X1 Social Discovery Posited as Solution to Social Media Discovery Problem
November 4, 2014
The article titled Why Printing Social Media Pages is a Bad Idea and May Violate an Attorney’s Duty of Competence on the X1 Discovery blog delves into the waste incurred by counsel when they take the time to print social media pages. The example used is the recent case of Stallings v. City of Johnston, a wrongful termination case wherein Jayne Stalling’s legal team spent a full week printing out some 500 pages of Facebook content. The article explains,
“This exercise was obviously costly. A week of paralegal and lawyer time could easily run $25,000 and no client should pay anywhere near that amount for a task that, with best practices technology, would require minutes instead of days to perform. But the high cost is only the tip of the iceberg…Many legal commentators note that the duty of competence arguably requires lawyers to conduct online investigations of opposing parties, key witnesses, jurors, including looking at social media.”
The article goes on to question the reliability of print screen images, which are still time-consuming. Screen shot images have not been allowed in several courts, but the answer proposed by the article is X1 Social Discovery. This is a single interface designed to address social media content from the leading sites while holding on to metadata and allowing for search. They also note the price is certainly preferable to that incurred in the Stallings case.
Chelsea Kerwin, November 04, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Watson Analytic Example
October 21, 2014
Navigate to Thinglink. At this location is an example of the type of graphic that can be generated with output from Watson, IBM’s next big thing. A graphic artist has taken the data and created an eye snapping infographic. How many other systems can generate this type of output? Quite a few if the information in my analytics files are representative. Is it necessary to use IBM Watson when Microsoft Excel and an open source tool like Tableau are available? IBM Watson analyzed 135 million tweets from 10 countries in Central and South America. Brazil was excluded.
Twitter said in 2013:
Brazil is one of our largest markets with a strong user base. Twitter has already become an important part of our lives in Brazil and, by strengthening our local presence, we plan to continue delighting our users as well as creating new opportunities for marketers who want to connect with them.
Perhaps I overlooked Brazil. No big deal.
Stephen E Arnold, October 22, 2014
Oh Google Plus You Are Learning From Your Mistakes
October 15, 2014
Google has alienated many potential users for any of its services by forcing them to open a universal Google Plus account. Some argue that the benefits outweigh the negative factors, but others say they do not need another email or social media account. Ars Technica has an interesting article, “Google Nixes G+ Requirement For Gmail Accounts” explaining that Google is listening to its users.
Gmail users will soon be liberated from forced enrollment in Google Plus starting in early September. Mandatory enrollment in Google Plus to access Gmail has been a topic of consternation, boiling over when YouTube users had to join Google or they wouldn’t be able to post videos or comments anymore. It transformed into a colossal mess and the YouTube comments are still rolling out.
When Vic Gundotra left the company in April 2014, Google Plus stopped being at the forefront of products and services are slowly becoming individual entities again.
However…
“Even though forced G+ integration continues to disappear, Google’s push towards global identity management across its services isn’t going away—you can still use a single Google account for YouTube, Gmail, the Google Play store, and so on. However, making G+ optional makes it much easier to carve out and manage multiple identities across services; it’s getting easier to maintain a YouTube account that has nothing to do with your Gmail account or your Google Play account, for example. For people who prefer to keep different components of their online identity firmly segregated—as I do—this is a very, very good thing.”
Maintaining some form of multiple Internet identities has returned. Also Google Plus was supposed to make search more personal and touted the “search of the future” tagline. Not anymore!
Whitney Grace, October 15, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Profile Engine: Sort of Finding the Forgotten
October 13, 2014
In the supplemental lecture added after the intel conference ended, I addressed the topic of disappearing content. The “right to be forgotten” is one of the great ideas emerging from government committees. I wonder who wants to be forgotten? I provided some basic information about finding information about these forgotten entities.
One of the attendees at my lecture alerted me to Profile Engine. I navigated to the link and learned:
Profile Engine is a fairly low-budget-looking search engine, started in 2007 in New Zealand and partly owned by the Auckland University of Technology. It allows you to find people on social networks. Google has been getting a lot of requests to reverse this trend—almost 3,300 results from Profile Engine have been taken down by Google since May, when the “right to be forgotten” came into effect.
