directly copy someone, that’s not innovation.”
Steal?
Nah, that’s innovation the online way.
Stephen E Arnold, August 7, 2017
IBM Watson: Horning in on the WKS Model
August 7, 2017
If you paid attention in sociology class, you might have heard about the Willem Kleine Schaars Model or WKS for short. This is a reasonably well known way to make sense of individuals with psychological disabilities. I was interested when I read an email from IBM to me stating:
Tired of wasting time creating and fine tuning your custom machine learning models? Rules-based approaches can often shorten development time and improve accuracy. Register for our webinar, Accelerate WKS model development with a rule-based approach, on Wednesday, August 9 at 10AM PT to learn how to build rule-based models and save time by using them to pre-annotate machine learning models.
There is nothing so disappointing as the idea of a better way to to perform WKS classifications.
Bummer.
IBM’s WKS means the Watson Knowledge Studio. There’s no getting around the fact that humans or wizards like my goslings have to write rules and plug them into Watson.
My suggestion is:
Either get a better acronym or automate Watson’s expensive, tedious, error prone, difficult, and time consuming preparatory steps for a Watson deployment.
Otherwise I might slip into a different Willem Kleine Schaars’s category. Yikes!
Stephen E Arnold, August 7, 2017
Big Data as Savior of Newspapers? Tell That to NYT Editors
August 7, 2017
This would be ironic. The SmartDataCollective posits, “Is Big Data the Salvation of the Newspaper Industry?” The write-up tells us that several prominent publications are turning to data analysis to boost their bottom lines and, they hope, save themselves from extinction. Writer Rehan Ijaz cites this post from the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation as he describes ways the New York Times and the Financial Times are leveraging data. He quotes publishing pro, David Soloff:
The Financial Times, one of our global publisher customers, uses big data analytics to optimize pricing on ads by section, audience, targeting parameters, geography, and time of day. Our friends at the FT sell more inventory because the team knows what they have, where it is and how it should be priced to capture the opportunity at hand. To boot, analytics reveal previously undersold areas of the publication, enabling premium pricing and resulting in found margin falling straight to the bottom line.
What about the venerable New York Times? That paper hired a data scientist in 2014, yet now is slashing staff, we learn from Reuters’ piece, “New York Times Offers Buyouts, Scraps Public Editor Position.” It is, in fact, most editors facing unemployment (because clear prose and verified facts are so last century, I suppose.) Reporters Jessica Toonkel and Narottam Medhora reveal:
The newspaper said it would eliminate the in-house watchdog position of public editor as it shifts focus to reader comments. ‘Today, our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to collectively serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be,’ publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr said in a memo, which was reviewed by Reuters.
“Vigilant and forceful?” Is “correct” not a consideration? Professional editors exist for a reason; crowdsourcing will not always suffice. Also, call me old-fashioned, but I think facts should be confirmed before publication. This is an interesting choice for the Times to be making particularly now, amid the “fake news” commotion.
Cynthia Murrell, August 7, 2017
Ask Me Anything by Google
August 7, 2017
In a recently released report by Google, the search engine giant says that out of billions of queries searched by its users, around 15% are unique or new queries.
Quartz in an article titled However Strange Your Search, Chances Are Google Has Seen It Before says:
His research shows that people turn to Google to learn about things prohibited by social norms: racist memes, self-induced abortions, and sexual fetishes of all kinds. In India, for example, the most popular query beginning “my husband wants…” is “…me to breastfeed him.
Google has become synonymous with the search for any kind of information, service or product all over the planet. Websites that can cater to audience demand for information thus have an opportunity to capitalize on this opportunity and monetize their websites.
A recent report suggests that SEO, the core of digital marketing is a $90 billion industry and soon will surpass $150 billion in revenues by 2020. It’s thus an excellent opportunity for anyone with niche audience to monetize the idea.
Vishal Ingole, August 7, 2017
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