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
LinkedIn: The Thought Leader Misfire
June 2, 2016
I read “News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016.” No big surprises, just confirmation of what our research has pegged. Almost two thirds in the Pew sample get their “news” from Facebook. You can read the summary and get a sense of the angst trigger the data make available to those in “real” news outfits.
What I noted is a different point. In the write up, LinkedIn users do not get their news from LinkedIn. On an upside note, the number of LinkedIn users who use the social networking service for news rose to 19 percent from 13 percent in 2013. That growth suggests that the effort to make LinkedIn a go to system for high value information is have modest impact.
Compared with Reddit and Facebook, LinkedIn ranks near YouTube and Vine in the must have information about compelling events.
LinkedIn seems to have trimmed back the volume of spam sent to me. I asked LinkedIn’s help desk this question:
What do I need to do to be notified of new posts to the groups I follow?
After several days of waiting, I still don’t know the answer. My hunch is that LinkedIn’s interface twiddling and workflow massaging is more interested in upselling me. Too bad. Every once in a while, the groups I follow produce “real news.”
From my vantage point in Harrod’s Creek, I thought LinkedIn had a chance to become more important in the must have information business. Right now, LinkedIn which operates Slideshare, has flailed. Perhaps the effort will pay off. Right now, I see a missed easy lay up or even an own goal.
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2016
VK.com: An Alternative to Facebook
May 27, 2016
VK is the name of the “old” VKontakte social networking service. My estimates peg the traffic to the site at about 30 percent of Facebook. The user count is in the 300 million range and growing. The user base is concentrated in Russia, but the service is attracting users from other countries. Online translation tools make it easy for a non Russian speaker to use the service.
Earlier this year, I read “German Neo Nazis Flocking to Putin’s Facebook Knock off VKontakte.” The write up seems a bit one sided, but social network sites allegedly linked to Mr. Putin suggests that a bit of additional research and investigation are warranted.
You can sign up and explore VK.com at www.vk.com. I provide some basics for appropriate prophylactic measures in my Dark Web lectures. One thought is okay here: Be prudent.
You will need a VK.com account to access an interesting facial recognition service called FindFace. The site looks like this:
Like Google’s “search by photo”, the FindFace service delivers close matches to the face you upload to the service. The Guardian published “Face Recognition App Taking Russia by Storm May Bring End to Public Anonymity.” The digital wannabe stated:
FindFace compares photos to profile pictures on social network Vkontakte and works out identities with 70% reliability.
I mention VK.com and FindFace because I was asked if there were an alternative to Facebook. The answer is, “VC.com.” However, the use of the service for certain types of groups and certain purposes is less easy than it was in the past. Some folks can use the VK.com apps and features instead of fooling around with Dark Web services.
Stephen E Arnold, May 27, 2016
Facebook and Law Enforcement in Cahoots
May 13, 2016
Did you know that Facebook combs your content for criminal intent? American Intelligence Report reveals, “Facebook Monitors Your Private Messages and Photos for Criminal Activity, Reports them to Police.” Naturally, software is the first entity to scan content, using keywords and key phrases to flag items for human follow-up. Of particular interest are “loose” relationships. Reporter Kristan T. Harris writes:
“Reuters’ interview with the security officer explains, Facebook’s software focuses on conversations between members who have a loose relationship on the social network. For example, if two users aren’t friends, only recently became friends, have no mutual friends, interact with each other very little, have a significant age difference, and/or are located far from each other, the tool pays particular attention.
“The scanning program looks for certain phrases found in previously obtained chat records from criminals, including sexual predators (because of the Reuters story, we know of at least one alleged child predator who is being brought before the courts as a direct result of Facebook’s chat scanning). The relationship analysis and phrase material have to add up before a Facebook employee actually looks at communications and makes the final decision of whether to ping the authorities.
“’We’ve never wanted to set up an environment where we have employees looking at private communications, so it’s really important that we use technology that has a very low false-positive rate,’ Sullivan told Reuters.”
