Search Data from Bing for 2015 Yields Few Surprises
December 11, 2015
The article on Search Engine Watch titled Bing Reveals the Top US and UK Searches of 2015 in the extremely intellectual categories of Celebs, News, Sport(s), Music, and Film. Starting with the last category, guess what franchise involving wookies and Carrie Fisher took the top place? For Celebrity searches, Taylor Swift took first in the UK, and Caitlyn Jenner in the US, followed closely by Miley Cyrus (and let’s all take a moment to savor the seething rage this data must have caused in Kim Kardashian’s heart.) What does this trivia matter? Ravleen Beeston, UK Sales Director of Bing, is quoted in the article with her two cents,
“Understanding the interests and motivations driving search behaviour online provides invaluable insight for marketers into the audiences they care about. This intelligence allows us to empower marketers to create meaningful connections that deliver more value for both consumers and brands alike. By reflecting back on the key searches over the past 12 months, we can begin to anticipate what will inspire and how to create the right experience in the right context during the year to come.”
Some of the more heartening statistics were related to searches for women’s sports news, which increased from last year. Serena Williams was searched more often than the top five male tennis players combined. And saving the best for last, in spite of the dehumanizing and often racially biased rhetoric we’ve all heard involving Syrian refugees, there was a high volume of searches in the US asking how to provide support and aid for refugees, especially children.
Chelsea Kerwin, December 11, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Understanding Trolls, Spam, and Nasty Content
December 9, 2015
The Internet is full of junk. It is a cold hard fact and one that will never die as long as the Internet exists. The amount of trash content was only intensified with the introduction of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterst, and other social media platforms and it keeps pouring onto RSS feeds. The academic community is always up for new studies and capturing new data, so a researcher from the University of Arkansas decided to study mean content. “How ‘Deviant’ Messages Flood Social Media” from Science Daily is an interesting new idea that carries the following abstract:
“From terrorist propaganda distributed by organizations such as ISIS, to political activism, diverse voices now use social media as their major public platform. Organizations deploy bots — virtual, automated posters — as well as enormous paid “armies” of human posters or trolls, and hacking schemes to overwhelmingly infiltrate the public platform with their message. A professor of information science has been awarded a grant to continue his research that will provide an in-depth understanding of the major propagators of viral, insidious content and the methods that make them successful.”
Dr. Nitin Agarwal and will study what behavioral, social, and computational factors cause Internet content to go viral, especially if they have deviant theme. Deviant means along the lines something a troll would post. Agarwal’s research is part of a bigger investigation funded by the Office of Naval Research, Air Force Research, National Science Foundation, and Army Research Office. Agarwal will have a particular focus on how terrorist groups and extremist governments use social media platforms to spread their propaganda. He will also be studying bots that post online content as well.
Many top brass organizations do not have the faintest idea of even what some of the top social media platforms are, much less what their purpose is. A study like this will raise the blinders about them and teach researchers how social media actually works. I wonder if they will venture into 4chan.
Whitney Grace, December 9, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Want to Know What Happens Online Every 60 Seconds?
December 4, 2015
I thought I knew. Time wasting, distractive behavior, and non productive behavior.
Wrong again. I read “What Happens Online Every Minute?” The document is an infographic which reveals a number of factoids. (Who knows if these are accurate or a 20 something daydream.)
- Every minute Vine users play 1,041,666 videos. I like the precision of this number. The happenstance of the sign of the devil is a delight. Remember? 666.
- In seconds Alphabet Googlers who can probably spell “video” nine out of ten times upload 300 hours of new video. The idea is that in one minute, you have the opportunity to fritter away 300 hours of couch potato time whether in a Google self driving car, in your own car, or standing on a line to buy a slice in Manhattan.
- In 1/60th of an hour, Twitter users send 347,222 tweets. How many of these are from marketers? No info. But again the precision of the number is outstanding. I like the 222 number which connotes faith. I have faith in Twitter. Also, 222 is a a strobogrammatic number. Nifty, eh?
View the original. There will be a factoid to make your day or at least a few seconds so you can get back to viewing the video goodness.
Stephen E Arnold, December 4, 2015
Nuzzel Up to Your Content
December 3, 2015
A service called Nuzzel should aggregate content from Web sites like Dogshaming,com, Cuteoverload.com, and Reddit.com/aww. These Web sites are all overloaded with so much cute content that it would make your gums bleed. Nuzzel, however, is not meant to aggregate cute content, Gigaom tells us in “Nuzzel Update Improves New Discovery For Those Who Don’t Use Twitter” what Nuzzel’s true purpose is. Nuzzel is a content discovery service that collects and organized links from Twitter and Facebook. It will now contain an updated feature allowing users to find stories based off their interests without connect to social networks, think Feedly, Zine, and other content feeders.
