Gaze into the Search Crystal Ball
August 17, 2017
The way we consume Internet content has drastically changed. We are no longer tethered to hulking desk top computers, instead we can browse the Web as easily as drive a car. It goes without saying that the way we search and consume content will change. We have already seen changes, such as more ads appearing on movie, social media, and news Web sites. Google Answers and Google My Business are also affecting how we access content without needing to visit a Web site. Entrepreneur shares predictions for search and content in the article, “How Changes To The Way We Search Will Impact Businesses.”
While the majority of us still type our search queries, the rise of digital assistants has made vocal search gain traction. Vocal search means that we are using natural language to ask digital assistants queries. This is actually better for search results, because we tend to simplify questions when we talk and search engines like simple search queries. Digital assistants also change how we interact/consume our information. Instead of delving into the results ourselves, we rely on a third-party device to provide it to us. It will also change how we shop, especially if Amazon or another shopping site has a digital assistant.
Users are also seeking out an “everything-in platform,” where all the services they need from payments, shopping, and even ordering a sandwich are in one application.
Facebook Instant Articles and Google AMP don’t take users too far away from the originating platform source, enabling them to return to whatever they were doing before something caught their eye. Solutions like Facebook Store integrate products for an in-platform shopping experience, tightening the gap between product discovery and purchase, while directing users away from Google’s fairly limitless shopping mall of possibilities.
Hyper-personalization might be the creepiest and have the most impact. Search engines already gather information about us from our queries and then target us with related ads. However, it can get even worse with beacon technology that can track and recommend services/products to us based on a store we just visited or where we are traveling too. It will be the capitalist version of Big Brother.
Whitney Grace, August 17, 2017
Bannon Threatens Antitrust on Google and Facebook
August 15, 2017
During a time when the left and right seem further apart than ever before an odd, unexpected leak from within the white house has emerged. According to The Atlantic,
Steve Bannon, the chief strategist to President Donald Trump, believes Facebook and Google should be regulated as public utilities, according to an anonymously sourced report in The Intercept. This means they would get treated less like a book publisher and more like a telephone company. The government would shorten their leash, treating them as privately owned firms that provide an important public service.
Previously, only the far left has voiced such opinions making this questionable. Are the motives altruistic or monetary in nature? If such a move actually were to happen the way business is done at Google and Facebook would drastically change.
The article goes on to point out why and how Bannon’s musings on tech giants will never happen under the current administration, but regardless of one’s political ways, the fact that antitrust and online giants are being discussed together might signal the end of an era.
Catherine Lamsfuss, August 15, 2017
Me Too Innovation Is Real News. Is It?
August 14, 2017
I saw links to a Wall Street Journal write up titled “In Tech, Imitation Is the New Innovation.” To view the document, you will have to [a] buy a dead tree version of the paper, [b] borrow one from a friendly neighbor or a low rise office building with newspapers scattered inside the entrance because who arrives when one can be on vacation, or [c] pay for an online subscription to one of the outfits wanting the US government to bail the newspaper companies out. (Is this an imitation of the Chrysler and GM bailouts? May be, may be.) You can find the story on page A-1 with a jump to page A-8 in the August 10, 2017 edition.
The main point of the write up is that the titans of Silicon Valley have run out of ideas. In order to get new ideas, the companies copy other companies. If the task of copying is tough, the big company may buy the outfit with the idea. Think how well that has worked out for Dodge Ball.
The focus of the write up is the general inability of the titans to come up with new ideas that capture eyeballs. Facebook is the focus, but I think of Google as one of the premier companies using piggyback innovation.
An interesting example of quasi innovation is the Google patent application 2017/0228436 A1, which is a continuation of a patent series reaching back seven years to 2019. The seven year old patent itself nods its head to a Korean patent dating from 2002. The August 2017 patent application reaches back 15 years.
The idea of “standing on the shoulders of giants” romanticizes the fact that coming up with something that captures users is difficult. Very difficult.
What strikes me as “Providing Results to Parameterless Search Queries” is that Google’s “invention” is similar to the “me too” approach to creating something new referenced in the Wall Street Journal write up. Facebook is doing what seems “natural.” Imitation is natural because the original “good idea” cooked up at Harvard needs oomph. Data enables refinement of ideas that may be decades old.
Innovation is less about innovation by copying or acquiring. Innovation is now a way to exploit comprehensive data.
Stephen E Arnold, August 14, 2017
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
Lest Chinese Conglomerates Forget
August 4, 2017
Alphabet, the parent company of Google last week was fined $2.7 billion for abusing its position in search engine results. This should provide Chinese companies with global ambitions a precursor on what lies ahead for them.
In an editorial published by China Daily and titled Google’s Fine a Reminder, the author says:
Fining of Google should remind Chinese enterprises intent on going global that they should abide by local laws and regulations to avoid possible economic losses resulting from any malpractices and wrongdoings.
China is a closed ecosystem where Google, Facebook, Apple, or Amazon have absolute no dominance unlike in rest of the economies. Here, homegrown companies rule the roost. However, with burgeoning profits fuelled by domestic consumption, the Chinese companies are looking to expand to other markets.