Uh-huh. So, one alleged predator has been caught. We’re told potential murder suspects have also been identified this way, with one case awash in 62 pages of Facebook-based evidence. Justice is a good thing, but Harris notes that most people will be uncomfortable with the idea of Facebook monitoring their communications. She goes on to wonder where this will lead; will it eventually be applied to misdemeanors and even, perhaps, to “thought crimes”?
Users of any social media platform must understand that anything they post could eventually be seen by anyone. Privacy policies can be updated without notice, and changes can apply to old as well as new data. And, of course, hackers are always lurking about. I was once cautioned to imagine that anything I post online I might as well be shouting on a public street; that advice has served me well.
Cynthia Murrell, May 13, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Parts Unknown of Dark Web Revealed in Study
May 13, 2016
While the parts unknown of the internet is said to be populated by terrorists’ outreach and propaganda, research shows a different picture. Quartz reports on this in the article, The dark web is too slow and annoying for terrorists to even bother with, experts say. The research mentioned comes from Thomas Rid and Daniel Moore of the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. They found 140 extremist Tor hidden services; inaccessible or inactive services topped the list with 2,482 followed by 1,021 non-illicit services. As far as illicit services, those related to drugs far outnumbered extremism with 423. The write-up offers a few explanations for the lack of terrorists publishing on the Dark Web,
“So why aren’t jihadis taking advantage of running dark web sites? Rid and Moore don’t know for sure, but they guess that it’s for the same reason so few other people publish information on the dark web: It’s just too fiddly. “Hidden services are sometimes slow, and not as stable as you might hope. So ease of use is not as great as it could be. There are better alternatives,” Rid told Quartz. As a communications platform, a site on the dark web doesn’t do what jihadis need it to do very well. It won’t reach many new people compared to “curious Googling,” as the authors point out, limiting its utility as a propaganda tool. It’s not very good for internal communications either, because it’s slow and requires installing additional software to work on a mobile phone.”
This article provides fascinating research and interesting conclusions. However, we must add unreliable and insecure to the descriptors for why the Dark Web may not be suitable for such uses.
Megan Feil, May 13, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Billions in vc Funding Continues Rinse and Repeat Process
May 12, 2016
In the tech world, the word billion may be losing meaning for some. Pando published a recent editorial called, While the rest of tech struggles, so far VCs have raised more this quarter than in past three years. This piece calls attention to the seemingly never-ending list of VC firms raising ever-more funds. For example, Accel announced their funds were at $2 billion, Founders Fund raised $1 billion in new funds, and Andreessen Horowitz currently works to achieve another $1.5 billion. The author writes,
“It was hard to put that [recent fundraising rounds] in context. I mean, yeah. These are major funds. Is it news that they raised a collective $4.5 billion more at some point? Doesn’t mean they’ll invest it any more quickly. All it means is that the two will still be around for another ten years, which we kinda already guessed. It’s staggeringly hard for a venture fund to actually go out of business, even when it wasn’t some of the first money in Facebook or, in the case of Marc Andreessen, sits on its board. [Disclosure: Marc Andreessen, Founders Fund and Accel are all investors in Pando.]”
As the author wonders, asking Pitchbook if it’s a “bigger quarter than usual”, our eyebrows are not raised by this this thought, nor easy money, bubbles, unicorns. Nah, this is just routine in Sillycon Valley.
Megan Feil, May 12, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Tumblr Tumbles, Marking yet Another Poor Investment Decision by Yahoo
April 14, 2016
The article on VentureBeat titled As Tumblr’s Value Head to Zero, a Look at Where It Ranks Among Yahoo’s 5 Worst Acquisition Deals pokes fun at Yahoo’s tendency to spend huge amounts of cash for companies only to watch them immediately fizzle. In the number one slot is Broadcast.com. Remember that? Me neither. But apparently Yahoo doled out almost $6B in 1999 to wade into the online content streaming game only to shut the company down after a few years. And thusly, we have Mark Cuban. Thanks Yahoo. The article goes on with the ranking,
“2. GeoCities: Yahoo paid $3.6 billion for this dandy that let people who knew nothing about the Web make web pages. Fortunately, this was also mostly shut down, and nearly all of its content vanished, saving most of us from a lot GIF-induced embarrassment. 3. Overture: Yahoo paid $1.63 billion in 2003 for this search engine firm after belatedly realizing that some upstart called Google was eating its lunch. Spoiler alert: Google won.”