There will be other changes to Nuzzel as well. Users will not be required to log into one social network, a better search function, and a swipe-based navigation system. Nuzzel is also adding a newsletter for users who do not want to download an application or a social media account. The updates are paired with a new round of funding totaling $5.1 million from the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, Mozilla, Google, and other companies.
“Connecting with Twitter remains the best way to use Nuzzel, and still provides a great personalized news experience,” Abrams said. “But a lot of people don’t use Twitter, and Nuzzel 2.0 provides a new experience for those people, that also allows non-Twitter users to enjoy the power of social curation.” So it can still help quiet the cacophony of links shared to social networks, but now it could also appeal to people who have somehow managed to avoid the din of social media.”
Nuzzel can be programmed to send users cute content from around the Internet, but it is useful for so much more and a great way to organize content and links.
Whitney Grace, December 3, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Vic Gundotra Restarts His Career
December 2, 2015
Google+ is a social media failure and its creator Vic Gundotra doesn’t like talking about. No one can blame him after he created the social media equivalent of the ET Atari videogame, often dubbed the worst videogame in history. According to Mashable in the article, “Here’s What You Do After Google+: Start Fresh,” Gundotra left Google and was gun shy to accept another job in the technology field. He continued to get daily job offers as he spent over a year traveling and spending time with his family, but he finally decided to focus on his career again by accepting a job with AliveCor.
AliveCor is a heath startup that has received FDA approval to use mobile devices to detect heart problems. Gundotra was interested in taking a job with a health technology startup after his father suffered from two heart attacks.
“AliveCor, while a big step removed from working on building a social network, nonetheless got him excited because of his interests in machine learning and wearable health. It also appealed to him on a more personal level.”
The health tech startup is proud to announce their new employee, but they do not include Google+ in the list of accomplishments in the press release. Gundotra recognizes he did good work at Google, but that his vision for social network to compete with Twitter and Facebook was a washout. He’s eager to move onto more fruitful endeavors, especially technology that will make people’s lives better.
Whitney Grace, December 2, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Individualized Facebook Search
November 27, 2015
Facebook search is a puzzle. If you want to find a specific post that you remember seeing on a person’s profile, you cannot find it unless it is posted to their timeline. It is a consistent headache, especially if you become obsessed with finding that post. Mashable alerts us to a new Facebook pilot program, “Facebook May Soon Let You Search Individual Profile Pages.” Facebook’s new pilot program allows users to search for posts within a profile.
The new search feature is only available to pilot program participants. Based on how the feedback, Facebook will evaluate the search function and announce a potential release date.
“Facebook says it’s a small pilot program going around the U.S. for iPhone and desktop and that users have requested an easier way to search for posts within a person’s profile. The feature is limited in nature and only showing up for a select group of people who are part of the pilot program. The social network will be evaluating feedback based on the pilot. No plans for an official rollout have been announced at this time.?”
The search feature shows up on user profiles as a basic search box with the description “search this profile” with the standard magnifying glass graphic. It is a simple addition to a profile’s dashboard and it does not take up much space, but it does present a powerful tool.
Facebook is a social media platform that has ingrained itself into the function of business intelligence to regular socialization. As we rely more on it for daily functions, information needs to be easy to recall and access. The profile search feature will probably be a standard Facebook dashboard function by 2016.
Whitney Grace, November 27, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Search Experts Looking for Work? Rejoice
November 23, 2015
The article titled 17 Tools to Make LinkedIn Work for You on TNW provides some thoughtful commentary on how to make the best use of the social media platform LinkedIn. The article begins by emphasizing how important and relevant LinkedIn still is, particularly for people in Sales, who use the service to gather information and research prospects. It goes on to highlight the difficulty facing salespeople when it comes to searching LinkedIn, and the myriad of tools and Chrome extensions available to simplify search. The first on the list is Crystal,
“Language matters. How you communicate with someone, the words you use, how you structure your requests etc. affects their initial perception of you. And that’s what Crystal helps with. The standalone app as well as its Chrome extension allows you to profile Linkedin users profiles to detect their personality. And suggest the best ways to communicate with them. Crystal can tell you what to write in an email or how to create a message that engages them in a way they’d expect from you.”