With a reputation of lofting rules, Google getting fined by EU regulators should tell Chinese companies if they break the law of the land, expect being penalized, heavily.
Vishal Ingole, August 4, 2017
Facebook Grapples with Moderation
August 1, 2017
Mashable’s Alex Hazlett seems quite vexed about the ways Facebook is mishandling the great responsibility that comes with its great power in, “Facebook’s Been Making It Up All Along and We’re Left Holding the Bag.” Reporting on a recent leak from the Guardian of Facebook moderator documents, Hazlett writes:
It confirmed what a lot of people had long suspected: Facebook is making it up as they go along and we’re the collateral damage. The leaked moderator documents cover how to deal with depictions of things like self-harm and animal cruelty in exceedingly detailed ways. A first read through suggests that the company attempted to create a rule for every conceivable situation, and if they missed one, well they’d write that guideline when it came up. It suggests they think that this is just a question of perfecting the rules, when they’ve been off-base from the outset.
The article notes that communities historically craft and disseminate the rules, ethics, and principles that guide their discourse; in this case, the community is the billions of Facebook users across the globe, and those crucial factors are known only to the folks in control (except what was leaked, of course.) Hazlett criticizes the company for its “generic platitudes” and lack of transparency around an issue that now helps shape the very culture of the entire world. He observes:
Sure, if Facebook had decided to take an actual stand, they’d have had detractors. But if they’d been transparent about why, their users would have gotten over it. If you have principles, and you stick to them, people will adjust. Instead, Facebook seems to change their policies based on the level of outrage that is generated. It contributes to a perception of them as craven and exploitative. This is why Facebook lurches from stupid controversy to stupid controversy, learning the hard way every. single. time.
These days, decisions by one giant social media company can affect millions of people, often in ways, those affected don’t even perceive, much less understand. A strategy of lurching from one controversy to another does seem unwise.
Cynthia Murrell, August 1, 2017
Free Content Destroying Print Media
July 27, 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, July 27, 2017
Western in Western Out
July 26, 2017
A thoughtful piece at Quartz looks past filter bubbles to other ways mostly Western developers are gradually imposing their cultural perspectives on the rest of the world—“Silicon Valley Has Designed Algorithms to Reflect Your Biases, Not Disrupt Them.” Search will not get you objective information, but rather the content your behavior warrants. Writer Ramesh Srinivasan introduces his argument:
Silicon Valley dominates the internet—and that prevents us from learning more deeply about other people, cultures, and places. To support richer understandings of one another across our differences, we need to redesign social media networks and search systems to better represent diverse cultural and political perspectives. The most prominent and globally used social media networks and search engines— Facebook and Google—are produced and shaped by engineers from corporations based in Europe and North America. As a result, technologies used by nearly 2 billion people worldwide reflect the design perspectives of the limited few from the West who have power over how these systems are developed.
It is worth reading the whole article for its examination of the issue, and suggestions for what to do about it. Algorithm transparency, for example, would at least let users know what principles guide a platform’s content selections. Taking input from user communities in other cultures is another idea. My favorite is a proposal to prioritize firsthand sources over Western interpretations, even ones with low traffic or that are not in English. As Srinivasan writes:
Just because this option may be the easiest for me to understand doesn’t mean that it should be the perspective I am offered.
That sums up the issue nicely.
Cynthia Murrell, July 26, 2017
Instagram Reins in Trolls
July 21, 2017
Photo-sharing app Instagram has successfully implemented DeeText, a program that can successfully weed out nasty and spammy comments from people’s feeds.
Wired in an article titled Instagram Unleashes an AI System to Blast Away Nasty Comments says:
DeepText is based on recent advances in artificial intelligence, and a concept called word embeddings, which means it is designed to mimic the way language works in our brains.
DeepText initially was built by Facebook, Instagram’s parent company for preventing abusers, trolls, and spammers at bay. Buoyed by the success, it soon implemented on Instagram.
The development process was arduous wherein a large number of employees and contractors for months were teaching the DeepText engine how to identify abusers. This was achieved by telling the algorithm which word can be abusive based on its context.
At the moment, the tools are being tested and rolled out for a limited number of users in the US and are available only in English. It will be subsequently rolled out to other markets and languages.
Vishal Ingole, July 21, 2017
Software That Detects Sarcasm on Social Media
July 20, 2017
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management has developed Sarcasm SIGN, a software that can detect sarcasm in social media content. People with learning difficulties will find this tool useful.
According to an article published by Digital Journal titled Software Detects Sarcasm on Social Media:
The primary aim is to interpret sarcastic statements made on social media, be they Facebook comments, tweets or some other form of digital communication.
As we move towards a more digitized world where the majority of our communications are through digital channels, people with learning disabilities are at the receiving end. As machine learning advances so do the natural language capabilities. Tools like these will be immensely helpful for people who are unable to understand the undertones of communication.
The same tool can also be utilized by brands for determining who is talking about them in a negative way. Now ain’t that wonderful Facebook?
Vishal Ingole, July 20, 2017
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