The article suggests that Tumblr would slide into fourth place given the $1.1B price tag and two year crash and burn. It also capitulates that there are other ways of measuring this list, such as: levels of hard to watch. By that metric, cheaper deals with more obvious mismanagement like the social sites Flickr or Delicious might take the cake.
Chelsea Kerwin, April 14, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Nasdaq Joins the Party for Investing in Intelligence
April 6, 2016
The financial sector is hungry for intelligence to help curb abuses in capital markets, judging by recent actions of Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse. Nasdaq invests in ‘cognitive’ technology, from BA wire, announces their investment in Digital Reasoning. Nasdaq plans to connect Digital Reasoning algorithms with Nasdaq’s technology which surveils trade data. The article explains the benefits of joining these two products,
“The two companies want to pair Digital Reasoning software of unstructured data such as voicemail, email, chats and social media, with Nasdaq’s Smarts business, which is one of the foremost software for monitoring trading on global markets. It is used by more than 40 markets and 12 regulators. Combining the two products is designed to assess the context, content and relationships behind trading and spot signals that could indicate insider trading, market manipulation or even expenses rules violations.”
We have followed Digital Reasoning, and other intel vendors like them, for quite some time as they target sectors ranging from healthcare to law to military. This is just a case of another software intelligence vendor making the shift to the financial sector. Following the money appears to be the name of the game.
Megan Feil, April 6, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Third Party Company Profiteering
March 31, 2016
We might think that we keep our personal information from the NSA, but there are third party companies that legally tap ISP providers and phone companies and share the information with government agencies. ZDNet shares the inside story about this legal loophole, “Meet The Shadowy Tech Brokers That Deliver Your Data To The NSA.” These third party companies hide under behind their neutral flag and then reap a profit. You might have heard of some of them: Yaana, Subsentio, and Neustar.
“On a typical day, these trusted third-parties can handle anything from subpoenas to search warrants and court orders, demanding the transfer of a person’s data to law enforcement. They are also cleared to work with classified and highly secretive FISA warrants. A single FISA order can be wide enough to force a company to turn over its entire store of customer data.
Once the information passes through these third party companies it is nearly impossible to figure out how it is used. The third party companies do conduct audits, but it does little to protect the average consumer. Personal information is another commodity to buy, sell, and trade. It deems little respect for the individual consumer. Who is going to stand up for the little guy? Other than Edward Snowden?
Whitney Grace, March 31, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Slack Hires Noah Weiss
March 29, 2016
One thing you can always count on the tech industry is talent will jump from company to company to pursue the best and most innovating endeavors. The latest tech work to jump ship is Eric Weiss, he leaps from Foursquare to head a new Search, Learning, & Intelligence Group at Slack. VentureBeat reports the story in “Slack Forms Search, Learning, & Intelligence Group On ‘Mining The Chat Corpus.’” Slack is a team communication app and their new Search, Learning, & Intelligence Group will be located in the app’s new New York office.
Weiss commented on the endeavor:
“ ‘The focus is on building features that make Slack better the bigger a company is and the more it uses Slack,” Weiss wrote today in a Medium post. “The success of the group will be measured in how much more productive, informed, and collaborative Slack users get — whether a company has 10, 100, or 10,000 people.’”
For the new group, Weiss wants to hire experts who are talented in the fields of artificial intelligence, information retrieval, and natural language processing. From this talent search, he might be working on a project that will help users to find specific information in Slack or perhaps they will work on mining the chap corpus.
Other tech companies have done the same. Snapchat built a research team that uses artificial intelligence to analyze user content. Flipboard and Pinterest are working on new image recognition technology. Meanwhile Google, Facebook, Baidu, and Microsoft are working on their own artificial intelligence projects.
What will artificial intelligence develop into as more companies work on their secret projects.
Whitney Grace, March 29, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