Other resources include SalesLoft Prospector, which aids in building lists of targeted leads with contact information in tow, Elink.Club for LinkedIn, which visits 800 targeted profiles a day with the expectation that just under 10% of those users will, in turn, return the visit and become acquainted, and Discover.ly, which helps users establish mutual friends and social media commonalities with the profiles they view.
Chelsea Kerwin, November 23, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Facebook Acts in Its Own Best Interest
November 19, 2015
The article titled Petition: Facebook Betrayed Us By Secretly Lobbying for Surveillance Bill on BoingBoing complains that Facebook has been somewhat two-faced regarding privacy laws and cyber surveillance. The article claims that Facebook publicly opposed the Cybersercurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) while secretly lobbying to push it through. The article explains,
“Facebook has come under public fire for its permissive use of user data and pioneering privacy-invasive experiments in the past. They have also supported previous versions of the cybersecurity info-sharing bills, and their chief Senate lobbyist, Myriah Jordan, worked as General Counsel for CISA’s sponsor, Senator Richard Burr, immediately before moving to Facebook. Facebook has declined to take a public position on CISA, but in recent days sources have confirmed that in fact Facebook is quietly lobbying the Senate to pass it.”
This quotation does beg the question of why anyone would believe that Facebook opposes CISA, given its history. It is, after all, a public company that will earn money in any acceptable way it can. The petition to make Facebook be more transparent about its position on CISA seems more like a request for an apology from a company for being a company than anything else.
Chelsea Kerwin, November 19, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Pew Report Compares News Sources: Twitter and Facebook
November 6, 2015
As newspapers fall, what is rising to take their place? Why, social media, of course. The Pew Research Center discusses its recent findings on the subject in, “The Evolving Role of News on Twitter and Facebook.” The number of Americans getting their news from these platforms continues to rise, across almost all demographic groups. The article informs us:
“The new study, conducted by Pew Research Center in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, finds that clear majorities of Twitter (63%) and Facebook users (63%) now say each platform serves as a source for news about events and issues outside the realm of friends and family. That share has increased substantially from 2013, when about half of users (52% of Twitter users, 47% of Facebook users) said they got news from the social platforms.”
The write-up describes some ways the platforms differ in their news delivery. For example, more users turn to Twitter for breaking news, while Facebook now features a “Trending” sidebar, filterable by subject. The article notes that these trends can have an important impact on our society:
“As more social networking sites recognize and adapt to their role in the news environment, each will offer unique features for news users, and these features may foster shifts in news use. Those different uses around news features have implications for how Americans learn about the world and their communities, and for how they take part in the democratic process.”
Indeed. See the article for more differences between Facebook and Twitter news consumers, complete with some percentages. You can also see the data’s barebones results in the report’s final topline. Most of the data comes from a survey conducted across two weekends last March, among 2,035 Americans aged 18 and up.
Cynthia Murrell, November 6, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Beyond LinkedIn
October 26, 2015
Though LinkedIn remains the largest professional networking site, it may be time to augment its hobnobbing potential with one or more others. Search Engine Journal gives us many to choose from in “12 Professional Networking Alternatives to LinkedIn.” Like LinkedIn, some are free, but others offer special features for a fee. Some even focus on local connections. Reporter Albert Costill writes:
“While LinkedIn has proven to be an incredible assist for anyone looking to make professional connections or find employment, there have been some concerns. For starters, the company has been forced to reduce the number of emails it sends out because of complaints. There have also been allegations of the company hacking into member’s emails and a concern that activity on LinkedIn groups are declining.
“That doesn’t mean that you should give up on LinkedIn. Despite any concerns with the network, it still remains one of the best locations to network professionally. It just means that in addition to LinkedIn you should also start networking on other professional sites to cast that wide net that was previously mentioned. I previously shared eight alternatives to LinkedIn like Twylah, Opprtunity, PartnerUp, VisualCV, Meetup, Zerply, AngelList, and BranchOut, but here are twelve more networking sites that you should also consider using in no particular order.”
So between Costill’s lists, there are 20 sites to check out. A few notable entries from this second list: Makerbase is specifically for software creators, and is free to any Twitter users; LunchMeet connects LinkedIn users who would like to network over lunch; Plaxo automatically keeps your cloud-based contact list up-to-date; and the European Xing is the place to go for a job overseas. See the article for many more network-boosting options.
Cynthia Murrell, October 26, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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