You can find Profile Engine at http://profileengine.com/. We can’t endorse the system, but we will check it out, and I will have an update for my next lecture. Conference organizers extend invitations via email. If you don’t hear about an event, you need to get yourself unforgotten. That’s a bit of humor for this Monday morning.
Stephen E Arnold, October 13, 2014
Twitter Bots Abound
September 23, 2014
Quartz grabs our attention with its headline, “Twitter Admits That as Many as 23 Million of Its Active Users Are Automated.” These accounts, which automatically request updates and may or may not also auto-post, include “users” like third-party data-display apps. Reporter Zachary M. Seward writes:
“The new disclosure was an attempt to clarify an earlier statement (pdf) that 14% of MAUs access the service outside of the official website and mobile apps, by using Twitter’s API. Twitter’s update today specifies that the 14% figure ‘included certain users who accessed Twitter through owned and operated applications.’ Those are likely TweetDeck and Twitter for Mac, which are favored by power tweeters but, for technical reasons, aren’t counted in many of the company’s official statistics. The company said only 11% of MAUs accessed Twitter from applications that the company doesn’t own, like Tweetbot or Flipboard.
“To be clear, automated accounts aren’t necessarily spam accounts, which according to Twitter make up less than 5% of MAUs. Bots can be useful, even essential, accounts for many Twitter users. But once they’re set up, they don’t usually have any humans behind them, which matters greatly to advertisers who are interested in reaching potential customers.”
Seward maintains that Twitter should be concerned for its advertisers (itself included), who may feel they are pouring ad dollars down a black hole. I’m sure they can work out some equitable fee structure(s). We wonder, though, what the implications are for high-value content that attracts interested readers.
Cynthia Murrell, September 23, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Useful Glossary to Search Short Text
July 13, 2014
The Daily Mail published a list of 60 new abbreviations. If you have access to short message content, the list may be helpful for some queries. You can find the list at http://dailym.ai/1kQpyrm. My faves allow me to say, “DGAF about the vendor’s OOTD. Very classy stuff.
Stephen E Arnold, July 13, 2014
Google Orkut: A Social Network Pioneer
July 2, 2014
Now that I have some free time in my golden years, I enjoy going through my archive of search and content processing content. I read in “Google Shutters Orkut, Its First Crack at a Social Network.” The write up provides some history; to wit:
Ten years ago, Orkut was Google’s first foray into social networking. Orkut Büyükkökten created the site using Google’s notion of “20 percent time”—that employees could dedicate a fifth of their work week to developing projects not directly related to their work (as long as those projects were cool, and could become Google projects). Orkut, launched a month before Facebook and five months after MySpace, has what most social-networking sites have: profile pages, photos, groups (called “communities”), and apps. And even through two redesigns, it retained some vestiges of the MySpace era, such as themes and a more prominently displayed list of friends.
Intrigued by the reference to “before Facebook”, I dipped into my archive of search goodness and spotted some interesting factoids about Orkut. Frankly speaking, I don’t think even the most intrepid Beyond Search reader cares too much about search and content processing history. I find the past fascinating because the present state of online services leaves me with indigestion.
Let me highlight some nuggets from my Google Orkut file. None of these made the cut for my first study of Google, published a decade ago as The Google Legacy by a defunct publishing company somewhere in merrie olde England.
ITEM: Litigation between Affinity Networks and Google about the Orkut service and some of its code and functions. I lost track of the lawsuit in 2005, but it would not surprise me if it is still alive and kicking. You can get a sense of dispute by scanning this Justia document. Innovation is an interesting business for Google.
ITEM: In 2005, Information Week ran a story which I assume is semi accurate. “Brazilian Police Bust Dope Ring Built Around Google’s Orkut” asserted:
Police in Brazil arrested a gang of drug dealers who were using Google’s popular Orkut social networking site to sell ecstasy and marijuana…
I recall learning at one of the police and intel conferences that Orkut was a go to service in Brazil for some fascinating activities. As Facebook was ramping up with college students, Orkut seemed to be appealing to a different type of social network maven.
ITEM: “Intermediary Liability in Latin America” reported in 2010 that Google faced in 2010 “faces at least 600 lawsuits in Brazil. The most famous of those cases was filed by two Brazilian teenagers against the Google-owned social networking site Orkut over dirty jokes that allegedly offended them.”
Orkut is a gone goose. For some, the announcement will be bittersweet.
Stephen E Arnold, July 1, 2014
Collective Venture Combines Traditional and Social Media
June 25, 2014
Social media has completely changed the way that news is spread, and who spreads it. Some say that the Arab Spring was due in great part to Twitter. But it seems that now traditional media is joining forces with social media in an effort to shape the future of news reporting. GigaOm covers the latest in their article, “VICE, Mashable, Digg and Others Form a Collective for Breaking News about Ukraine, May Expand into Other Areas.”
The article sums up the initiative:
“A group of six news organizations and digital-media outlets — including VICE, Mashable, Digg, Quartz, Mother Jones and NBC-owned Breaking News — have created a somewhat unusual collective effort aimed at reporting breaking news about Ukraine, an effort they are calling #UkraineDesk. For the moment at least, the venture consists of just a common hashtag that all the different entities have agreed to use, which is then pulled into a similarly-named Twitter account, but some of the players say if it works they may expand into other areas.”
If the concept is successful, it could change the way that news is received in the future. Keep an eye on not only this initiative, but also on how others are attempting to leverage social media for news coverage. It seems like the major networks and other big players are scrambling to keep up.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 25, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
UkraineDesk Consolidates Breaking Ukraine Related News
June 10, 2014
I find hope for the future in a Gigaom piece about journalistic cooperation: “VICE, Mashable, Digg and Others Form a Collective for Breaking News About Ukraine, May Expand into Other Areas.” These publications are willing to work together to assure each of their audiences receive as complete a picture as possible about a very important series of events. Naturally, social media is involved. Reporter Mathew Ingram writes:
“A group of six news organizations and digital-media outlets — including VICE, Mashable, Digg, Quartz, Mother Jones and NBC-owned Breaking News — have created a somewhat unusual collective effort aimed at reporting breaking news about Ukraine, an effort they are calling #UkraineDesk. For the moment at least, the venture consists of just a common hashtag that all the different entities have agreed to use, which is then pulled into a similarly-named Twitter account, but some of the players say if it works they may expand into other areas.”
Ingram interviewed a few of the folks who came up with this idea; see the article for their brief takes on how the project came together and their hopes for the future. He also points out the diversity of publications that are participating:
“Whether the group does other things together or not, it’s definitely an interesting effort: VICE is known for its hip videos, Digg is a traffic-driving aggregator (which has also been experimenting with original content), Mashable is a social-media giant that has been doing more serious news since former Roberts joined the company last year, Mother Jones is a site known for its biting political commentary, and Breaking News specializes in mobile and real-time info.”
The write-up goes on to compare the members of this group to those that formed the Associated Press in 1846. That project was spurred by the costs of reporting on the Mexican-American war. I suppose the concept of a press collective was due for an update, and major conflicts seems to be a powerful prompt. I hope this is a sign of things to come—these days there are many who would benefit from exposure to varying points of view.
Cynthia Murrell, June 10, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Pinterest Attempts Improved Search
May 26, 2014
Pinterest is known as a time drain, a very entertaining time drain, but a time drain none the less. It is pages and pages of endless scrolling, browsing, and clicking. But now Pinterest attempts to join the world of search, to make their product easier to use and perhaps more efficient. Read the details in the MakeUseOf story, “Explore Pinterest In Just A Few Taps As Guided Search Comes To The Mobile Apps.”
The article says:
“Guided Search is being described as a new way to find content on Pinterest. With so many pins, boards, and Pinners to search through, Guided Search wants to make it easier to find something within the first few taps. As the name indicates, Guided Search helps you get more specific by diving deeper into each category.”
No advanced search phrases are needed – just a simple keyword that can then be narrowed down via the sliding row of filters along the top of the screen. And while this is a nice thought, Pinterest users likely have no expectation for efficient search. If they did, they would be using Google to find the page in the first place instead of scrolling through countless pins from friends of friends in search of mashed potato recipes.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 26, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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